The Greatest of Modern Wits.---What Coleridge said of Hook.--Hook's
Family.--Redeeming Points.--Versatility.--Varieties of Hoaxing.--The
Black-wafered Horse.--The Berners Street Hoax.--Success of the Scheme.--
The Strop of Hunger.--Kitchen Examinations.--The Wrong House.--Angling
for an Invitation.--The Hackney-coach Device.--The Plots of Hook and
Mathews.--Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.--The Gift becomes his
Bane.--Hook's Novels.--College Fun.--Baiting a Proctor.--The Punning
Faculty.--Official Life Opens.--Troublesome Pleasantry.--Charge of
Embezzlement.--Misfortune.--Doubly Disgraced.--No Effort to remove the
Stain.--Attacks on the Queen.--An Incongruous Mixture.--Specimen of the
Ramsbottom Letters.--Hook's Scurrility.--Fortune and Popularity.--The End.


If it be difficult to say what wit is, it is well nigh as hard to
pronounce what is not wit. In a sad world, mirth hath its full honour,
let it come in rags or in purple raiment. The age that patronises a
'Punch' every Saturday? and a pantomime every Christmas, has no right to
complain, if it finds itself barren of wits, while a rival age has
brought forth her dozens. Mirth is, no doubt, very good. We would see
more, not less, of it in this unmirthful land. We would fain imagine the
shrunken-cheeked factory-girl singing to herself a happy burthen, as she
shifts the loom,--the burthen of her life, and fain believe that the
voice was innocent as the sky-lark's. But if it be not so--and we know
it is not so--shall we quarrel with any one who tries to give the poor
care-worn, money-singing public a little laughter for a few pence? No,
truly, but it does not follow that the man who raises a titter is, of
necessity, a wit. The next age, perchance, will write a book of 'Wits
and Beaux,' in which Mr. Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, and so on,