with visible reluctance; the gentlemen remained at it longer than courtesy to the drawing-room expectants justified. Theodore's wit flew about like diamond-sparks, and lighted up by its hilarious influence all eyes with joyous admiration and delight; and before he and his friend left the house, he riveted the affections of all present by rehearsing, in extemporaneous verse (for which he possessed such wonderful facility), to a lively air, the incidents of his eventful visit, amazing and enrapturing his hospitable entertainers and their friends by his wonderful talents and engaging manners; and as he took his leave, they all crowded around him with even affectionate adieux; while his host and hostess declared this accident to have been the most fortunate of their lives; at the same time begging Mr. Hook to consider them his fast friends, and to drop in upon them, when not more formally invited, as he had by chance done that lucky day. Many such instances as the foregoing might be told, did not limited time preclude further relations of Mr. Hook's wondrous power, not only in the manner described, but at all periods and occasions of his life, in not only making friends of strangers, but of converting even prejudice into partiality.

Mr. Hook's memory was always miraculous. When about eighteen, he undertook for a wager to repeat the names and trades upon the shopfronts situated on one side of Oxford Street, after passing down a certain portion of it. This undertaking he accomplished, failing only in the due succession of one house. But it being afterwards observed by one of the party, that Mr. Hook might possibly have been partially acquainted with the shops previously, he engaged, after the perusal of the front page of a newspaper, to rehearse every advertisement that stood in its columns. This he also performed without a single mistake. Although Mr. Hook had great animal spirits, he did not possess equal vivacity at all times; on the contrary, he was subject, as most men of genius are, to deep and bitter depressions of mind, most affecting to witness. Strange to say, of so gifted and intelligent a being, he was superstitious to a painful degree. He entertained an implicit

belief in supernatural agency, and would listen to a ghost-story with a pallid cheek and awe-inspired interest. Early in life, he wrote a novel called The Man of Sorrow, in which this weakness was manifest; and though, as his judgment strengthened, he conquered much of this tendency, yet to the last years of his existence he cherished many of his early impressions. As a trivial instance, it may be mentioned that he never would enter upon any undertaking of importance, if he could help it, on a Friday. He had, however, a remarkable insight into the weaknesses and follies of others, and was not unobservant of his own. He penetrated into the depths of the most wily; and detected the small intents of little minds with the most whimsical facility, dragging them from their shallow hiding-places, and laying them bare upon the surface with infinite humour, to their owner's surprise and dismay. He held a professed enmity with what he described under the expressive head of humbug,

every evidence of which he assailed with all the vigour of his powerful ridicule, inexorably putting the right names upon wrong things.

It has been observed that Mr. Hook continued his intimacy and friendship with Mathews, with few intermissions, up to the period of the comedian's death. One interruption, however, there was, which threatened to be fatal to their future good understanding. It occurred about the year 1827, when Mr. Hook, in one of his humorous veins, was irresistibly tempted to work upon some traditional accounts, picked up, of the strolling players of other days (for the race must have been extinct before he was born), and to publish their supposed "sayings and doings" in that admirable series in the story of Gervaise Skinner. His friend Mathews had, perhaps, more of the esprit de corps in him than most actors of his day. He had always loved the art itself; he esteemed many persons belonging to it; and could not bear to see it degraded either by its own members, or by the invidious report of the prejudiced or ill-natured. To find his "own familiar friend" the agent of vulgar calumny against it, shocked his ideas of propriety, and wounded his confi

