To the Editor of the Athen?um.

MY DEAR SIR— The following Ode was written anticipating the tone of some strictures on my writings by the gentleman to whom it is addressed. I have not seen his book; but I know by hearsay that some of my verses are characterized as “profaneness and ribaldry”— citing, in proof, the description of a certain sow, from whose jaw a cabbage sprout

“Protruded, as the dove so staunch

For peace supports an olive branch.”

If the printed works of my Censor had not prepared me for any misapplication of types, I should have been surprised by this misapprehension of one of the commonest emblems. In some cases the dove unquestionably stands for the Divine Spirit; but the same bird is also a lay representative of the peace of this world, and, as such, has figured time out of mind in allegorical pictures. The sense in which it was used by me is plain from the context; at least, it would be plain to any one but a fisher for faults, predisposed to carp at some things, to dab at others, and to flounder in all. But I am possibly in error. It is the female swine, perhaps, that is profaned in the eyes of the Oriental tourist. Men find strange ways of marking their intolerance; and the spirit is certainly strong enough, in Mr. W.‘s works, to set up a creature as sacred, in sheer opposition to the Mussulman, with whom she is a beast of abomination. It would only be going the whole sow. — I am, dear Sir, yours very truly, THOS. HOOD.

“Close, close your eyes with holy dread,

And weave a circle round him thrice,

For he on honey-dew hath fed

And drunk the milk of Paradise.”— COLERIDGE.

“It’s very hard them kind of men

Won’t let a body be.”—Old Ballad.

A wanderer, Wilson, from my native land,

Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee,

Where rolls between us the eternal sea,

Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand —

Beyond the broadest Scotch of London Wall;

Beyond the loudest Saint that has a call;

Across the wavy waste between us stretch’d,

A friendly missive warns me of a stricture,

Wherein my likeness you have darkly etch’d,

And though I have not seen the shadow sketch’d,

Thus I remark prophetic on the picture.

I guess the features:— in a line to paint

Their moral ugliness, I’m not a saint.

Not one of those self-constituted saints,

Quacks — not physicians — in the cure of souls,

Censors who sniff out mortal taints,

And call the devil over his own coals —

Those pseudo Privy Councillors of God,

Who write down judgments with a pen hard-nibb’d;

Ushers of Beelzebub’s Black Rod,

Commending sinners, not to ice thick-ribb’d,

But endless flames, to scorch them up like flax —

Yet sure of heav’n themselves, as if they’d cribb’d

Th’ impression of St. Peter’s keys in wax!

Of such a character no single trace

Exists, I know, in my fictitious face;

There wants a certain cast about the eye;

A certain lifting of the nose’s tip;

A certain curling of the nether lip,

In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky;

In brief it is an aspect deleterious,

A face decidedly not serious,

A face profane, that would not do at all

To make a face at Exeter Hall —

That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray,

And laud each other face to face,

Till ev’ry farthing-candle ray

Conceives itself a great gas-light of grace.

Well! — be the graceless lineaments confest!

I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth;

And dote upon a jest

“Within the limits of becoming mirth”; —

No solemn sanctimonious face I pull,

Nor think I’m pious when I’m only bilious —

Nor study in my sanctum supercilious

To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull.

I pray for grace — repent each sinful act —

Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible;

And love my neighbor far too well, in fact,

To call and twit him with a godly tract

That’s turn’d by application to a libel.

My heart ferments not with the bigot’s leaven,

All creeds I view with toleration thorough,

And have a horror of regarding heaven

As anybody’s rotten borough.

What else? no part I take in party fray,

With troops from Billingsgate’s slang-whanging tartars,

I fear no Pope — and let great Ernest play

At Fox and Goose with Foxs’ Martyrs!

I own I laugh at over-righteous men,

I own I shake my sides at ranters,

And treat sham-Abr’am saints with wicked banters,

I even own, that there are times — but then

It’s when I’ve got my wine — I say d —— canters!

I’ve no ambition to enact the spy

On fellow souls, a Spiritual Pry —

’Tis said that people ought to guard their noses,

Who thrust them into matters none of theirs;

And tho’ no delicacy discomposes

Your Saint, yet I consider faith and pray’rs

Amongst the privatest of men’s affairs.

I do not hash the Gospel in my books,

And thus upon the public mind intrude it,

As if I thought, like Otaheitan cooks,

No food was fit to eat till I had chewed it.

On Bible stilts I don’t affect to stalk;

Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk —

For man may pious texts repeat,

And yet religion have no inward seat;

’Tis not so plain as the old Hill of Howth,

A man has got his belly full of meat

Because he talks with victuals in his mouth!

Mere verbiage — it is not worth a carrot!

Why, Socrates — or Plato — where’s the odds? —

Once taught a jay to supplicate the Gods,

And made a Polly-theist of a Parrot!

A mere professor, spite of all his cant, is

Not a whit better than a Mantis —

An insect, of what clime I can’t determine,

That lifts its paws most parson-like, and thence,

By simple savages — thro’ sheer pretence —

Is reckon’d quite a saint amongst the vermin.

But where’s the reverence, or where the nous,

To ride on one’s religion thro’ the lobby,

Whether a stalking-horse or hobby,

To show its pious paces to “the house”?

