Theodore Hook

Theodore Edward Hook (22 September 1788 – 24 August 1841) was an English man of letters and composer and briefly a civil servant in Mauritius.

Quotes

English Epigrams

Reported in William Davenport Adams (ed.) English Epigrams (London, [1878])

• An arch wag has declar'd, that he truly can say
  Why the Prince did not lay the first stone t'other day:
  The Restrictions prevented — the reason is clear;
  The Regent can't meddle in making a pier.
  • On the Prince Regent's Absence from the Ceremony of Laying the First Stone of Vauxhall Bridge" (1811)
  • [This appeared in The Morning Chronicle (11 May 1811)]

• Shelley styles his new poem "Prometheus Unbound,"
  And 'tis like to remain so while time circles round;
  For surely an age would be spent in the finding
  A reader so weak as to pay for the binding!
  • On Shelley's 'Prometheus Unbound'"

• When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said,
     A reverse he display'd in his vapour,
  For while all his poems were loaded with lead,
     His pistols were loaded with paper.
  For excuses, Anacreon old custom may thank,
     Such a salvo he should not abuse,
  For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank,
     That is fired away at Reviews.
  • "On Moore's Duel with Lord Jeffrey"
  • [From Barham's Life of Hook (1848). Moore is here called "Anacreon" in allusion to his translations from that poet. The duel was owing to an article in the Edinburgh Review, which Moore thought proper to resent by challenging the editor. The combatants were, however, arrested on the ground, and conveyed to Bow Street; where the pistols were found to contain merely a charge of powder, the balls having in some way disappeared! Byron alludes to the circumstance in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809):—

    When Little's leadless pistol met his eye,
    And Bow-Street myrmidons stood laughing by.]

• Two Miltons in separate ages were born:
     The cleverer Milton 'tis clear we have got,
  Though the other had talents the world to adorn,
     This lives by his mews, which the other could not!
  • "On a Livery-Stable Keeper, called Milton"
  • Cp. Gray, Elegy in a Country Churchyard (1751): Some mute inglorious Milton.

• This pair in matrimony
     Go most unequal snacks:
  He gets all the Honey,
     And she gets all the whacks.
  • "On the Unfortunate Marriage of a Miss Honey"

• Cease, ye Etonians! and no more
  With rival wits contend:
  Feathers, we know, will float in air,
  And bubbles will ascend.
  • "Reply to Canning"
  • [This appeared in the Eton school magazine called The Microcosm (Hook was then a boy at Harrow), in reply to the following epigram by the Eton boy George Canning, "On a Caricature representing Three Harrow Boys in a Pair of Scales, Outweighing Three Etonians":

    What mean ye by this print so rare,
       Ye wits, of Eton jealous,
    But that we soar aloft in air,
       While ye are heavy fellows?]

• It seems as if Nature had curiously plann'd
     That men's names with their trades should agree;
  There's Twining the Tea-man, who lives in the Strand,
     Would be whining, if robb'd of his T.
  • "On Twining, the Tea-Merchant"

• Cease your humming;
     The case is "on";
  Defendant's Cumming,
     Plaintiff's—gone!
  • "On a certain Nobleman Deserting his Cause against a Mr. Cumming"

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Theodore Hook on Wikipedia