dence. He knew that Mr. Hook could never have associated with any but the gentlemen of the stage; and it seemed unaccountable-nay, Mathews at the time thought unpardonable-thus with malice prepense to hold them up to public ridicule and contempt. By clothing the characters in Gervaise Skinner in the garb of London performers, and identifying their conceited ignorance, their depraved and vulgar habits with the educated and honourable portion of the community, the author certainly acted injuriously, not only to the profession generally, but to his friends particularly. So Mathews thought and felt, and a coolness, or rather a warmth, ensued. The comedian was irate at what he considered an outrage upon good fellowship. It must be confessed that the unprincipled and meretricious habits of the men and women in Gervaise Skinner are unredeemed by the undisputed "fun" arising from their imputed vanities and technical follies; and Mr. Hook's pen was too forcible to need its being steeped in gall in order to give it pungency. Whatever might be the author's feeling in writing this story, Mathews tacitly resented its publication. The consequence was, that a long interval ensued ere Mr. Hook's charming society again gladdened his friend's habitation. At length the offender, conscious of the cause, could no longer bear the effect, and the following generous, pleasant, and charac teristic letter was one morning delivered to Mathews, during a temporary illness, which confined him to his house:

"CHARLES MATHEWS, Esq., Ivy Cottage, Kentish Town.

"Cleveland Row, Thursday, March 5, 1829.

"My dear Mathews,-You are now about one of the oldest acquaintances I have (or just now have not); some of my happiest hours have been passed in your company. I hate mincing (except in a case of real). There is a difference not perhaps existing between us, but between you now and yourself at other times. They (on) say that you have been annoyed with one of my tales, as if any man except a pacha had more than one; and our good-natured friends — bless them-make out that you are personally

affected by some of the jokes about the Fagglestones, and other imaginary personages. Now, I verily believe, that if I had read that story to you before it was published, you would have enjoyed it more than any body who has read it; since to ridicule the bad part of a profession can be no satire upon the good; and, as I have said somewhere before, Lawrence might as well be annoyed at the abuse of sign-painters, or Halford angry at a satire upon quacks, as you, personally, with any thing reflecting upon the lower part of the theatrical world.

"From you yourself I verily believe I culled the art of ridiculing the humbugs of the professions. However, why you should suppose that I, after having for years (in every way I could) contributed -needlessly, I admit-to support your talents, merits, and character, professional and private, could mean to offend you, I cannot imagine. I can only say, that nothing was further from my intention than to wound your feelings or those of any other individual living, by what seemed to me a fair travestie of a fair subject for ridicule, and which, I repeat, never could apply to you, or any man in your sphere or station. Now, the upshot of all this is this, where not the smallest notion of personal affront was contemplated I think no personal feeling should remain. If you think so, come and call upon me, or tell me when I pay you a visit. If you don't think so, why say nothing about it, and burn this letter; but do whichever of these things you may, rest assured, I do not forget old associations; and that I am, and shall be, my dear Mathews, as much yours as ever. And now, having said my say, I remain yours most truly,

may

"THEODORE E. HOOK."

To a sterner nature than his to whom it was addressed such an ingennous appeal must have proved irresistible. Mathews's heart opened once more to the man to whom he was really much attached; and it was settled that Hook should come to the cottage the following day. He did so, and the friendship thus wounded healed without a sear.

For a man living so entirely in the world-Mr. Hook was not altogether what might be called a man of the world-he retained and cherished a youthful romance of character that was totally at variance with his general bearing and tone of conversation, and inconsistent and incompatible with his habits and associations;

and he would have been utterly ashamed to elicit this inherent quality except to those who had known him long and intimately, and with whom he had no dread of its incurring ridicule. Past scenes and the attachments of early days, however broken in upon or suspended by the chances and changes of this life, the distractions of time and circumstance, continued to keep a tenacious and remarkable hold upon his memory and affections. During his long term of intimacy with Mr. Mathews, living with him on the most familiar terms of social equality, he professed for him the regard of a younger brother; and at his death manifested even a feminine sensibility of sorrow at the event.

