rest of my days."

Mr. Hook did not say if the gentleman had obtained from his securities a
license for what he had done; but the anecdote illustrates the extreme
laxity enjoyed by prisoners in the Rules, (which extended to several
streets,) as compared with the doleful incarceration to which _poor_
debtors were subjected, who in those days often had their miserable home
in a jail for debts that might have been paid by shillings.

Hook then took up his residence at Putney, from which he afterwards
removed to a "mansion" in Cleveland Street, but subsequently to Fulham,
where the remainder of his life was passed, and where he died. It was a
small, detached cottage. It is of this cottage that Lockhart says, "We
doubt if its interior was ever seen by half a dozen people besides the
old confidential worshippers of Bull's mouth."

He resided here in comparative obscurity. It gave him a pleasant
prospect of Putney Bridge, and of Putney on the opposite side of the
river. As the Thames flowed past the bottom of his small and narrow
garden, he had a perpetually cheerful and changing view of the many gay
passers-by in small boats, yachts, and steamers. The only room of the
cottage I ever saw was somewhat coarsely furnished: a few prints hung on
the walls, but there was no evidence of those suggestive refinements
which substitute intellectual for animal gratifications, in the internal
arrangements of a domicile that becomes necessarily a workshop.

Hook's love of practical joking seems to have commenced early. Almost of
that character was his well-known answer to the Vice-Chancellor at
Oxford, when asked whether he was prepared to subscribe to the
Thirty-Nine Articles,--"Certainly, to forty of them, if you please"; and
his once meeting the Proctor dressed in his robes, and being questioned,
"Pray, Sir, are you a member of this University?" he replied, "No, Sir;
pray are you?"

In the Memoirs of Charles Mathews by his widow abundant anecdotes are
recorded of these practical jokes; but, in fact, "Gilbert Gurney," which
may be regarded as an autobiography, is full of them. Mr. Barham, his
biographer, also relates several, and states, that, when a young man, he
had a "museum" containing a large and varied collection of knockers,
sign-paintings, barbers' poles, and cocked hats, gathered together
during his predatory adventures; but its most attractive object was "a
gigantic Highlander," lifted from the shop-door of a tobacconist on