Hook now lived and thrived purely on literature.  He published many novels—­gone where the bad novels go, and unread in the present day, unless in some remote country town, which boasts only a very meagre circulating library.  Improbability took the place of natural painting in them; punning supplied that of better wit; and personal portraiture was so freely used, that his most intimate friends—­old Mathews, for instance—­did not escape.

Meanwhile Hook, making a good fortune, returned to his convivial life, and the enjoyment—­if enjoyment it be—­of general society.  He ’threw out his bow window’ on the strength of his success with ‘John Bull,’ and spent much more than he had.  He mingled freely in all the London circles of thirty years ago, whose glory is still fresh in the minds of most of us, and everywhere his talent as an improvisatore, and his conversational powers, made him a general favourite.

Unhappy popularity for Hook!  He, who was yet deeply in debt to the nation—­who had an illegitimate family to maintain, who owed in many quarters more than he could ever hope to pay—­was still fool enough to entertain largely, and receive both nobles and wits in the handsomest manner.  Why did he not live quietly? why not, like Fox, marry the unhappy woman whom he had made the mother of his children, and content himself with trimming vines and rearing tulips?  Why, forsooth? because he was Theodore Hook, thoughtless and foolish to the last.  The jester of the people must needs be a fool.  Let him take it to his conscience that he was not as much a knave.

In his latter years Hook took to the two dissipations most likely to bring him into misery—­play and drink.  He was utterly unfitted for the former, being too gay a spirit to sit down and calculate chances.  He lost considerably, and the more he lost the more he played.  Drinking became almost a necessity with him.  He had a reputation to keep up in society, and had not the moral courage to retire from it altogether.  Writing, improvising, conviviality, play, demanded stimulants.  His mind was overworked in every sense.  He had recourse to the only remedy, and in drinking he found a temporary relief from anxiety, and a short-lived sustenance.  There is no doubt that this man, who had amused London circles for many years, hastened his end by drinking.

It is not yet thirty years since Theodore Hook died.  He left the world on August the 24th, 1841, and by this time he remains in the memory of men only as a wit that was, a punster, a hoaxer, a sorry jester, with an ample fund of fun, but not as a great man in any way.  Allowing everything for his education—­the times he lived in, and the unhappy error of his early life—­we may admit that Hook was not, in character, the worst of the wits.  He died in no odour of sanctity, but he was not a blasphemer or reviler, like others of this class.  He ignored the bond of matrimony, yet he remained faithful to the woman he had betrayed; he was undoubtedly careless