Many able pens will do ample justice to the memory of Theodore Hook. It might well be shewn that his unlooked-for and lamented death is not only a social, but in some measure a political loss. Mr. Hook was a consistent Tory from his earliest youth; and though-as it has herein been previously mentioned-in lite

rature the sun of his genius "shewed but half his beams," yet as the originator and continual editor of the John Bull paper his powers were to a great extent conspicuous, not only in the leading and more important columns of that publication, but in the witty and playful portions. Of the latter, Mrs. Ramsbottom's unique correspondence must be mirthfully remembered by all its readers.*

Besides the John Bull, his novels, and the biography of Sir David Baird (the only work he prided himself upon), Mr. Hook's editorship and contributions added weight and attraction, during the last years of his life, to the New Monthly Magazine. But he is gone! Alas, Theodore ! thou art "pale in the tomb! in the winter-house! Thy friends have bent the red eye over thy grave! They shall seek thee in their halls, but they shall not find thee. Thou shalt come at times to their dreams; thy voice shall remain in their ears; but they shall see thee no more!"

"Tread lightly o'er his ashes, ye men of genius, for he was your kinsman."

September 13.-Johnson is known to have projected, though at what period of his life is uncertain, a work to shew how small a quantity of real

POPE: Imitat. of Hor. Ep. 1.

fiction there is in the world, and that the same images, with slight changes or modifications, have been employed in succession by all the authors who

have ever written.* The investigation would have repaid the toil bestowed upon it. The currency of the intellect is, without doubt, a very limited one, and is in continual circulation. In a century we find no writer importing his own gold. The antique coinage of Chaucer is melted down by Spenser: and the image and superscription of Spenser are, in their turn, effaced by those of Milton and Dryden. The choice of thoughts, said Le Bruyère, is invention. Have the editors of Thomson assigned to its proprietor the poet's description of beauty being adorned the most when it is unadorned? It comes from Lactantius, as I learned while reading Wollaston's Religion of Nature, where the following passage is quoted in a note:-" Simplex et nuda veritas est luculentior, quia satis ornata per se est; adeoque ornamentis extrinsecus additis fucata corrumpitur." The phrase is not unlike the simplex munditiis of Horace, which Milton translates plain in neatness.

Milton's beautiful sonnet, on the death of his wife, offers a very strong resemblance to a sonnet of Rota, one of the most successful imitators of Petrarch; and one of the sublimest images in Paradise Lost is only a reflection from the verses of a writer whose name would never have reached the English reader but for the collection of Mathias :

:

"Tu per soffrir della cui luce i rai, Si fan con l'ae i serafini un velo."

"Dark with excessive light thy skirts appear;

Yet dazzle heaven, that brightest Seraphim,

But with both hands veil their eyes." § The Italian poet's name is Girolamo Preti; and we know from Pope that the obscurity of an author is frequently a recommendation to the travelling invention. Mr. Hallam remarks, that Milton's resemblances to the Italian poets often seem more than accidental. I cannot shut my book for the night without noticing the ingenious observation of Hallam, that the Count de Culagne, one of the most humorous characters in the Secchia Rapita of Tassoni, "bears a

certain resemblance to Hudibras, both by his awkward and dastardly appearance as a knight, and by his ridiculous addresses to a lady whom he woos." || "None, however," Hallam adds, "will question the originality of Butler." Professor Smyth has pointed out, in a note to his fourth lecture, that Hume, who was a reader of Dryden's plays, probably borrowed from Sebastian¶ that satire on the clergy, which Dryden had inflicted only on a particular period of ecclesiastical history.

The next is from Cowper's Task, book ii., where he describes the earthquake that desolated Sicily:"Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now Lie scattered where the shapely column stood:

Her palaces are dust. In all her streets The voice of singing and the sprightly chord

Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show,

Suffer a syncope and solemn pause; While God performs upon the trembling

stage

Of his own works his dreadful part alone.” It always seems to me, in reading the closing couplet, that Cowper had borrowed some sketch from the sublime scenery of the Night Thoughts. But the germ of the description is, I think, contained in a sermon by Henry Smyth, bearing the thrilling title of The Trumpet of the Soul Sounding to Judgment. Smyth lived in the reign of Elizabeth, and was one of the most eloquent preachers in the sixteenth century.

