-

he rejoined, this proves that you are no son | Child," "Lord Ullin's Daughter," and "The of A'braham. Have you never read "the Soldier's Dream"-the Tyrtaus who added singers go before, the minstrels follow after'? to English song its most stirring appeal to the And with this text the Poet drove the singer national spirit the yet sublimer Poet who before him into the dining-room.'' could conceive the loneliness of the last created being left on Earth, and who when he himself was in articulo mortis could revive the lofty and momentous vision and its emotions as truths real and near. The poems are great possessions. Is it needful, then, that we should expatiate with unflattering minuteness on the in-comings and out-goings of their artificer? Though this book contains little by which he will be remembered, save, perhaps, the honest love which guided its writer's pen, -they will not be soon forgotten. Therefore they shall remain to be our life of Thomas

We have dwelt in this biography, purposely, upon the fragments of anecdote which it contains rather than upon the character which is developed in its pages. Had we considered the latter, we must perchance have questioned, added, qualified; since, however natural to the biographer be such homage as that shown by Dr. Beattie, the critic must strike a balance betwixt faults and virtues-betwixt great qualities and petty foibles. Far be it from us to enter upon this task (always an ungracious one) against the lyrist who sang "O'Connor's Campbell.-Athenæum.

LIFE AND REMAINS OF THEODORE HOOK.

ཐ

The Life and Remains of Theodore Edward Hook. By the Rev. R. H. Dalton Barham, B. A.

Of Hook, the dramatist, essayist, improvisatore, novelist, we would all know something-though from his biography we are likely to gain more amusement than instruction. His example is one to deter, not to attract. It is the life of a man of wit, not of wisdom of a clever man, not a man of genius -whose talent was wonderful rather for its readiness than for its extent. His morals, however, were not worse than his politics, and his fortunes little better than either. He walked in a vain sphere, and having labored hard in support of a faction, died in debt to the world, not leaving the world in debt to him by the amount of a single truth. Much of Hook's humor, too, will perish with the illusions which it vainly endeavored to preserve. One cannot help lamenting the waste of so much attic salt; but we believe that his novel of "Gilbert Gurney" is likely to survive as evidence of talents, that, if they had always been equally well employed, would have insured their possessor an indisputable immortality. In too many respects, Hook resembled Sheridan. His biographer confesses this:

they seem equally to have been distinguished as idle, careless, and engaging. Their mothers, also, both snatched away too soon, appear to have been alike in their amiable dispositions, estimable characters, and in those gifts of nature which they transmitted to their sons. Sheridan, as well as Hook, had an elder brother more blessed than himself in the watchful care exercised over his youth, and more happy, more prosperous, though less brilliant in his subsequent course. The treatment the two young men experienced at the hands of their fathers, though opposite enough in all other respects, had a like issue; leaving them, from indifference on the one side, and an over indulgence, no less culpable, on the other, to enter immaturely on the world, and to seek their fortune where and how they listed. The early tastes of both gravitated towards the same centre-the stage; through the same portal they passed into the upper and alien world of fashion, and illuminated it with the same flashing 'sparks of immortality!' not, however, that we venture to contend for any general parity of genius between Theodore Hook and

The worthy rival of the wondrous three!' It is only in the humbler field of social eloquence and convivial wit that a comparison is suggested which Hook need fear with none.

"In point of geniune extemporaneity and absence of artifice, he was far superior to Sheridan himself, whose bon mots were pre

ably led to a more complete development of
the idea. On this occasion, however, the
and Mrs. -9
a
confederates, Mr. H
celebrated actress still alive, were called into
council; six weeks were spent in preparation,
during which time about four thousand letters
were despatched, all, under various pretences,
inviting the several recipients to call on a cer-
tain day at the house of a Mrs. Tottenham, a
lady of property, residing at No. 54, Bern-
ers-street, and who had, on some account, fal-
len under the displeasure of this formidable

trio.

"Scarce had the eventful morning began to break, ere the neighborhood resounded with the cries of sweep,' uttered in every variety of tone, and proceeding from crowds of sooty urchins and their masters, who had assembled by five o'clock beneath the windows of the devoted No. 54. In the midst of the wrangling of the rival professors, and protestations of the repudiating housemaid, heavy wagons laden with chaldrons of coals from the different wharves, came rumbling up the street, blockading the thoroughfare, impeding one another, crushing and struggling to reach the same goal, amid a hurricane of imprecations from the respective conducteurs. Now among the gathering crowd, cleanly, cook-like men were to be seen, cautiously making their way, each with a massive wedding-cake under his arm; tailors, boot-makers, upholsterers, undertakers with coffins, dray-men with beer-barrels, &c., succeeded in shoals, and long before the cumbrous coal-wagons were enabled to move off, about a dozen travelling chariots and four, all ready for the reception of as many happy pairs, came dashing up to the spot. Medical men with instruments for the amputation of limbs, attorneys prepared to cut off entails, clergymen summoned to minister to the mind, and artists engaged to portray the features of the body, unable to draw near in vehicles, plunged manfully into the mob. Noon came, and with it about forty fishmongers, bearing forty' cod and lobsters,' as many butchers, with an equal number of legs of mutton, and as the confusion reached its height, and the uproar became terrific, and the consternation of the poor old lady grew to be bordering on temporary insanity, up drove the great Lord Mayor himself-state carriage, cocked hats, silk stockings, bag, wigs and all, to the intense gratification of Hook and his two associates, who, snugly ensconced in an apartment opposite, were witnessing the triumph of their scheme.

