PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT. THE favourable reception of the comprehensive selection from THOMAS HOOD'S writings in the volumes of "Poems," and "Prose and Verse," published a few years since by the subscriber-in a form of general similarity to the present series-has induced the undertaking of the completion, in this popular style, of the most important of this author's numerous productions. The author of "The Pugsley Papers," "The Dream of Eugene Aram," and "The Song of the Shirt," left much behind him engrafted with the humour, the gaiety, sentiment, the deep feeling of these well-known writings. In the few years which have elapsed since his death, it has been abundantly proved that in his peculiar walk he has left no successor. No man furnishes us, with so free a hand, such innocent light-hearted mirth, no one's jests play more gracefully, in the happy illustration of the old poet, about the heart. It was well remarked at the time of his death by an able critic in the Athenæum :—"The secrets of these effects, if analysed, would. give the characteristics of one of the most original and powerful geniuses which ever was dropped by Faëry into infant's cradle, and oddly nursed up by man into a treasure, quaint, special, cameleoncoloured in the changefulness of its tints, yet complete and self consistent. Of all the humorists Hood was the most poetical. When dealing with the most familiar subjects, whether it might be a Sweep bewailing the suppression of his cry, or a Mother searching through St. Giles's for her lost infant, or a Miss Kilmansegg's golden child hood-there was hardly a verse in which some touches of heart, or some play of fancy, did not beckon the laughing reader away into far other worlds than the Jester's." This is the spirit of all Hood's volumes, playful and poetical; light as gossamer, but profound enough too, if you look into them; and, above all other jesting—innocent. The volumes of Hood which will appear immediately in this series are, "Whimsicalities, a Periodical Gathering," made by himself, of some of his best papers; the capital volume of the school of Humphrey Clinker, "Up the Rhine;" with a new collection of Miscellaneous Prose and Verse under the author's title of "Hood's Own." These will be illustrated with the author's quaint and humorous designs, which are frequently independent of the text, and always laughable epigrams in themselves. New-York, March, 1852. G. P. PUTNAM. |