Born, in London 22 Sept. 1788. Early education at private schools. At Harrow, June 1804 to 1810. Wrote opera libretti, farces and melodramas during school days. Matric. St. Mary Hall, Oxford, 2 July 1810. Accountant-General and Treasurer at Mauritius, Oct. 1813. Deprived of office owing to deficit in treasury, and sent back to England, 1818. Imprisoned, 1823–25. Edited “The Arcadian,” 1820; edited “John Bull,” 1820–41; edited “New Monthly Mag.,” 1837–38. F.S.A., 27 Feb. 1840. Died, at Fulham, 24 Aug. 1841. Works: “The Soldier’s Return” (anon.), 1805; “Catch Him Who Can,” 1806; “The Invisible Girl,” 1806; “Tekeli,” 1806; “The Fortress,” 1807; “Siege of St. Quintin,” 1807; “Music Mad,” 1808; “Killing No Murder,” 1809; “Safe and Sound,” 1809; “The Man of Sorrow” (3 vols.), 1809; “The Trial by Jury,” 1811; “Darkness Visible,” 1811 (2nd edn. same year); “Pigeons and Crows,” 1819; “Facts illustrative of the treatment of Napoleon Buonaparte in St. Helena” (anon.), 1819; “Exchange No Robbery” (anon.), 1820; “Tentamen” (under pseud. of “Vicesimus Blenkinsop”), 1820; “Peter and Paul,” 1821; “Sayings and Doings,” 1st series (3 vols.; anon.), 1824; 2nd series (3 vols.; anon.), 1825; 3rd series (3 vols.), 1828; “Reminiscences of Michael Kelly,” 1826; “Maxwell” (anon.), 1830; “The Life of Sir David Baird” (2 vols.; anon.), 1832; “The Parson’s Daughter” (anon.), 1833; “Love and Pride” (anon.), 1833; “Gilbert Gurney” (anon.), 1836; “Jack Brag” (anon.), 1837; “Pascal Bruno,” 1837; “Births, Deaths, and Marriages” (anon.), 1839; “Gurney Married” (anon.), 1839; “Cousin Geoffrey,” 1840; “Precept and Practice,” 1840. Posthumous: “Fathers and Sons,” 1842; “Peregrine Bunce” (perhaps spurious), 1842; “The Widow and the Marquess,” 1842; “The Ramsbottom Letters,” 1872; “The Ramsbottom Papers” [1874]. He edited: “Peter Priggins,” 1841; “The Parish Clerk,” 1840. Collected Works: “Choice Humourous Works” [1873]. Life: “Life and Remains,” by R. H. D. Barham, 1877.

Personal

  We have already expressed our opinion, that Theodore Hook’s ability in conversation was above what he ever exemplified in his writings. We have seen him in company with very many of the most eminent men of his time; and we never, until he was near his end, carried home with us the impression that he had been surpassed. He was as entirely, as any parent of bon-mots that we have known, above the suspicion of having premeditated his point; and he excelled in a greater variety of ways than any of them. No definition either of wit or humour could have been framed that must not have included him; and he often conveyed what was at once felt to be the truest wit in forms, as we believe, entirely new. He could run riot in conundrums—but what seemed at first mere jingle, was often perceived, a moment after, to contain some allusion or insinuation that elevated the vehicle. Memory and knack may suffice to furnish out an amusing narrator; but the teller of good stories seldom amuses long if he cannot also say good things. Hook shone equally in both. In fact he could not tell any story without making it his own by the ever-varying, inexhaustible invention of the details and the aspects, and above all, by the tact that never failed to connect it with the persons, the incidents, the topics of the evening.

  Thank you for the paper about Theodore Hook. I knew him and disliked him. He was very witty and humorous, certainly; but excessively coarse in his talk and gross in his manners, and was hardly ever strictly sober after dinner.

  Any estimate of the powers of Theodore Hook, drawn from his writings alone, must be fatally inadequate and erroneous. As a novelist he has been not unfrequently equalled, and occasionally surpassed, by more than one of his compeers; and whatever the eminence to which his published works have raised him, it is as nothing compared with the position which, by virtue of his varied talents,—his brilliant and unflagging wit, has been unhesitatingly conceded to him in society. But it is precisely in these its higher qualities, that his genius cannot be appreciated save by those who knew him…. His social qualities were only too attractive; he not only delighted by his talents, but charmed by that easy benevolence in trifles, in which true politeness is defined to consist; to men younger and less gifted, his demeanour was gentle and encouraging; to children, those who could sit and listen, all eye and ear to his music and his mirth, he was remarkably indulgent. Unsurpassed as a talker, he was, what perhaps is almost equally appreciated, patient as a listener…. In person, Theodore Hook was above the middle height, his frame was powerful and well-proportioned, possessing a breadth and depth of chest, which, joined to a constitution naturally of the strongest order, would have seemed, under ordinary care, to hold promise of a long and healthy life. His countenance was fine and commanding, his features, when in repose, settling into a somewhat stern and heavy expression, but all alive and alight with genius the instant his lips were opened. His eye was dark, large, and full—to the epithet Βοώπις he, not less justly than the venerable goddess, was entitled. His voice was rich, deep, and melodious.