"All this, perhaps, was comparatively common-place, and within the range of a of a mediocre joker of jokes.' There were

6

features, however, in the Berners-street hoax,
independently of its originality, which distin-
guished it for wit and méchancéte, far above
any of the numberless imitations to which it
gave rise. Every family, it is said, has its
secret; some point tender to the touch, some
circumstance desirable to be suppressed; ac-
cording to the proverb, there is a skeleton
in every house, and, as a matter of course,
the more eminent and conspicuous the master
of the house, the more busy are men's tongues
with his private affairs, and the more likely
are they to get scent of any concealed subject
of annoyance. Completely familiar with Lon-
don gossip, and by no means scrupulous in
the use of any information he might possess,
Hook addressed a variety of persons of con-
sideration, taking care to introduce allusion to
some peculiar point sure of attracting atten-
Certain revelations
tion, and invariably closing with an invitation
to No. 54 Berners-street.
to be made respecting a complicated system
of fraud pursued at the Bank of England,
brought the Governor of that establishment;
a similar device was employed to allure the
Chairman of the East India Company, while
the Duke of Gloucester started off with his
equerry to receive a communication from a
dying woman, formerly a confidential attendant
on his royal highness' mother.
the royal liveries conspicuous on the occasion,
the Duke of York was not, we have reason to
believe, included in the hoax.

66

His were

'The consequences of this affair threatened to be serious, many of the beguiled tradesmen and others who had suffered in person or in purse, took active measures towards bringing the charge home to the principal offender, who was pretty generally suspected. Such, however, was the precaution that had been observed, that the attempt proved fruitless, and the inquiry fell to the ground, and Theodore Hook, after a temporary visit to the country, returned unmolested, and more famous than ever, to his usual occupations.'

Hook was about 21, when his first novel "The Man of Sorrow," which was appeared, unsuccessful on its original publication, but reproduced in a condensed form in "Sayings and Doings." Having become on the same night with Sheridan a member of the "Eccentrics," Hook obtained an aristocratic connection. Considerable portion of this biography is taken up with an account of Mr. Hook's acquaintance with the Rev. Edward Carman, the Prince Regent's chaplain, a man after his own heart, and whose adventures are too like his own to need to detain us here. Whether or not, by means of such patronage,

no record is here needed. Famous and formidable in its day it was; but not having been devoted to the cause of humanity, its praise is unrecorded even in its epitaph.

Hook obtained in 1812 the post, worth £2,000 | Of the kind of lampooning on which it lived, per annum, of accountant-general and treasurer at the Mauritius; which place he visited at the end of the following year. A duel there made his position uncomfortable. The audit of his accounts also produced an unsatisfactory result-a result, however, in which there is no doubt Hook was more sinned against than sinning, one Allan (a man black in nature as in hue) being the real delinquent. An extent, however, was issued against Hook's property, and inconvenienced him to the day of his death. On his return to England, Hook resorted to literature and politics as the means of subsistence. In 1820, the John Bull newspaper was established, with the specific object of extinguishing the Brandenburg House party, and proved to be "the most formidable antagonist that had as yet entered the lists against the Queen." Hook's editorship was kept a secret-a nominal editor being appointed as a "legal lightning conductor."

As a writer of squibs, Hook was, perhaps, unrivalled; and as a novelist, his merit was great enough to procure for him large remuneration. But improvidence ruined him at the height of his success. His mode of life was confessedly of the most exhausting nature. The posthumous works, which compose the second volume of the present publication, are of various degrees of merit; some capital: but all of merely temporal interest. They will hereafter be referred to as curiosities, and as throwing light on political life and personal manners; but for their author they will command no reverence. The reader's feelings will be constantly divided between admiration and compassion.-Douglas Jerrold's Newspa

per.

ANCIENT AND MODERN MONSTER REPTILES.

BY W. FRANCIS AINSWORTH, ESQ.

"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?"

