; not only because they made the author an everlasting
benefactor to the poor, but also because they became an interpretation
of his own deeper genius, and revealed a nobler meaning in his works
than had ever before been discerned. Hence-forth, he was more thought of
as a profound poet than as the greatest of mimes, jesters, and punsters.
The lyrics of the poor saved him from imminent injustice.--All that we
have further to say of these lyrics is to express our admiration as to
the classical finish of their diction, and as to the wild, sweet, and
strange music in their sadly sounding measures.

Hood is a writer to whom, in his degree, we may apply the epithet
_Shakspearian_. We do not, indeed, compare him with Shakspeare in bulk
or force of genius, but only in quality and kind. He had, as the great
dramatist, the same disregard of the temporary and discernment of the
essential; the same wonderful wealth of vocabulary, and the same bold
dexterity in the use of it; the same caprices of jestings and conceits;
the same comminglings of mirth and melancholy; the same many-sided
conception of existence; the same embracing catholicity of tastes and
tendencies; the same indifference to sects and factions; the same
freedom from jealousies, asperities, and spites; and in the lower scale
of his genius, he resembled the mighty dramatist in subtile perception
of life and Nature, in his mental and moral independence, and in his
intuitive divinations of abstract truth and individual character.

As a poet of the poor, Crabbe is the only poet with whom he can be
critically compared. The comparison would be a contrast; and in order to
handle it to any purpose, a long essay would be required. Hood wrote
but a few short lyrics on the poor; Crabbe wrote volumes. Crabbe was
_literal_: Hood _ideal_. Crabbe was concrete; Hood was abstract. Crabbe
lived among the rural poor; Hood among the city poor. Crabbe saw the
poor constantly, and went minutely and practically into the interior of
their life; if Hood ever directly saw them at all, it was merely with
casual glimpses, and he must have learned of them only by occasional
report. Crabbe was a man of vigorous constitution, he lived a hardy
life, and he lived it long; Hood was a man of feeble health, he lived a
life of pain, and he closed it early. Crabbe had a hard youth, but
after that a certain and settled competence; Hood's was also a youth of
struggle, but struggle was his destiny to the end.