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HOOK, THEODORE EDWARD (1788–1841), English author, was born in London on the 22nd of September 1788. He spent a year at Harrow, and subsequently matriculated at Oxford, but he never actually resided at the university. His father, James Hook (1746–1827), the composer of numerous popular songs, took great delight in exhibiting the boy’s extraordinary musical and metrical gifts, and the precocious Theodore became “the little pet lion of the green room.” At the age of sixteen, in conjunction with his father, he scored a dramatic success with The Soldier’s Return, a comic opera, and this he rapidly followed up with a series of over a dozen sparkling ventures, the instant popularity of which was hardly dependent on the inimitable acting of John Liston and Charles Mathews. But Hook gave himself up for some ten of the best years of his life to the pleasures of the town, winning a foremost place in the world of fashion by his matchless powers of improvisation and mimicry, and startling the public by the audacity of his practical jokes. His unique gift of improvising the words and the music of songs eventually charmed the prince Regent into a declaration that “something must be done for Hook.” The prince was as good as his word, and Hook, in spite of a total ignorance of accounts, was appointed accountant-general and treasurer of the Mauritius with a salary of £2000 a year. For five delightful years he was the life and soul of the island, but in 1817, a serious deficiency having been discovered in the treasury accounts, he was arrested and brought to England on a criminal charge. A sum of about £12,000 had been abstracted by a deputy official, and for this amount Hook was held responsible.

During the tardy scrutiny of the audit board he lived obscurely and maintained himself by writing for magazines and newspapers. In 1820 he launched the newspaper John Bull, the champion of high Toryism and the virulent detractor of Queen Caroline. Witty, incisive criticism and pitiless invective secured it a large circulation, and from this source alone Hook derived, for the first year at least, an income of £2000. He was, however, arrested for the second time on account of his debt to the state, which he made no effort to defray. In a sponging-house, where he was confined for two years, he wrote the nine volumes of stories afterwards collected under the title of Sayings and Doings (1826–1829). In the remaining twenty-three years of his life he poured forth no fewer than thirty-eight volumes, besides numberless articles, squibs and sketches. His novels are not works of enduring interest, but they are saved from mediocrity by frequent passages of racy narrative and vivid portraiture. The best are Maxwell (1830), Love and Pride (1833), the autobiographic Gilbert Gurney (1836), Jack Brag (1837), Gurney Married (1838), and Peregrine Bunce (1842). Incessant work had already begun to tell on his health, when Hook returned to his old social habits, and a prolonged attempt to combine industry and dissipation resulted in the confession that he was “done up in purse, in mind and in body too at last.” He died on the 24th of August 1841. His writings in great part are of a purely ephemeral character; and the greatest triumphs of the improvisatore may be said to have been writ in wine. Putting aside, however, his claim to literary greatness, Hook will be remembered as one of the most brilliant, genial and original figures of Georgian times.

HOOK, WALTER FARQUHAR (1798–1875), English divine, nephew of the witty Theodore, was born in London on the 13th of March 1798. Educated at Tiverton and Winchester, he graduated at Oxford (Christ Church) in 1821, and after holding an incumbency in Coventry, 1829–1837, and in Leeds, 1837–1859, was nominated dean of Chichester by Lord Derby. He received the degree of D.D. in 1837. His friendship towards the Tractarians exposed him to considerable persecution, but his simple manly character and zealous devotion to parochial work gained him the support of widely divergent classes. His stay in Leeds was marked by vigorous and far-reaching church extension, and his views on education were far in advance of his time. Among his many writings are An Ecclesiastical Biography, containing the Lives of Ancient Fathers and Modern Divines (8 vols., 1845–1852), A Church Dictionary, The Means of Rendering more Effectual the Education of the People, The Cross of Christ (1873), The Church and its Ordinances (sermons, 4 vols., 1876), and Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (12 vols., 1860–1876). He died on the 20th of October 1875.

HOOKAH (the English spelling of the Persian and Hindustani huqqu, an adaptation of the Arabic huqqah, a vase or casket, and by transference a pipe for smoking, probably derived from the Arabic huqq, a hollow place), a pipe with a long flexible tube attached to a large bowl containing water, often scented, and resting upon a tripod or stand. The smoke of the tobacco is made to pass through the water in the bowl, and is thus cooled before reaching the smoker. The narghile of India is in principle the same as that of the hookah; the word is derived from nargil, an Indian name for the coco-nut tree, as when the narghile was first made the water was placed in a coco-nut. This receptacle is now often made of porcelain, glass or metal. In the hubble-bubble the pipe is so contrived that the water in the bowl makes a bubbling noise while the pipe is being smoked. This pipe is common in India, Egypt and the East generally.

HOOKE, ROBERT (1635–1703), English experimental philosopher, was born on the 18th of July 1635 at Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, where his father, John Hooke, was minister of the parish. After working for a short time with Sir Peter Lely, he went to Westminster school; and in 1653 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, as servitor. After 1655 he was employed and patronized by the Hon. Robert Boyle, who turned his skill to account in the construction of his air-pump. On the 12th of November 1662 he was appointed curator of experiments to the Royal Society, of which he was elected a fellow in 1663, and filled the office during the remainder of his life. In 1664 Sir John Cutler instituted for his benefit a mechanical lectureship of £50 a year, and in the following year he was nominated professor of geometry in Gresham College, where he subsequently resided. After the Great Fire of 1666 he constructed a model for the rebuilding of the city, which was highly approved, although the design of Sir C. Wren was preferred. During the progress of the works, however, he acted as surveyor, and accumulated in that lucrative employment a sum of several thousand pounds, discovered after his death in an old iron chest, which had evidently lain unopened for above thirty years. He fulfilled the duties of secretary to the Royal Society during five years after the death of Henry Oldenburg in 1677, publishing in 1681–1682 the papers read before that body under the title of Philosophical Collections. A protracted controversy with Johann Hevelius, in which Hooke urged the advantages of telescopic over plain sights, brought him little but discredit. His reasons were good; but his offensive style of argument rendered them unpalatable and himself unpopular. Many circumstances concurred to embitter the latter years of his life. The death, in 1687, of his niece, Mrs Grace Hooke, who had lived with him for many years, caused him deep affliction; a law-suit with Sir John Cutler about his salary (decided, however, in his favour in 1696) occasioned him prolonged anxiety; and the repeated anticipation of his discoveries inspired him with a morbid jealousy. Marks of public respect were not indeed wanting to him. A degree of M.D. was conferred on him at Doctors’ Commons in 1691, and the Royal Society made him, in 1696, a grant to enable him to complete his philosophical inventions. While engaged on this task he died, worn out with disease, on the 3rd of March 1703 in London, and was buried in St Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate Street.

In personal appearance Hooke made but a sorry show. His