And
yet observe the gravity with which the forms of reason are kept up in
the "and so." Like this is the peddler's recommendation of his
ear-trumpet:
I don't pretend with horns of mine,
Like some in the advertising line,
To magnify sounds on such marvellous scales
That the sounds of a cod seem as large as a whale's.
There was Mrs. F. so very deaf
That she might have worn a percussion cap
And been knocked on the head without hearing it snap.
Well, I sold her a horn, and the very next day
She heard from her husband in Botany Bay.
Again, his definition of deafness:
Deaf as the dog's ears in Enfield's "Speaker."
So, in his description of the hardships of the wild beasts in the
menagerie,
Who could not even prey
In their own way,
and the monkey-reformer who resolved to set them all free, beginning
with the lion; but
Pug had only half unbolted Nero,
When Nero bolted him.
In Hood there is almost always a combination of wit and fun, the wit
always suggesting the remote association of ideas, and the fun jostling
together the most obvious concords of sound and discords of sense.
Hood's use of words reminds one of the kaleidoscope. Throw them down in
a heap, and they are the most confused jumble of unrelated bits; but
once in the magical tube of his fancy, and, with a shake and a turn,
they assume figures that have the absolute perfection of geometry.
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