s of Hood, we come to the crowning quality of his genius,
the _simply pathetic_. We could, if space remained, adduce many
psychological and other reasons why we apply this phrase to the pathos
of Hood. One reason is, that Hood's pathos involves none of the
complications of higher passion, nor any of the pomp which belongs, in
mood, situation, or utterance, to the loftier phases of human suffering.
The sorrow of those who most attracted his sympathy was not theatrical
or imposing. It has been well said of him, that his "bias was towards
all that was poor and unregarded." And thus, while those who painfully
moved the charity and compassion of his genius were considered by him
the victims of artificial civilization, his own feeling for them was
natural and instinctive; yet never did natural and instinctive feeling
receive expression more artistic, but with that admirable art in which
elaboration attains the utmost perfection of simplicity. It excites
our wonder to observe how in pathos Hood's genius divests itself of
attributes which had seemed essential to its existence. All that is
grotesque, whimsical, or odd disappears, and we have only the soul of
pity in the sound of song,--in song "most musical, most melancholy." In
pathos, Hood's is not what we should call a transformed genius so much
as a genius becoming divested of its coarser life, and then breathing
purely the inner spirit of goodness and beauty. The result is what one
might almost term the "absolute" in pathos. Nothing is excluded that is
necessary to impression; nothing is admitted that could vulgarize or
weaken it. We have thus pathos at once practical and poetic,--pathos at
once the most affecting and the most ideal,--coming from a heart rich
with all human charities, and gaining worthy and immortal form by means
of a subtile, deep, cultivated imagination. The pathetic, therefore, no
less than the comic, in Hood's writings has all the author's peculiar
originality, but has it in a higher order. Pathos was the product of
the author's mind when it was most matured by experience, and
when suffering, without impairing its strength, had refined its
characteristic benevolence to the utmost tenderness.

Hood's pathos culminates in "The Song of the Shirt," "The Lay of the
Laborer," and "The Bridge of Sighs."

These are marvellous lyrics. In spirit and in form they are singular
and remarkable. We cannot think of any poems which more show the mystic
enchantment of g