January, 1818, his pleasant career was rudely stopped. A large deficit of 37,000 dollars was found in his accounts, occasioned, it is believed, by the dishonesty of a clerk named Allan, who shortly afterwards shot himself. Hook was arrested and sent home for trial, all his goods being sold for the benefit of the treasury. At the Cape he encountered Lord Charles Somerset, who knowing nothing of what had happened, said—"I hope you are not going home for your health, Mr. Hook." "Why," replied the wit, "I am sorry to say they think there is something wrong in the chest."
Although criminal proceedings against him could not be sustained, he had to endure for five weary years of suspense the examinations and cross-examinations of the auditors of public accounts. He was compelled at once to write for his daily bread in newspapers and magazines. He tried to set up a shilling magazine of his own, called the Arcadian, but it lived through very few numbers. In 1820, through a casual introduction to Sir Walter Scott, Hook came to be appointed editor of a new tory weekly paper, the John Bull. The main object proposed in the establishment of this newspaper, was the discomfiture of the supporters of the unfortunate Queen Caroline; and as Hook had always been a bigoted tory, he launched the envenomed shafts of his sarcasm and invective at the assailants of the king without pity or remorse. The audacious wit and caustic humour of the articles which were at first all written by the editor himself, produced a striking effect on the public mind, and made the paper reach almost instantly a very large circulation, giving Hook once more an income of £2000-a-year. Meanwhile a commission of the board of audit proceeded with its examination of the Mauritius accounts. They were found to have been kept with scandalous carelessness; yet Hook was exonerated from all criminality, except that of a culpable reliance upon the accuracy and honesty of his subordinates. Some of the errors in the books were to the disadvantage of the colonial treasurer, and the examiners reduced the original amount of the deficit from £20,000 to £12,000. Hook acknowledged himself responsible for £9000; but, unable to pay either sum, he was arrested in August, 1823, and remained in custody until the spring of 1825—part of the time at Hemp's sponging-house in Shire Lane, and the rest within the rules of the king's bench, at a house in Temple Place. This confinement exercised an evil influence on his moral and physical health. He thought the audit commissioners had been unjustly severe, and he made no resolute attempt to discharge his heavy debt to the treasury, and redeem his honour in pecuniary matters from every suspicion. One generous effort in that direction might possibly have procured from the lords of the treasury a release from all further claims; but as it was, the charge remained an oppressive incubus upon him to the end of his life. While under arrest he published the first series of "Sayings and Doings," making use of his experience in the sponging-house to introduce many whimsical personages and scenes. The success of this work was great, bringing to the author a profit of £2000. A second series was published in 1825, and a third in 1828. Hook now took a good house at Putney, and by degrees mixed more freely and more largely in society; became a member of several clubs; and wielding his fascinating social powers with all his energy and skill, was soon again a welcome guest in the best circles of London. His habits grew more and more expensive; and to the anxieties occasioned by the involved state of his pecuniary affairs, was added a secret cause of care in the existence of "a home which he dared not call his home," and of a family he could not publicly acknowledge. In 1830 he published "Maxwell," and two years later the "Life of Sir David Baird," the only book which he prided himself on having written. His other and more popular works being composed, like his "improvisations," on the spur of the moment and for sale, he regarded as trash. In 1836 he became editor of the New Monthly Magazine, and contributed to its pages "Gilbert Gurney," and the far inferior sequel "Gurney Married." In 1837 appeared "Jack Brag;" in 1839 "Births, Deaths, and Marriages." "Precepts and Practice," and "Fathers and Sons," were published in the magazine of 1840; and some months after his death appeared "Peregrine Bunce," evidently not all written by Hook. The picture contained in his diary of his desperate daily struggle against growing pecuniary embarrassments, while his evenings and nights were spent among the wealthy and luxurious, he the gayest among the gay, is deeply affecting. The double strain upon his vital energies which such