  Never, perhaps, was there a man of such precocious and versatile talents. “As a wit, confessed without rival to shine,” his company was courted, and he was incessantly flattered by princes, nobles, and the most noted in the world of fashion and of fame. As a writer of novels, farces, songs, and particularly in improvisation, he was, perhaps, unrivalled in the world of genius. Having been several times in his fascinating company, I can bear witness to these qualifications: when in contact and competition with the famed authors of “The Rejected Addresses,” he seemed to shine with additional brilliancy. Yet this man, this accomplished wit and novelist, was imprisoned and degraded for disreputable neglect of his duties in a public government office, in which he was misplaced by political friends.

  Like many fellows of “most excellent fancy,” “wont to set the table in a roar,” Hook—the humorist all mirth and jocularity abroad—at home was subject to violent revulsions of feeling, to gusts of sadness, and fits of dejection of spirits, which temporary excitement, produced by stimulants, did not much tend to remedy or remove. The results of his disordered and embarrassed circumstances became too manifest to his private friends in impaired energies of mind and body, in his broken health, and depressed spirits, and furnished a melancholy contrast with the public exhibition of apparently irrepressible animal spirits, that rendered him a welcome guest at all tables.

  Hook has been, by common consent, placed at the head of modern wits…. Theodore could amuse, Theodore could astonish, Theodore could beat home any where; he had all the impudence, all the readiness, all the indifference of a jester, and a jester he was. Let any one look at his portrait, and he will doubt if this be the king’s jester, painted by Holbein, or Mr. Theodore Hook, painted by Eddis. The short, thick nose, the long upper lip, the sensual, whimsical mouth, the twinkling eyes, all belong to the regular maker of fun. Hook was a certificated jester, with a lenient society to hear and applaud him, instead of an irritable tyrant to keep him in order: and he filled his post well…. Theodore Hook stands almost alone in this country as an improviser.

  For the rest, it should not be forgotten that Theodore Hook was a man warm in his friendships; of humane and charitable disposition; and of open-handed, generous nature. He was beloved and regretted by all who knew him; and possessed to the last such charm of grace and manner, that, at the Athenæum, his favourite club, it is said that the dinners fell off to the extent of £300 per annum when he disappeared from his accustomed corner, near the door of the coffee-room.

  In the art of punning he was without a rival, as he was also in the exercise of the still less legitimate form of humour contained in hoaxes…. It may be noted, in passing, as curious that despite the unanimity with which his improvising powers were spoken of as unique, but few of the improvisations have got committed to paper.—It seemed as if his talent was essentially oral, and refused to give itself wholly to a more permanent means of sustaining his reputation.—The exuberance of his fun was irrepressible.—Unabating spirit and unflagging mirth made him the soul and centre of the convivial circle.—Since the days of Sheridan no more brilliant luminary had flashed across the realm of fashion.

General

  Tickler.—“Confound haste and hurry! What else can account for Theodore Hook’s position? Who that has read his ‘Sayings and Doings,’ and, above all, his ‘Maxwell,’ can doubt that, had he given himself time for consideration and correction, we should have been hailing him ere now, nem. con., as another Smollett, if not another Le Sage?”… North.—“I agree with you; and I sincerely hope this novel-improvisatore will pause ere it is too late, and attempt something really worthy of his imagination. But, as it is, such is the richness of the vis comica showered over these careless extravaganzas, that unless he himself throws them into the shade by subsequent performances, I venture to say they have a better chance of being remembered a hundred years hence than any contemporary productions of their class—except only those of the two great lights of Scotland and Ireland—Jam dudum ad scripta Camœnis.”

  It would not be easy to find another artist with ability equal to Hook’s for discussing the good and evil, the passions and affectations, the fits of generosity and settled systems of saving, the self-sufficiency and the deplorable weakness, the light and darkness, the virtue and the vice, of this prodigious Babel. The stories which he tells might be invented with little outlay of fancy, for the best of them are far from being consistent; but the characters, which live and breathe in them, would make the narratives pleasing, though they were as crooked as the walls of Troy.

