Robin, a celebrated outlaw, who lived in the reign of Richard I., about the close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century. He dwelt principally in Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire. At the period during which Robin Hood performed his exploits the forest laws were enforced with great rigour by the Norman kings; and, as a consequence, numbers fled to solitudes and natural strongholds. Having a common interest, they banded together; and by their acquaintance with unfrequented localities they were able to elude the vigilance of pursuers, as well as at times to present a bold front even to a numerous enemy. Stow mentions that Robin Hood had a hundred companions, able-bodied men, and skilful archers, who were so formidable that four hundred would not attack them. But Robin pursued a certain system in his robberies. He spared the poor, and plundered the rich. Stow says, "He suffered no woman to be oppressed, violated, or otherwise molested. Poor men's goods he spared, abundantly relieving them with that which by theft he got from abbeys and rich old castles." Hence it is not wonderful that Robin became a very great favourite with the lower classes of people. His exploits have been celebrated from early times in great numbers of popular ballads, setting forth his courage, strength, skill in deer-hunting, chivalry towards the fair sex, and humanity towards his poorer neighbours. The poems, songs, and ballads relating to him have been brought together in Ritson's Robin Hood Collection, Svo, 1795, London. Not much can be gathered regarding Robin Hood's real history from these poems, many of them being written long after his time. He appears to have been a yeoman, though Ritson gives some credit to the epithet at Kirklees in Yorkshire, which represented him as an earl of Huntingdon. As to the MS. in the Sloane Collection, which speaks of Robin as an earl, the question is at once raised regarding the antiquity and value of the MS., which probably belongs to a period long subsequent to Robin Hood. Of his companions Little John and Friar Tuck, his chaplain, were the most notable. Robin is said to have been bled to death by a nun, near Kirklees, a.d. 1247. See Ritson's Robin Hood Collection, and Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

Hood, Samuel, better known as Viscount Hood, belonged to a family of which several members have earned a lasting name in the naval annals of England. He was born in 1724 at Butley, in Somerseshire, of which parish his father was rector. Entering the navy at an early age, he passed rapidly through the inferior grades, and in 1757 was made captain of the Antelope, a 50-gun ship, with which he captured a French ship of equal size. After serving in the Mediterranean and on the American coast with such distinction as to earn a baronetcy, he was sent in 1780 to the West Indies to co-operate with Sir George Rodney, and while there fought some indecisive actions with the Comte de Grasse. In the course of the American War he again engaged that commander off the mouth of the Chesapeake, and with a similar result. In the actions of the 9th and 12th April, which followed the capture of the island of St Christopher by the French, Hood had the brunt of the battle to bear, and distinguished himself so much that he was created a peer of Ireland with the title of Baron Hood of Catherington; and on Rodney's return home was promoted to the chief command, which he held till peace was proclaimed in 1783. When the war of the French Revolution broke out Hood was sent to the Mediterranean, where the royalists in Toulon received him with open arms, and surrendered that city to his care. When the republicans, under the command of Napoleon, were on the point of regaining possession of the city, Hood destroyed the arsenal, and burned fifteen sail of the line, besides carrying off eight; and in the following year signalized himself by expelling the French from Corsica. Soon after this exploit he returned home, and was rewarded for his numerous services with the governorship of Greenwich Hospital, an English peerage with the title of Viscount Hood of Whitley, and finally with the Grand Cross of the Bath. He was in his ninety-second year when he died at Bath, June 27, 1816. In Viscount Hood were combined the finest qualities of the English sailor. He certainly had not the genius of Blake or Nelson; but among the men of talent who have contributed to raise the British navy to its present pre-eminence, few stand higher than he. To great nautical skill he joined high courage, a prompt decision of movement, and a sagacity of judgment that won the confidence of the nation as well as of the fleet. With all his daring he was cautious enough to avoid risking his ships or men unless the prize were a very tempting one, or unless, with the means at his command, he felt himself justified in trying to secure it.—The career of Lord Hood's younger brother Alexander, afterwards Viscount Bridport, was very similar to his own. Passing rapidly through the lower grades of the service, he rose to be second in command of the fleet which was sent out in 1782 under Lord Howe to relieve Gibraltar. In that commander's great victory with the Channel fleet on June 1, 1794, Hood was again his second in command, and contributed greatly to the successful result of the action. In the following year, while enjoying an independent command, he encountered a French fleet off L'Orient, and took three sail of the line. When Lord Howe retired from the service Hood succeeded him in the command of the Channel fleet, which he retained till 1800. In 1801, his numerous and valuable services were rewarded with an English peerage under the title of Viscount Bridport. He died at Bath in 1814.—Hardly less distinguished than either of the above was their cousin Sir Samuel Hood, who carried his laurels at Toulon, Corsica, and the Nile. In 1806 he greatly signalized himself by the capture of three French frigates in an action off Rochefort, for which exploit he was rewarded with the Order of the Bath. Soon after the battle of Copenhagen, in which he took part, he was promoted to the highest naval command in India, where he died in 1814. To the remarkable nautical talents that seemed hereditary in the family to which he belonged, he superadded a great knowledge of science, of which he was an arduous student.

