a fool—­a fool of the first water, but that he was equally a knave was not so certain.  Let it never be certain to blind man, who cannot read the heart, that any man is a knave.  He died on the 30th of March, 1840, and so the last of the Beaux passed away.  People have claimed, indeed for D’Orsay, the honour of Brummell’s descending mantle, but D’Orsay was not strictly a beau, for he had other and higher tastes than mere dress.  It has never been advanced that Brummell’s heart was bad, in spite of his many faults.  Vanity did all.  Vanitas vanitatem.  O young men of this age, be warned by a Beau, and flee his doubtful reputation!  Peace then to the coat-thinker.  Peace to all—­to the worst.  Let us look within and not judge.  It is enough that we are not tried in the same balance.

THEODORE EDWARD HOOK.

The Greatest of Modern Wits.—–­What Coleridge said of Hook.—­Hook’s Family.—­Redeeming Points.—­Versatility.—­Varieties of Hoaxing.—­The Black-wafered Horse.—­The Berners Street Hoax.—­Success of the Scheme.—­ The Strop of Hunger.—­Kitchen Examinations.—­The Wrong House.—­Angling for an Invitation.—­The Hackney-coach Device.—­The Plots of Hook and Mathews.—­Hook’s Talents as an Improvisatore.—­The Gift becomes his Bane.—­Hook’s Novels.—­College Fun.—­Baiting a Proctor.—­The Punning Faculty.—­Official Life Opens.—­Troublesome Pleasantry.—­Charge of Embezzlement.—­Misfortune.—­Doubly Disgraced.—­No Effort to remove the Stain.—­Attacks on the Queen.—­An Incongruous Mixture.—­Specimen of the Ramsbottom Letters.—­Hook’s Scurrility.—­Fortune and Popularity.—­The End.

If it be difficult to say what wit is, it is well nigh as hard to pronounce what is not wit.  In a sad world, mirth hath its full honour, let it come in rags or in purple raiment.  The age that patronises a ‘Punch’ every Saturday? and a pantomime every Christmas, has no right to complain, if it finds itself barren of wits, while a rival age has brought forth her dozens.  Mirth is, no doubt, very good.  We would see more, not less, of it in this unmirthful land.  We would fain imagine the shrunken-cheeked factory-girl singing to herself a happy burthen, as she shifts the loom,—­the burthen of her life, and fain believe that the voice was innocent as the sky-lark’s.  But if it be not so—­and we know it is not so—­shall we quarrel with any one who tries to give the poor care-worn, money-singing public a little laughter for a few pence?  No, truly, but it does not follow that the man who raises a titter is, of necessity, a wit.  The next age, perchance, will write a book of ’Wits and Beaux,’ in which Mr. Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, and so on, will represent the wit of this passing day; and that future age will not ask so nicely what wit is, and not look for that last solved of riddles, its definition.  Hook has been, by common consent, placed at the head of modern wits.  When kings were kings, they bullied, beat, and and brow-beat