the Roman citizens need not have feared the accidents of navigation, rude as that art was in antiquity. Nor would the fertile fields of Italy have gone out of cultivation, if their occupiers had contended merely against the fair competition of foreign trade, and they had not been supplanted by large supplies of corn, exacted from tributary subjects, and distributed gratuitously, or sold at nearly nominal prices.

So long as Rome retained her power, she could at least secure the regular remittance of the corn tributes from the Provinces. But when her ascendency had declined, the dangers of dependence for food upon tributary supplies began to show themselves. In the reign of Honorius, the province of Africa revolted under a rebellious governor, named Gildo, and withheld its customary subsidy of corn: Rome was on the brink of starvation, from which it was only relieved by timely importations from Gaul.* Claudian, in his poem on the Gildonic war, supposes Rome-no longer with a proud and warlike mien, but with feeble gait and emaciated cheeks, her shoulders scarcely able to support her shield, and her spear consumed with rust-to approach Jupiter as a suppliant, and, in lowly phrase, thus to entreat him that her inhabitants may not perish from famine. Formerly my prayers used to be, that my legions might triumph on the banks of the Araxes, or that the Consul might display his forces at Susa: now all I ask is, a supply of food to avert the extremities of hunger. The province of Africa, which furnishes corn to my people, is under the power of Gildo. He intercepts our supplies, and our food is at his mercy. He sells the harvests which belong to the 'sons of Romulus, and he possesses the fields purchased by my blood. The soldier-people, which mastered the world, now ' unhonoured and in want, endures the miserable punishment of peace; though blockaded by no enemy, they are like the in'habitants of a besieged town. Death impends at every moment; 'there remain only doubtful supplies of food for a few days. My very greatness has been my ruin; I was safer when my territory 6 was more confined: would that its boundaries were once more 'close to my gates! But if I am doomed to perish, at least let 'me have a different fate; let me be conquered by another Porsenna, let my city be burnt by a second Brennus. All things are more tolerable to me than hunger!' Such were the dangers to which the oppressive, improvident, and unnatural system for the supply of Rome with corn, reduced the population of that city at a time when its numbers were still immense.

6

6

* Gibbon, c, 29.

The preceding explanation shows, that if Rome was irregularly supplied with corn; if she was sometimes in danger of starvation; and if Italian agriculture was destroyed, these evils did not result from freedom of commerce.* The mode by which the populace of Rome obtained their corn, had none of the characteristics of Trade. In trade, the article is sold voluntarily by the producer, and paid for at the natural price by the consumer. The Roman corn was wrung as a tribute from reluctant Provinces, and was distributed as a gift among the pauper multitude of the dominant capital. The more sagacious among the Roman statesmen perceived the ruinous tendency of this system. Cicero condemned its policy; J. Cæsar and Augustus checked its increase; and the latter even meditated its extinction; while Pliny, in his Panegyric of Trajan, observes, that a plentiful supply of grain in the market is as good for the people as a continual succession of gratuitous distributions by the government. It was a system doubly pernicious; it began with oppression of the Provinces, it ended with the corruption of the Capital; while, at the same time, it waged a war of extermination against the native agriculture of Italy. It was a bad poor-law, it was a bad cornlaw. If the indigent freemen of Rome needed public relief, they ought to have received it from the taxation of the richer freemen of the capital. If Rome required supplies of foreign grain, they ought to have been obtained by voluntary commerce. If tributes were imposed upon the Provinces, they ought to have been expended in purposes tending to the general service and advantage of the Empire.

The political and economical state of the Roman Empire was, happily, so different from that of England and other modern nations, that no inferences can be safely drawn from the Corn-Laws of Rome to those of our own time; without making the corrections and exclusions which these differences indicate. But when the points of difference are well understood, the points of resemblance are sufficiently numerous to render the comparison both instructive and interesting.

*By the extension of their power over all the nations adjoining the Mediterranean, as well as by the incessant clamours of the Roman populace for cheap bread, the Roman government was early obliged to admit a free importation of grain from Sicily, Libya, and Egypt, the great granaries of mankind in ancient times.Alison on Population, vol. ii. p. 417. The cry of the Roman populace was not for cheap bread, in the modern sense, but for gratuitous bread-Panem et Circenses.

† 'Instar ego perpetui congiarii reor affluentiam annonæ,' c. 29.

ART. IV. Poems. By THOMAS HOOD. 2 vols. 12mo. London: 1846.

IF our estimate of the merits of these compositions be more balancing and doubtful than that of some of our contemporaries—if we hesitate as to the precise rank which they are likely to occupy as contributions to English Poetry-our hesitation assuredly does not proceed from any doubt as to the high claims of the variously gifted author; or want of sympathy with the generous, manly, and benevolent spirit which guided his writings, and actuated his life. But while we feel that these volumes possess many of the finest elements of poetry; that they abound with thought; are prodigal of imagery; sparkle with wit and fancy; and are throughout inspired by a genial principle of kindness and philanthropy-we yet cannot be insensible to certain cardinal defects by which their good qualities are alloyed; and by which, we fear, the permanent popularity of Mr Hood as an English poet may be impeded, if not endangered. These defects have grown out of that very affluence of mind which constitutes his strength ;-they have sprung not from penury but luxuriance of thought; and have become interwoven with the character of his genius and writings, through the force of circumstances which rendered the union almost inevitable and inseparable. Take him for all and all, however, it is impossible to confound him with the versifiers of the day : in his errors and his excellencies he stands out from the common rank; he pursues a path of his own-sometimes a little entangled and devious, it must be confessed-but which he has at least hewn out for himself, and which leads to a distinct and intelligible goal.