Hood, Thomas, humourist and poet, born 1789, the son of Mr Hood, bookseller, of the firm of Vernor and Hood, a man of intelligence, and the author of two novels. "Next to being a citizen of the world," writes Thomas Hood in his Literary Reminiscences, "it must be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world's greatest city." The best incident of his boyhood was his instruction by a schoolmaster who appreciated his talents, and, as he says, "made him feel it impossible not to take an interest in learning while he seemed so interested in teaching." Under the care of this "decayed dominie," whom he has so affectionately recorded, he earned a few guineas—his first literary fee—by revising for the press a new edition of Paul and Virginia. Admitted soon after into the counting-house of a friend of his family, he "turned his stool into a Pegasus on three legs, every foot, of course, being a dactyl or a spondee;" but the uncongenial profession affected his health, which was never strong, and he was transferred to the care of a relation at Dundee. He has graphically described his unconditional rejection by this inhospitable personage, and the circumstances under which he found himself in a strange town without an acquaintance, with the most sympathetic nature, anxious for intellectual and moral culture, but without guidance, instruction, or control. This self-dependence, however, suited the originality of his character; he became a large and indiscriminate reader, and before long contributed humorous and poetical articles to the provincial newspapers and magazines. As a proof of the seriousness with which he regarded the literary vocation, it may be mentioned that he used to write out his poems in printed characters, believing that that process best enabled him to understand his own peculiarities and faults, and probably unconscious that Coleridge had recommended some such method of criticism when he said he thought "print settles it."

His modest judgment of his own abilities, however, deterred him from literature as a profession, and on his return to London he applied himself assiduously to the art of engraving, in which he acquired a skill that in after years became a most valuable assistant to his literary labours, and enabled him to illustrate his various humours and fancies by a profusion of quaint devices, which not only repeated to the eye the impressions of the text, but, by suggesting amusing analogies and contrasts, added considerably to the sense and effect of the work. In 1821 Mr John Scott, the editor of the *London Magazine*, was killed in a duel, and that periodical passed into the hands of some friends of Mr Hood, who proposed to him to take a part in its publication. His installation into this congenial post at once introduced him to the best literary society of the time; and in becoming the associate of such men as Charles Lamb, Cary, De Quincey, Allan Cunningham, Proctor, Tallfourd, Hartley Coleridge, the peasant-poet Clare, and other contributors to that remarkable miscellany, he gradually developed his own intellectual powers, and enjoyed that happy intercourse with superior minds for which his cordial and genial character was so well adapted, and which he has described in his best manner in several chapters of *Hood's Own—Odes and Addresses*—his first work—were written about this time, in conjunction with his brother-in-law Mr J. H. Reynolds, the friend of Keats; and it is agreeable to find Sir Walter Scott acknowledging the gift of the work with no formal expressions of gratification, but "wishing the unknown author good health, good fortune, and whatever other good things can best support and encourage his lively vein of inoffensive and humorous satire."

