have written two thousand four
hundred songs, one hundred and forty complete works or operas, one
oratorio, and many odes and anthems. He died in 1813, leaving two sons,
Dr. James Hook, the Dean of Worcester, who died 1828, and Theodore Edward
Hook, the author.

William Crotch, whose name has attained a wider celebrity, was also a
native of the city, the son of a carpenter. His early displays of
musical talent exceed in wonder even those of his fellow-citizen and
co-temporary, Hook; and many curious anecdotes are related of its
manifestation during his infancy. His father seems to have been a
self-taught musician, who without any scientific knowledge had built
himself an organ, upon which he had learned to play a few common tunes,
such as "God save the King," and "Let Ambition fire the mind." About
Christmas 1776, his child William, then only a year and a half old, was
observed frequently to leave his food or play, to listen to his father,
and would even then touch the key note of the tunes he wished to be
played. Not long afterwards, a musical lady came to try the organ, and
after her visit he seems to have made his first attempt to play a
tune--her playing excited him to a painful degree, his mother describing
him as so peevish that she could "do nothing with him." Music had
charms, however, to soothe his baby breast, and he consoled himself by
picking out the air of "God save the King," which in addition to being
his father's most frequent performance, had been also frequently sung as
a lullaby by his maternal nurse. At this time he was _two years and
three weeks old_, truly an infant prodigy! The report of his precocity
gained little credence, until accident confirmed what had previously been
deemed the exaggerations of parental fondness.

His father's employer, passing the house at a time when the elder Crotch
was absent from work on the plea of indisposition, heard the organ, and
fancied that his workman was idle instead of ill; to convince himself, he
went in, and found little Master William performing, and his brother
blowing the bellows. The marvel spread, and attracted such crowds of
auditors, that from that time the hours of his performance were obliged
to be limited. As he grew older his musical attainments rapidly
increased, while at the same time he discovered symptoms of a genius for
drawing, almost equal to that which he had already displayed for music.

When he was twelve years old he did t