him. Eighteen months later she was laid beside him,
dying of an illness first contracted from her constant tendance on his
sick-bed. In the closing period of his life, Hood could hardly bear her
being out of his sight, or even write when she was away. Some years
afterwards, a public subscription was got up, and a monument erected to
mark the grave of the good man and true poet who "sang the Song of the
Shirt."

The face of Hood is best known by two busts and an oil-portrait which
have both been engraved from. It is a sort of face to which apparently
a bust does more than justice, yet less than right. The features, being
mostly by no means bad ones, look better, when thus reduced to the mere
simple and abstract contour, than they probably showed in reality, for
no one supposed Hood to be a fine-looking man; on the other hand, the
_value_ of the face must have been in its shifting expression--keen,
playful, or subtle--and this can be but barely suggested by the
sculptor. The poet's visage was pallid, his figure slight, his voice
feeble; he always dressed in black, and is spoken of as presenting a
generally clerical aspect. He was remarkably deficient in ear for
music--not certainly for the true chime and varied resources of verse.
His aptitude for the art of design was probably greater than might be
inferred from the many comic woodcut-drawings which he has left. These
are irresistibly ludicrous--(who would not laugh over "The Spoiled
Child"--"What next? as the Frog said when his tail fell off"--and a
host of others?)--and all the more ludicrous and effective for being
drawn more childishly and less artistically than was within Hood's
compass. One may occasionally see some water-color landscape-bit or the
like from his hands pleasantly done; and during his final residence in
England he acted upon an idea he had long entertained, and produced
some little in the way of oil-painting. He was also ingenious in any
sort of light fancy-work--such, for instance, as carving the scenery
for a child's theatre which formed the delight of his little son and
daughter. His religious faith was, according to the writers of the
_Memorials_, deep and sincere, though his opposition to sectarian
narrowness and spite of all sorts was vigorous, and caused him
sometimes to be regarded as anti-religious. A letter of his to a
tract-giving and piously censorious lady who had troubled him
(published in the same book) is absolutely fierce, and indee