I honestly confess that I would hinder

The Scottish member’s legislative rigs,

That spiritual Pinder,

Who looks on erring souls as straying pigs,

That must be lash’d by law, wherever found,

And driv’n to church, as to the parish pound.

I do confess, without reserve or wheedle,

I view that grovelling idea as one

Worthy some parish clerk’s ambitious son,

A charity-boy, who longs to be a beadle.

On such a vital topic sure ’tis odd

How much a man can differ from his neighbor:

One wishes worship freely giv’n to God,

Another wants to make it statute-labor —

The broad distinction in a line to draw,

As means to lead us to the skies above,

You say — Sir Andrew and his love of law,

And I— the Saviour with his law of love.

Spontaneously to God should tend the soul,

Like the magnetic needle to the Pole;

But what were that intrinsic virtue worth,

Suppose some fellow, with more zeal than knowledge,

Fresh from St. Andrew’s College,

Should nail the conscious needle to the north?

I do confess that I abhor and shrink

From schemes, with a religious willy-nilly,

That frown upon St. Giles’s sins, but blink

The peccadilloes of all Piccadilly —

My soul revolts at such a bare hypocrisy,

And will not, dare not, fancy in accord

The Lord of Hosts with an Exclusive Lord

Of this world’s aristocracy.

It will not own a notion so unholy,

As thinking that the rich by easy trips

May go to heav’n, whereas the poor and lowly

Must work their passage, as they do in ships.

One place there is — beneath the burial sod,

Where all mankind are equalized by death;

Another place there is — the Fane of God,

Where all are equal, who draw living breath; —

Juggle who will elsewhere with his own soul,

Playing the Judas with a temporal dole —

He who can come beneath that awful cope,

In the dread presence of a Maker just,

Who metes to ev’ry pinch of human dust

One even measure of immortal hope —

He who can stand within that holy door,

With soul unbow’d by that pure spirit-level,

And frame unequal laws for rich and poor —

Might sit for Hell and represent the Devil!

Such are the solemn sentiments, O Rae,

In your last Journey-Work, perchance you ravage,

Seeming, but in more courtly terms, to say

I’m but a heedless, creedless, godless savage;

A very Guy, deserving fire and faggots —

A Scoffer, always on the grin,

And sadly given to the mortal sin

Of liking Maw-worms less than merry maggots!

The humble records of my life to search,

I have not herded with mere pagan beasts;

But sometimes I have “sat at good men’s feasts,”

And I have been “where bells have knoll’d to church.”

Dear bells! how sweet the sounds of village bells

When on the undulating air they swim!

Now loud as welcomes! faint, now, as farewells!

And trembling all about the breezy dells

As flutter’d by the wings of Cherubim.

Meanwhile the bees are chanting a low hymn;

And lost to sight th’ ecstatic lark above

Sings, like a soul beatified, of love —

With, now and then, the coo of the wild pigeon; —

O Pagans, Heathens, Infidels and Doubters!

If such sweet sounds can’t woo you to religion,

Will the harsh voices of church cads and touters?

A man may cry “Church! Church!” at ev’ry word,

With no more piety than other people —

A daw’s not reckon’d a religious bird

Because it keeps a-cawing from a steeple.

The Temple is a good, a holy place,

But quacking only gives it an ill savor;

While saintly mountebanks the porch disgrace,

And bring religion’s self into disfavor!

Behold yon servitor of God and Mammon,

Who, binding up his Bible with his Ledger,

Blends Gospel texts with trading gammon,

A black-leg saint, a spiritual hedger,

Who backs his rigid Sabbath, so to speak,

Against the wicked remnant of the week,

A saving bet against his sinful bias —

“Rogue that I am,” he whispers to himself,

“I lie — I cheat — do anything for pelf,

But who on earth can say I am not pious?”

In proof how over-righteousness re-acts,

Accept an anecdote well based on facts.

One Sunday morning —(at the day don’t fret)—

In riding with a friend to Ponder’s End

Outside the stage, we happened to commend

A certain mansion that we saw To Let.

“Ay,” cried our coachman, with our talk to grapple

“You’re right! no house along the road comes nigh it!

’Twas built by the same man as built yon chapel

And master wanted once to buy it —

But t’other driv the bargain much too hard —

He ax’d sure-ly a sum purdigious!

But being so particular religious,

Why, that, you see, put master on his guard!”

Church is “a little heav’n below,

I have been there and still would go,”—

Yet I am none of those, who think it odd

A man can pray unbidden from the cassock,

And, passing by the customary hassock,

Kneel down remote upon the simple sod,

And sue in forma pauperis to God.

As for the rest — intolerant to none,

Whatever shape the pious rite may bear,

Ev’n the poor Pagan’s homage to the Sun

I would not harshly scorn, lest even there

I spurn’d some elements of Christian pray’r —

An aim, tho’ erring, at a “world ayont,”

Acknowledgment of good — of man’s futility,

A sense of need, and weakness, and indeed

That very thing so many Christians want —

Humility.

Such, unto Papists, Jews or turban’d Turks,

Such is my spirit —(I don’t mean my wraith!)

Such, may it please you, is my humble faith;

I know, full well, you do not like my works!

I have not sought, ’tis true, the Holy Land,

As full of texts as Cuddie Headrigg’s mother,

The Bible in one hand,

And my own commonplace-book in the other —

But you have been to Palestine — alas!
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