The hoaxing stories of Theodore Hook are numberless.  Hoaxing was the fashion of the day, and a childish fashion too.  Charles Mathews, whose face possessed the flexibility of an acrobat’s body, and who could assume any character or disguise on the shortest notice, was his great confederate in these plots.  The banks of the Thames were their great resort.  At one point there was Mathews talking gibberish in a disguise intended to represent the Spanish Ambassador, and actually deceiving the Woolwich authorities by his clever impersonation.  At another, there was Hook landing uninvited with his friends upon the well-known, sleek-looking lawn of a testy little gentleman, drawing out a note-book and talking so authoritatively about the survey for a canal, to be undertaken by Government, that the owner of the lawn becomes frightened, and in his anxiety attempts to conciliate the mighty self-made official by the offer of dinner—­of course accepted.

[Illustration:  THEODORE HOOK’S ENGINEERING FROLIC.]

Then the Arcades ambo show off their jesting tricks at Croydon fair, a most suitable place for them.  On one occasion Hook personates a madman, accusing Mathews, ‘his brother,’ of keeping him out of his rights and in his custody.  The whole fair collects around them, and begins to sympathise with Hook, who begs them to aid in his escape from his ‘brother.’  A sham escape and sham capture take place, and the party adjourn to the inn, where Mathews, who had been taken by surprise by the new part suddenly played by his confederate, seized upon a hearse, which drew up before the inn, on its return from a funeral, persuaded the company to bind the ‘madman,’ who was now becoming furious, and who would have deposited him in the gloomy vehicle, if he had not succeeded in snapping his fetters, and so escaped.  In short, they were two boys, with the sole difference, that they had sufficient talent and experience of the world to maintain admirably the parts they assumed.

But a far more famous and more admirable talent in Theodore than that of deception was that of improvising.  The art of improvising belongs to Italy and the Tyrol.  The wonderful gift of ready verse to express satire, and ridicule, seems, as a rule, to be confined to the inhabitants of those two lands.  Others are, indeed, scattered over the world, who possess this gift, but very sparsely.  Theodore Hook stands almost alone in this country as an improviser.  Yet to judge of such of his verses as have been preserved, taken down from memory or what not, the grand effect of them—­and no doubt it was grand—­must have been owing more to his manner and his acting, than to any intrinsic value in the verses themselves, which are, for the most part, slight, and devoid of actual wit, though abounding in puns.  Sheridan’s testimony to the wonderful powers of the man is, perhaps, more valuable than that of any one else, for he was a good judge both of verse and of wit.  One of