their earliest miseries. It was in learning Hook's
exercises, or primers, or whatever they were called, that they first had
their fingers slapped over the piano-forte. The father of Theodore, no
doubt, was the unwitting cause of much unhappiness to many a young lady
in her teens. Hook _pere_ was an organist at Norwich. He came up to
town, and was engaged at Marylebone Gardens and at Vauxhall; so that
Theodore had no excuse for being of decidedly plebeian origin, and, Tory
as he was, he was not fool enough to aspire to patricianism.

Theodore's family was, in real fact, Theodore himself. He made the name
what it is, and raised himself to the position he at one time held. Yet
he had a brother whose claims to celebrity are not altogether ancillary.
James Hook was fifteen years older than Theodore. After leaving
Westminster School he was sent to immortal Skimmery (St. Mary's Hall),
Oxford, which has fostered so many great men--and spoiled them. He was
advanced in the church from one preferment to another, and ultimately
became Dean of Worcester. The character of the reverend gentleman is
pretty well known, but it is unnecessary here to go into it farther. He
is only mentioned as Theodore's brother in this sketch.[12] He was a
dabbler in literature, like his brother, but scarcely to the same extent
a dabbler in wit.

[12: Dr. James Hook, Dean of Worcester, was father to Dr. Walter
Farquhar Hook, now the excellent Dean of Chichester, late Vicar of
Leeds.]

The younger son of 'Hook's Exercises' developed early enough a taste for
ingenious lying--so much admired in his predecessor--Sheridan, He
'fancied himself' a genius, and therefore, from school-age, not amenable
to the common laws of ordinary men. Frequenters of the now fashionable
prize-ring--thanks to two brutes who have brought that degraded pastime
into prominent notice--will hear a great deal about a man 'fancying
himself.' It is common slang and heeds little explanation. Hook 'fancied
himself' from an early period, and continued to 'fancy himself,' in
spite of repeated disgraces, till a very mature age. At Harrow, he was
the contemporary, but scarcely the friend, of Lord Byron. No two
characters could have been more unlike. Every one knows, more or less,
what Byron's was; it need only be said that Hook's was the reverse of it
in every respect. Byron felt where Hook laughed. Byron was morbid where
Hook was gay. Byron abjured with disgust the social vices to which he