a life demanded, "burning the candle at both ends," injured his physical health, and led to the use of strong stimulants. Against the ravages thus made in his naturally fine constitution, he seemed outwardly to strive with unconquerable light-heartedness; but it was a false show of gaiety, like the paddings and washings by which, as he confessed to Mr. Gleig, he had endeavoured in his later life to maintain an appearance of health and vigour. After a few weeks' illness, during which great sympathy was manifested for him by his neighbours in Fulham, but by few of those great ones to whom he had ministered amusement at such bitter cost, he expired apparently without pain on the 24th of August, 1841. He was undoubtedly a man of great original talent, sweet-tempered, warm-hearted, humane, charitable, and generous. Under a better, a sterner discipline of life in his early years, he would have probably taken rank with the first minds of his time. As a novelist, his chief defect is a tendency to farce, and the attempt to produce extravagant merriment by heaping absurdity upon absurdity. His keen sense of the ridiculous is shown in the portraiture of men and women of eccentric character, mostly in the higher classes of society. It has been said of Hook as a writer, that "he is to the upper and middle life of British society what Dickens is to its low life—a true, authentic expositor; but in manner he is entirely original, and can be likened to no one." The Life and Writings of Theodore Hook, edited by a kindred genius, the Rev. R. H. Barham, were published in 2 vols. 8vo, 1848—R. H.
* HOOK, Walter Farquhar, D.D., the Very Reverend, dean of Chichester, was born in London in 1798. His father, the elder brother of Theodore Hook, and himself the author of two pleasing fictions, "Pen Owen "and "Percy Mallory," rose to be dean of Worcester through the patronage of George IV., one of whose chaplains he had previously been, and the daughter of whose physician, Sir Walter Farquhar, he had married. Dr. Hook was educated at Tiverton school, at Winchester, and at Christ church, Oxford, of which he was elected student in 1817. Taking holy orders, he officiated for some time as curate to his father at Whippingham in the Isle of Wight, from which he removed to discharge the same duties in a very different locality—manufacturing Birmingham. In 1827, it may be added, Dr. Hook was appointed chaplain-in-ordinary to George IV., an office which he retains under her majesty. In 1828 Dr. Hook was nominated to the vicarage of Holy Trinity in Coventry, where he remained for nine years, zealously labouring to effect the elevation of the working classes of his district. His diligence was so widely and deeply appreciated that when, in 1837, the important vicarage of Leeds became vacant, eighteen of the twenty-three trustees in whose hands the patronage was vested, voted for the nomination of Dr. Hook; and his claims were supported by the late Sir Robert Peel, the late archbishop of Canterbury, and seven occupants of the episcopal bench. As vicar of Leeds, Dr. Hook, without suppressing his own distinctive peculiarities as a high churchman, secured in course of time the respect, and in many instances the co-operation of his parishioners of all classes and parties, religious and political. This result was aided doubtless by the proof of rare personal disinterestedness which he gave by promoting the passing of the act for dividing Leeds into seventeen parishes, thus sacrificing a considerable amount of patronage and income. By 1859 twenty-one new churches had been built in Leeds, the number of clergy had been more than trebled, and accommodation for seven thousand five hundred children had been provided in thirty-two new schoolrooms; this was effected, as Dr. Hook himself said by "men of all sections of the church, both of the clergy and laity." In 1846 Dr. Hook published his celebrated letter to the bishop of St. David's, "On the Means of rendering more efficient the Education of the People." The publication of this letter formed an era in the educational controversy. Dr. Hook strongly advocated in it the bestowal by the state of an ample provision for the purely secular instruction of the people, while their religious education, he recommended, should be left to ministers of religion in the church and out of it. The esteem in which Dr. Hook was held by the working classes of Leeds and the district, was proved on the occasion of her majesty's visit to that town, when he was requested by them to present to the queen an address from the united friendly benefit societies of Leeds, numbering more than twenty thousand members. In the colliery strike of a few years ago, when the men proposed to refer the dispute to
