Some writers, it may be, were as powerful as he in the
grotesque. Rabelais had a certain hugeness in it, which Hood did not
have and did not need. Other writers transcended Hood in the region of
the terrible. It is almost useless to name such sublime masters of it as
Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. But in the intermingling of the grotesque
and terrible, and in the infinite diversification of them as thus
united, not only has Hood no equal, but no rival. In some few marked
and outward directions of his genius he may have imitators; but in this
magical alchemy of sentiment, thought, passion, fancy, and imagination,
the secret of his laboratory was _his_ alone; no other man has
discovered it, and no other man, as he did, could use it. But he worked
in the purely ideal also;--if he did not work supremely, he worked well,
as we have proof in many of his serious poems, and particularly in
his "Plea for the Midsummer Fairies." And when aroused,--but that
was rarely,--he could wield a burningly satiric pen, and with manly
indignation and impassioned scorn wield it to chastise the hypocritical
and the arrogant, as his letter to a certain pious lady and his "Ode to
Rae Wilson" bear sufficient witness.
Along with the grotesque and terrible in Hood's writings we also often
observe a wizard-like command over the elements of the desolate, the
weird, the sad, the forlorn, and the dreary.
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