*Whims and Oddities, National Tales, Tynney Hall*, a novel, *The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies*, followed. In these works the humorous faculty not only predominated, but expressed itself with a freshness, originality and power, which the poetical element could not claim. There was much true poetry in the verse, and much sound sense and keen observation in the prose of these works; but the poetical feeling and lyrical facility of the one, and the more solid qualities of the other, seemed best employed when they were subservient to his rapid wit, and to the ingenious coruscations of his fancy. This impression was confirmed by the series of the *Comic Annual*, a kind of publication at that time popular, which Mr Hood undertook and continued, almost unassisted, for several years. Under that somewhat frivolous title he treated all the leading events of the day in a fine spirit of caricature, entirely free from grossness and vulgarity, without a trait of personal malice, and with an under-current of true sympathy and honest purpose that will preserve these papers, like the sketches of Hogarth, long after the events and manners they illustrate have passed from the minds of men. But just as the agreeable jester rose into the earnest satirist, one of the most striking peculiarities of his style became a more manifest defect. The attention of the reader was distracted, and his good taste annoyed, by the incessant play upon words, of which Hood had written in his own vindication,

"However critics may take offence, A double meaning has double sense."

Now it is true that the critic must be unconscious of some of the subtlest charms and nicest delicacies of language, and which would exclude from humorous writing all those impressions and surprises which depend on the use of the diverse sense of words. The history, indeed, of many a word lies hid in its equivocal uses; and it in no way derogates from the dignity of the highest poetry to gain strength and variety from the ingenious application of the same sounds to different senses, any more than from the contrivances of rhythm or the accompaniment of imitative sounds. But when this habit becomes the characteristic of any wit, it is impossible to prevent it from degenerating into occasional buffoonery, and from supplying a cheap and ready resource, whenever the true vein of humour becomes thin or rare. Artists have been known to have used the left hand in the hope of checking the fatal facility which practice had conferred on the right; and if Mr Hood had been able to place under some restraint the curious and complex machinery of words and syllables which his fancy was incessantly producing, his style would have been a great gainer, and much real earnestness of object, which now lie confused by the brilliant kaleidoscope of language, would have remained definite and clear. He was probably not unconscious of this danger; for, as he gained experience as a writer, his diction became more simple, and his ludicrous illustrations less frequent. In another annual called the *Gem* appeared the poem on the story of "Eugene Aram," which first manifested the full extent of that poetical vigour which seemed to advance just in proportion as his physical health declined. He started a magazine in his own name, for which he secured the assistance of many literary men of reputation and authority, but which was mainly sustained by his own intellectual activity. From a sick-bed, from which he never rose, he conducted this work with surprising energy, and there composed those poems, too few in number, but immortal in the English language, such as the "Song of the Shirt," the "Bridge of Sighs," and the "Song of the Labourer," which seized the deep human interests of the time, and transported them from the ground of social philosophy into the loftier domain of the imagination. They are no clamorous expressions of anger at the discrepancies and contrasts of humanity, but plain, solemn pictures of conditions of life, which neither the politician nor the moralist can deny to exist, and which they are imperatively called upon to remedy. Woman, in her wasted life, in her hurried death, here stands appealing to the society that degrades her, with a combination of eloquence and poetry, of forms of art at once instantaneous and permanent, and with a metrical energy and variety of which perhaps our language alone is capable. Prolonged illness brought on strained circumstances; and application was made to Sir Robert Peel to place Mr Hood's name on the pension list, with which the British state so moderately rewards the national services of literary men. This was done without delay, and the pension was continued to his wife and family after his death, which occurred on the 3d of May 1845. Nine years after, a monument, raised by public subscription, in the cemetery of Kensal Green, was inaugurated with a concourse of spectators that showed how well the memory of the poet stood the test of time. Artizans came from a great distance to view and honour the image of the popular writer whose best efforts had been dedicated to the cause and the sufferings of the workers of the world; and literary men of all opinions gathered round the grave of one of their brethren whose writings were at once the delight of every boy, and the instruction of every man, who read them. Happy the humorist whose works and life are an illustration of the great moral truth that the sense of humour is the just balance of all the faculties of man, the best security against the pride of knowledge and the conceits of the imagination, the strongest inducement to submit with a wise and pious patience to the vicissitudes of human existence. This was the lesson that Thomas Hood left behind him, and which the people of this country will not easily forget.

(H. M. M.)