For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. SUMMER SONNETS FROM MY GARDEN. VOICES. I'm like the girl that tumbled down the well Into Dame Hollë's dim enchanted ground, Who heard strange voices calling all around, And rose up from the meadow where she fell. And first the fruit tree: "Lo, my apples swell, Gather them now while they are ripe and sound!" "My loaves are ready, take them, baked and browned !" The oven next implored (Old Grimm doth tell). Thus I, when I my garden pass along Hear voices many calling unto me, "Cut me!" the grass doth whisper, "I'm too long!" "My hives are full," murmurs the honey bee; "Gather us!" cries the berries' jocund crew Nay! Shall I have my fairy guerdon too? HONEY. THE sleek sea, gorged and sated, basking lies; The cruel creature fawns and blinks and purrs; And almost we forget what fangs are hers, And trust for once her emerald-golden eyes; Though haply on the morrow she shall rise When bees wend forth in black continuous With wild white fingers snatching at the stream, And steadily return unto the hive, Then it behoves to work and not to dream! Up! if your honey store you want to thrive (Ere hungry drones with robber-bees connive), That you may gather all the blossom cream. Yet let me pause a moment on the brink- Yet labor, perspiration, many a sting, SUMMER DAWN. I like to draw the curtain at the dawn The veil of night is solemnly withdrawn, And strange new lights on things familiar play, While changing slowly, neutral tints give way To warmer shades of russet and of fawn. From Temple Bar. THEODORE HOOK, SATIRIST AND NOVELIST. a happy one. We next find him entering Harrow, from which he was almost obliged to flee precipitately, in consequence of an act of pleasantry to which he was instigated by his young contemporary Lord Byron. Hook left Harrow in 1802, and at this time he lost the most salutary restraining influence of his life by the death of his excellent. mother. The elder Hook was not a good guide for his son, being addicted to the pleasures of society. THIS chartered libertine of practical joking is one of the most extraordinary curiosities of literature.” The most effervescent of English writers, his irrepressible wit overshadowed his graver claims upon his contemporaries and posterity; and the probability is that he will never now take quite his rightful place among men of letters. A sketch The young wit wrote the words of a of his life and deeds or rather mis- comic opera to his father's music, and, deeds-forms one of the most amusing what is more, cleared £50 by the un-chapters in the history of wits and dertaking, at the age of sixteen. He humorists. The Rev. R. H. Dalton next wrote a farce for the HaymarBarham son of Ingoldsby "Bar-ket, "Catch Him Who Can," in which ham, and the author of Hook's "Life" Liston and Mathews appeared, the lat- has well said that the reputation of ter especially scoring a great success. men like Hook is "sunk, as it were, Other dramatic pieces followed, includin a life annuity, bearing indeed a ing that popular after-piece "Killing larger and more available interest than no Murder." Undismayed by the is commonly derived from fame of a standing of the leading play-actors, more enduring nature, but which ter- Hook perpetrated practical jokes on minates, for the most part, with their them right and left. The sketch of day and generation." Even of a bril-"Killing no Murder" gave rise to a liant wit like George Selwyn - whose conversational powers were the wonder and delight of his contemporaries – nothing remains beyond a few letters but some apocryphal puns and a single epigram 1 furious controversy, for through its leading character the author made a bitter and trenchant attack upon the Methodists. There was some ground for his severity, seeing that at Rowland Hill's chapel the congregation had been congratulated from the pulpit on the destruction of Covent Garden Theatre by fire, and the annihilation of a score of firemen. 66 Hamlet," Theodore Edward Hook was a Londoner by birth, having been born in Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, on the 22nd of September, 1788. His father, James Hook, was a musical A kind of burlesque on composer, who enjoyed a great vogue entitled "Ass-ass-ination," absolutely in his day, and his mother (née Mad-bristled with puus. Hook himself apden) was the author of "The Double peared in this and other pieces, in Disguise," and other novels. As a 1809, but on the occasion of his first boy of six or seven, Theodore was performance he was so overcome by supposed to put in a good deal of time stage fright, and exhibited such palpaat a seminary for young gentlemen "ble terror, that Mrs. Mathews had to in Soho Square, but an accident re- support him; yet this is the man who vealed his scandalous lâches in the way became the first improvisatore of his of playing truant. Even at this phe- time. He would make up clever verses nominally early age he manifested an on the spur of the moment, and bring ingenious talent for framing excuses in the names of the company. It was and playing practical jokes. He was thought he had a poser once with the packed off to a Dr. Curtis's at Linton, name of a Mr. Rosenagen, a Dane, but in Cambridgeshire, where at the age of after dealing with others of the comsixteen he put together his first dra-pany, he brought out this stanza withmatic sketch. His school life was not out pausing: |