particular line. Nevertheless, when a man not only does his own work well, but acts powerfully on the national mind, then his fame is a national possession, and may be with all propriety made the subject of public commemoration. A great author is distinguished from the merely professional scribe by the fact of adding something to the stock of national ideas. Who can tell how much of the national character is due to the operation of the works of Shakspeare? The flood of ideas with which the great dramatist inundated the national mind has enriched it and fertilized it. We are most of us wiser and better by the fact of Shakspeare having lived and written. It would not be difficult to find in most modern works traces of the influence which Shakspeare has exercised over the writers. A great author, such as Shakspeare, is, then, a great public educator. The national mind is enlarged and enriched by the treasures which he pours into it. There is, therefore, a great propriety in making such a writer the subject of public eulogium.
Hood was one of those who not only enriched the national literature, but instructed the national mind. His conceptions, it is true, were not vast. His labors were not, like those of Shakspeare, colossal. But he has produced as permanent an effect on the nation as many of its legislators.
Englishmen are wiser and better because Hood has lived. In one of his own poems, "The Death-Bed," how sweetly he sang:
