We have thrown together the foregoing anecdotes of Hook, irrespective of time, in order to show what the man’s gifts were, and what his title to be considered a wit.  We must proceed more steadily to a review of his life.  Successful as Hook had proved as a writer for the stage, he suddenly and without any sufficient cause rushed off into another branch of literature, that of novel-writing.  His first attempt in this kind of fiction was ‘The Man of Sorrow,’ published under the nom de plume of Alfred Allendale.  This was not, as its name would seem to imply, a novel of pathetic cast, but the history of a gentleman whose life from beginning to end is rendered wretched by a succession of mishaps of the most ludicrous but improbable kind.  Indeed Theodore’s novels, like his stage-pieces, are gone out of date in an age so practical that even in romance it will not allow of the slightest departure from reality.  Their very style was ephemeral, and their interest could not outlast the generation to amuse which they were penned.  This first novel was written when Hook was one-and-twenty.  Soon after he was sent to Oxford, where he had been entered at St. Mary’s Hall, more affectionately known by the nickname of ‘Skimmery.’  No selection could have been worse.  Skimmery was, at that day, and, until quite recently, a den of thieves, where young men of fortune and folly submitted to be pillaged in return for being allowed perfect licence, as much to eat as they could possibly swallow, and far more to drink than was at all good for them.  It has required all the enterprise of the present excellent Principal to convert it into a place of sober study.  It was then the most ‘gentlemanly’ residence in Oxford; for a gentleman in those days meant a man who did nothing, spent his own or his father’s guineas with a brilliant indifference to consequences, and who applied his mind solely to the art of frolic.  It was the very place where Hook would be encouraged instead of restrained in his natural propensities, and had he remained there he would probably have ruined himself and his father long before he had put on the sleeves.

At the matriculation itself he gave a specimen of his ‘fun.’

When asked, according to the usual form, ’if he was willing to sign the Thirty-nine Articles,’ he replied, ’Certainly, sir, forty if you please.’  The gravity of the stern Vice-Chancellor was upset, but as no Oxford Don can ever pardon a joke, however good, Master Theodore was very nearly being dismissed, had not his brother, by this time a Prebendary of Winchester, and ‘an honour to his college, sir,’ interceded in his favour.