new part suddenly played by his confederate, seized upon a hearse, which
drew up before the inn, on its return from a funeral, persuaded the
company to bind the 'madman,' who was now becoming furious, and who
would have deposited him in the gloomy vehicle, if he had not succeeded
in snapping his fetters, and so escaped. In short, they were two boys,
with the sole difference, that they had sufficient talent and experience
of the world to maintain admirably the parts they assumed.

But a far more famous and more admirable talent in Theodore than that of
deception was that of improvising. The art of improvising belongs to
Italy and the Tyrol. The wonderful gift of ready verse to express
satire, and ridicule, seems, as a rule, to be confined to the
inhabitants of those two lands. Others are, indeed, scattered over the
world, who possess this gift, but very sparsely. Theodore Hook stands
almost alone in this country as an improviser. Yet to judge of such of
his verses as have been preserved, taken down from memory or what not,
the grand effect of them--and no doubt it _was_ grand--must have been
owing more to his manner and his acting, than to any intrinsic value in
the verses themselves, which are, for the most part, slight, and devoid
of actual wit, though abounding in puns. Sheridan's testimony to the
wonderful powers of the man is, perhaps, more valuable than that of any
one else, for he was a good judge both of verse and of wit. One of
Hook's earliest displays of his talent was at a dinner given by the
Drury Lane actors to Sheridan at the Piazza Coffee House in 1808. Here,
as usual, Hook sat down to the piano, and touching off a few chords,
gave verse after verse on all the events of the entertainment, on each
person present, though he now saw many of them for the first time, and
on anything connected with the matters of interest before them. Sheridan
was delighted, and declared that he could not have believed such a
faculty possible if he had not witnessed its effects: that no