In looking to the character of Mr Hood's mind, we are immediately struck with the variety which it displays. We do not at the present day require to be told that there is no incompatibility between wit and pathos, or that sensibility and humour may dwell together in the same heart; for we have been rendered familiar with such associations in the character of our greatest writers. But in Hood this alliance is more than usually conspicuous. He is open to all influences, and yields himself with equal pliancy to all. He can call up the most grotesque conceptions, the most incongruous and ludicrous imagery; whole trains of comic and mirth-inspiring fancies wait upon his will without an effort: but he seems to find himself as much at home in the contemplation of serious human emotion-in listening to, or echoing back, some old and moving story of love and pity-or letting his thoughts

wander with devout gratitude over the beauties of creation, or in sympathy with the fading glories of old traditions. In not a few of his poems he has even ventured to commingle these discordant elements; and the quaintest allusions, quips and cranks of all kinds, stand side by side with thoughts of earnest interest, and happy homely touches of feeling, which sink quietly but surely into the heart. He has not only paid his court alternately to Comedy and Tragedy, and with success; but he may be said to have introduced these ancient rivals to each other, and taught them by an interchange of good offices to live together in cordial union.

It is a consequence of this enlarged and liberal view of human nature, and this happy accommodation of the spirit of humour with feeling, that while Hood indulges in a constant under current of satire in his comic poems, that satire has nothing in it onesided or malignant. He cannot shut his eyes either to the vices or the follies that are paraded before him ; but he does not seek out by choice the sores and diseases of society. Indignant and energetic against that heartlessness and apparent indifference to the evils of humanity which are the growth of great cities, and which, in the British metropolis, are unfortunately more apt to catch the eye than the many secret and silent currents through which benevolence and charity circulate their stores, he seeks not to inflame one class of society against the other by a gloomy poetical Chartism: his aim is only to point out existing evils; to appeal to the better feelings of men: for their removal or relief; and to unite society, not by the ties of fear or force, but by the bond of kindness on the part of the rich, repaid by gratitude on that of the poor. Thus his satire, even where it is most pungent, is not personal. He acts like a soldier in fair warfare, who levels his weapon against the hostile lines, but takes no aim, as he bears no enmity against any particular opponent.

Only in one instance, at least in these volumes, does Mr Hood deviate from this rule, but, as we gather from several passages in his writings, not without considerable provocation; for the pleasantry of his works, touching, as it sometimes did, in a light, though, as we think, not an irreverent spirit, upon topics of a serious nature, appears to have exposed him to a good deal of unfair remark from certain classes or societies, who, assuming to themselves a monopoly as it were of granting Degrees in Piety, attempt to put down, as irregular practitioners, all who have not taken out a license from their Sanctuary. From these acrid censors, Hood appears to have sustained considerable annoyance; and he has revenged himself in an Ode of consummate clever

ness-addressed to a gentleman whom he treats as the Coryphæus of the class, but with so much of tact, and goodhumour, and genuine pleasantry, mixed with a spirit of true charity, that if the person thus addressed was able to peruse it without feeling the cordage of his countenance' relaxed, his inflexibility of muscle was little to be envied.

Another indespensable quality of a poet Hood possessed in a high degree, that of clear vision. It pervaded his choice of themes, his imagery, the whole expression of his thoughts. For the mystical or the vaporous, those reveries of airy republics and fantastic schemes of moral regeneration, on which the great genius of Shelley wasted so much of its powers, and from which in fact scarcely any thing he ever wrote is entirely free, (with the exception of the stern drama of the Cenci,')—and still more for those fierce and ghastly exaggerations-ægri somnia-with which our later poetical literature had teemed, he had no taste or sympathy whatever. Even where dealing with an airy and fanciful theme, -as in the Plea of the Midsummer Fairies,'-the Elfin pictures are as clear and distinct as if he had been painting a scene in the Strand or at Exeter Hall; the Tiny Elves flutter and gambol in their appropriate habit, and talk and plead their case before grim and unrelenting Time, with a wonderful air of business-like reality. He chose no theme, in short, till he saw his way clearly to some object; he attempted to paint nothing till he had realized it to his own mind. Generally speaking, therefore, he shunned the visionary and the abstract; he could throw himself back into the romance of the past, but his home was naturally among the realities of the present; and his aim was to soften its harsh and rugged features, and to brighten them, as far as they could be brightened, by the cheerful sunshine of poetry.

The general clearness of view and the decision of purpose which are observable in the treatment of his subjects, can of course only be appreciated by a perusal of them as a whole. But the lively and graphic way in which he presents an image to the mind, may be illustrated by one or two examples. And with regard to these it may be remarked, that they owe their effect, first, to this-that he never appears to draw his images from books,-presenting merely a reflection from a reflection, but from his own observation of nature; and next, to the great simplicity of expression in which the image is embodied. He knew well that plainness wins us more than eloquence ;-therefore he never disdained a homely word if it was the fittest to convey his meaning; and hence an air of originality even in the expression of images which are in themselves of no remarkable novelty. It may be added, too, that the character of their expres