The image is a favourite one with several of our early theological writers, who sometimes introduce it with a grotesque wildness of sublimity, that reminds us of the pen of Dante. Henry More, in that wonderful miscellany of learning, genius, and simplicity which he called The Mystery of Godliness, has the following remarkable passage upon the future conflagration of the world :

"And it is as true that all things lie open to his sight, and that the earth is always under the present eye of God. When He perpetually looks on, is it hard to conceive that at last, at some solemn period of time, he may in a special manner

Od. v. l. 1.

xi. p. 260. Act ii. scene 1.

step out into action, if need so require, and He be invoked thereunto ?" *

And again

"It is no wonder if the stupid world be much amused at Providence, till that great Dramatist drew on the period towards the last catastrophe of all things."+

Bishop Hurd introduces the same image into his admirable lectures on the prophecies.

September 14.-I find the collection of these parallel thoughts a very pleasant occupation.

Let me begin with Swift. That vigorous and poignant writer had said, as reported in his miscellaneous thoughts, "An excuse is worse than a lic, for an excuse is a lie guarded.” It happens that Pope introduces the identical expression, without any hint of borrowing it, into a letter to Edward Blount, September 13th, 1725. "If I were not more ashamed to tell a lie or to make an excuse, for an excuse is worse than a lie (for being built upon some probable circumstance, it makes use of a degree of truth to falsify with it is a lie guarded.)" Perhaps the sentiment looks better in Pope's expansion than in the epigram of Swift. The next coincidence, if so mild a term be appropriate, is between Jeremy Collier and Paley. It occurs in Collier's Essays, partiv. p. 176; sixth edition,

1722:

"When the signs of affirmation or denying, of assent or refusal, of pleasure or dislike, appear counter to our thoughts, this is hanging out false colours. Tis being one thing without, and another within. A Mute may be guilty of this sin; for a man may point or look a lie, as well as speak one.'

Paley, after remarking that as there may be falsehoods which are not lies, so there may also be lies without literal or direct falsehood, adds that, a lie being a breach of promise, we deceive when our expression carries a false colour upon it.

"Or a man may act a lie; as by pointing his finger in a wrong direction when a traveller inquires of him his road, or when a tradesman shuts up his windows to induce his creditors to believe that he is abroad for to all moral purposes, and therefore as to veracity, speech and ac

Paley should have acknowledged his debt to Collier, to whom, with a small capital and not a very large connexion, every item in the bill was of some importance. Johnson, in one of his conversations (Boswell, by Croker, i. 344), introduces a new species of lie:

"There are," he said, "inexcusable lies and consecrated lies. For instance, we are told that on the arrival of the news of the unfortunate battle of Fontenoy, every heart beat and every eye was in tears. Now we know that no man ate his dinner the worse; but there should have been all this concern; and to say there was (smiling) might be reckoned a consecrated lie."

Having spoken of Paley, let me add my humble tribute to the wonderful clearness and force of his style,a transparency equalled only by some of the finest passages in Plato. Coleridge, who certainly had few literary feelings in common with Paley, expressed his willingness to surrender all hopes of contemporary praise, if he could approach to what he called the incomparable grace, propriety, and persuasive ease of his writings. In a note to Pope's Essay on Criticism, it is remarked, that true cloquence is the candid light reflected from sentiments in their natural state of completeness and sincerity:

Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon."

Paley has been classed among the minor prose writers, partly because his more popular works are expository and argumentative, and partly because when he rises into a higher mood, the lucidness of his manner is still preserved: there is no sun-burst of imagination, colouring every object, like the autumnal rays that glow through cathedral windows. He is never dark, never exaggerated, nor like

"The puff'd orator, bursts out in tropes." §

His eloquence is of the simplest, but of the purest description; he looks

+ Ibid. b. xi. chap. 8. § Dunciad, ii. 206.