begged earnestly to see her. She was then just recovering from one of her frequent illnesses, and was obliged to decline the visits of all but her immediate friends. The applicant was therefore told that she was unable to receive him; but he persisted in entreating for a few minutes' audience, with such urgent importunity, that at last the point was conceded. The moment he was admitted, the gentleman (for such his manner and appearance declared him to be) explained, in words and tones of the deepest feeling, that the object of his visit was to acknowledge a debt of obligation which he could not rest satisfied without avowing that

to her he owed, in the first instance, that faith and those hopes which were now more precious to him than life itself; for that it was by reading her poem of The Sceptic' he had been first awakened from the miserable delusions of infidelity, and induced to search the Scriptures.' Having poured forth his thanks and benedictions in an uncontrollable gush of emotion, this strange, but interesting visitant took his

departure, leaving her overwhelmed with a mingled sense of joyful gratitude and wondering humility."

Perchance as she mused over this occurrence on her dying couch, it would recall to her this passage from a treasured Volume-a Volume which she had never lost sight of in life, and was inexpressibly dear to her in death-" If any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save

a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins."

215

CHAP. XIV.

The Man of Wasted Talents.

THEODORE HOOK.

"A common and every-day object shall express my meaning. A man of consummate talents devoid of high principle is, to my mind, a steam engine without a driver! You have an instrument of resistless force before you, without any directing, controlling, or governing power. So abandoned, calculate, if you can, the amount of mischief it may generate!" The late REV.

W. HOWELLS.

THIS interlocutory remark of an able man, thrown off in one of his annual addresses to the young, will afford a clue to much that is incomprehensible in the career of that erring being, over whose chequered history we are about to glance.

THEODORE EDWARD HOOK, the son of a musical composer, who enjoyed, at one period, considerable success and celebrity, was born in

Bedford Square, on the 22nd of September, 1788.

He was cotemporary at Harrow with Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel. His mother died in 1802; and the widower, a clever, but weak man, was easily persuaded to withdraw Theodore from school altogether. The boy had an exquisite ear; lived, as it were, from the cradle, in a musical atmosphere; was an expert player on the pianoforte; had a voice rich, sweet, and powerful. He could sing a pathetic song well, a comic one charmingly. What more could a musical artist desire?

One evening he enchanted his doting parent by singing to his own accompaniment two new ballads

one grave, and

one gay.

Whence the

airs? whence the words? It turned out that

verse and music were alike his own.

Here was

a mine for the veteran artist! Hitherto he had been forced to import his words, now the whole manufacture might go on at home! The boy was delighted at the prospect; and at sixteen his fate was fixed. The beardless Theodore

was virtually a partner in his father's business. Whatever there had been of authority was at an end. Whenever Mr. Hook got his five guineas, two, perhaps, were, of right, Theodore's.

That career, so erratic and unstable, so devoted to amusement, so crowded with rebellious frolics and boisterous buffooneries, now commenced in right earnest. All his father's friends and boon companions were musicians and players, male and female; and the theatre became the son's nightly resort. Free admission before and behind the curtain was granted him, but his main ambition was to become a successful Play-wright.

One effort was made to stop this headlong career. His eldest brother, the Rev. James Hook, afterwards Dean of Worcester, prevailed on his father to consent that steps should be taken to complete Theodore's education, and to train him for the bar. With this view the clergyman took the petted and precocious boy down to Oxford, to be entered as an Undergraduate. Even then his turn for