  His name will be preserved. His political songs and jeux d’esprit, when the hour comes for collecting them, will form a volume of sterling and lasting attraction; and after many clever romances of this age shall have sufficiently occupied public attention, and sunk, like hundreds of former generations, into utter oblivion, there are tales in his collection which will be read with, we venture to think, even a greater interest than they commanded in their novelty. We are not blind to his defects. The greatest and the most prevailing blemish is traceable to his early habits as a farce-writer: he too often reminds us of that department of the theatre, both in the flagrancy of his contrasts in character, and the extravagant overcharging of particular incidents. He is tempted to pile absurdity on absurdity till all credibility is destroyed—and if it were not for the easy richness of his language, ever pregnant with byeplay, the incredulus would toss the volume down with odi…. His defects are great;—but Theodore Hook is, we apprehend, the only male novelist of this time, except Mr. Dickens, who has drawn portraits of contemporary English society destined for permanent existence. A selection from his too numerous volumes will go down with Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen. His best works are not to be compared with theirs, either for skilful compactness of fable or general elegance of finish. His pace was too fast for that. But he is never to be confounded for a moment either with their clumsier and weaker followers, or with the still more tedious imitators of their only modern superior.

  Mr. Hook had no sympathies with humanity for its own sake, but only as developed and modified by aristocratic circumstances and fashionable tastes. He was devoted to splendid externals. He may be said to have had no inner life—except that the lofty image of a powdered footman, with golden aiguillettes and large white calves, walked with a great air up and down the silent avenues of his soul.

  As a dramatic author, his fame was built on a foundation too slight to last; the cleverest of his pieces were written to display the powers, or contrast the peculiarities of particular actors, and with them may be considered to have retired from the stage. But as a novelist, we have ventured to affirm, that his reputation stands high and is broadly based; in the delineation of modern English life, in laying bare the hidden springs of human action, effected the one without mannerism, the other without pretension.

  Doubtless, his wit and humour were apt to degenerate into buffoonery, his pathos into sentimentality, and his nature into conventionalism; but his knowledge of city life, in its manners, habits, and language, seemed intuitive, and has been surpassed only by Fielding and Dickens. Many and multifarious, however, as are his volumes, he has left behind him no great creation—nothing that can be pointed to as a triumphant index of the extraordinary powers which he undoubtedly possessed.

  I see the merit of the novels of Theodore Hook, whom I held in greater abhorrence than even Croker, stuffed as those novels are with scurrility against my political friends.

  As a novelist he has fallen into undeserved oblivion. The best of his novels are scarcely inferior in comic power to Dickens’s most successful works. Indeed, there is a great similarity between the two humourists, the same tendency to exaggeration and caricature. “In casting our eyes over the volumes,” says Barham, “we are at a loss to point out a single character of importance that has not its prototype, or an incident—the most incredible, the most true—that is not in some measure founded upon facts.” Some of the best known persons of the day, so little disguised as to be easily recognisable, were introduced in his novels. He himself and Sam Beazley, architect and dramatist, divided Gilbert Gurney and Daly between them; Hull was the noted Tom Hill, before mentioned as the original of Poole’s “Paul Pry;” Godfrey Moss in “Maxwell,” the Rev. Edward Canon, the King’s Chaplain, &c. Nor was the vis comica his only excellence. There is a power in “Maxwell” and “Cousin William” not inferior to the best sensation novelist of the day. Yet all his works were composed hurriedly, under high pressure; the plots are badly constructed, and the whole requires finish. But his powers of observation, his profound knowledge of human nature, his fun, the excellence of his detached scenes must ever place him in a high rank among novelists; and a perusal of his bygone books, were it only for the striking pictures they give of bygone men and manners, would still prove more profitable and amusing than that of three-fourths of those which have no other claim to attention than their being new.

  Hook’s novels are not of much higher class than his journalism. They abound in caricature, not even the caricature of invention, but that of actual portraiture, all his broadest sketches being easily identified by those who knew him, and by society in general. They were clever enough to be largely read at the time, but nothing can be more entirely dead than these galvanically vivacious productions are now, nor is there enough even of contemporary life in them to make it worth while to recall them to the reader.

  His unflagging literary industry in the midst of so many hindrances and temptations is highly to his credit. Though he sold his pen, he did not prostitute it; the side in support of which his wit and scurrility were enlisted was really his own. His natural powers were extraordinary. “He is,” said Coleridge, “as true a genius as Dante.” With regular education and mental discipline he might have done great things; his actual reputation is that of a great master in a low style of humour, and the most brilliant improvisatore, whether with the pen or at the piano, that his country has seen.

  In “Gilbert Gurney” Hook has painted his own portrait, under the name of Daly. “Fun is to me what ale was to Boniface,” says Daly of himself. “I sleep upon fun—I drink for fun—I talk for fun—I live for fun.” The practical jokes which that gentleman delights in are in effect the jests which Hook had perpetrated in real life.