we take an extract anywhere:--

'Oh! Mr. Bull, Room is raley a beautiful place. We entered it by the
Point of Molly, which is just like the Point and Sally at Porchmouth,
only they call Sally there Port, which is not known in Room. The Tiber
is a nice river, it looks yellow, but it does the same there as the
Thames does here. We hired a carry-lettz and a cocky-olly, to take us to
the Church of Salt Peter, which is prodigious big; in the centre of the
pizarro there is a basilisk very high, on the right and left two
handsome foundlings; and the farcy, as Mr. Fulmer called it, is
ornamented with collateral statutes of some of the Apostates.'

We can quite imagine that Hook wrote many of these letters when excited
by wine. Some are laughable enough, but the majority are so deplorably
stupid, reeking with puns and scurrility, that when the temporary
interest was gone, there was nothing left to attract the reader. It is
scarcely possible to laugh at the Joe-Millerish mistakes, the old world
puns, and the trite stories of Hook 'remains.' Remains! indeed; they had
better have remained where they were.

Besides prose of this kind, Hook contributed various jingles--there is
no other name for them--arranged to popular tunes, and intended to
become favourites with the country people. These like the prose
effusions, served the purpose of an hour, and have no interest now.
Whether they were ever really popular remains to be proved. Certes, they
are forgotten now, and long since even in the most Conservative corners
of the country. Many of these have the appearance of having been
originally _recitati_, and their amusement must have depended chiefly on
the face and manner of the singer--Hook himself; but in some he
displayed that vice of rhyming which has often made nonsense go down,