That excellent Hebrew scholar, Gesenius, remarks that the word Leviathan, which denotes any twisted animal, is especially applicable to every great tenant of the waters, such as the great marine serpents and crocodiles, and it may be added, the colossal serpents and great lizards of the desert. In general, however, it applies to the crocodile, and Job xli. is unequivocally descriptive of that scaly monster; while other texts apply more naturally to the whale. There are passages, however, in the Prophets and Psalms, where Pharaoh is evidently apostrophized under the name of Leviathan, while the combat of the Archangel Michael was as evidently carried on against the powers of darkness as typified by the dragon.

Upon this subject, the able naturalist, Colonel Hamilton Smith, remarks that in connection with rivers, Than, or Leviathan, generally applies to the crocodile; when in connection with land, and particularly the desert, it appears to designate the Waran el Hard, a species of lizard or monitor, the same as that which the pilgrim and esquire-carver to the Duke of Burgundy, La Brocquière, describes the doughty champions, Sir Andrew de Toulongeon

and Pierre de Vaudrei, as giving battle to in the Holy Land; but Thannin, the same author remarks, is a term used for serpents mostly of the larger kind.

It was, perhaps, in conjunction with the existence of real colossal sea-serpents, but not wholly so, Colonel Hamilton Smith also remarks, that nations remote from the ocean, in common with the rest, have, in their cosmogo nies, their religious dogmas, their legends and records, both malevolent and beneficial giantserpents. Such are the innumerable fables in Hindu lore of Nagas and Naga kings, and in Scandinavian legends, the Paystha, Kater, and Vidhanger.

Such, also, is the origin of that primeval astronomy which placed the serpent in the skies, and called the milky way by the name of Ananta and Sesha Naga, and the Pagan obscure, yet almost universal record of the deluge, typified by a serpent endeavoring to destroy the ark; which astronomy has likewise transferred to the skies in the form of a dragon about to devour the moon, when it appears the form of a crescent-shaped boat. The same image of the deluge is figured in the West, in

in

Ancient and Modern Monster Reptiles.

|

those structures with avenues of upright stones Such especially was the dragon that lived at.
of several miles in length, and serpentine in the foot of Mount Pelinæum, in Scio, and was
form, whereof the ruins may still be traced at only destroyed by burning down a whole forest.
Carnak in Brittany, Abury in Wiltshire, and These dragons were generally scaly monsters,
Dracontia, as these "Ecce draco squamis !" exclaims old Ovid
Redruth in Cornwall.
temples are called from this very circumstance," Draco squamosus fiet," says Virgil-and
also existed in Asia Minor, in Epirus, and in
Northern Africa.

Kneeph, or Cnuphis, or Ihh-Nuphi, the good genius of ancient Egypt, always figured as the Nachash, or Thermuth, is the same as Naga Sahib-the lord serpent of India, and is still a personification of the vanquisher of the deluge -Vishnu, with many others, being Pagan denominations of Noah. In Egypt, the early centre of Ophiolatry, or snake-worship, this debasing service was so deeply rooted, that a Christian sect of heretics, called Ophitæ, or, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, Ophiani, arose in the second century of our era.

The Hesperian, Colchian, and Lernæan dragons, are only Greek legends of the same doctrine, still more distorted, and affording ample proof how far the Pagan world had departed from the simplicity of its true symbolical meaning, as when Moses raised the brazen serpent in the wilderness, and that, from the then prevalent partiality to metaphysical descriptions and fanciful symbols.

The typifying the deluge and all other great destructive agents, under the form of monster serpents and dragons, arose, however, in the earliest antiquity from those giant serpents which, at a remote period, were evidently still more colossal than that which is recorded to have opposed a Roman army, or than those whose skeletons have been recently found in India, and which were above 100 feet in length; or those of the serpent (Hydrargos Sillimanii,) discovered, in 1844, by Dr. Koch, in Alabama, and which measured 114 feet.

The Azhdehak, the dragon of the Persians, was a great monster that was transformed into stone by the potent spell of Solomon's signetring, as it was coming open-mouthed to attack the city of Ecbatana. The dragon race of Armenia, whom history represented as the descendants of Azhdehak-the Astyages of the Greeks were believed, in popular tradition, to derive their origin from the dragons that issued from the shoulders of Zohak.

The dragons of the Greeks and Romans were sometimes of a compound nature, as in the case of the Chimæra of Lycia. They also dwelt alike in water and on land, but appear most to have affected wooded ravines and lonely marshes.

Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen makes fear'd
And talk'd of more than seen.

sometimes winged. They were always of enormous size. The poets of old vie with one another in finding epithets sufficiently expressive of their size, their hideousness, and their deadly attributes. Elian and others make their length from thirty or forty to a hundred cubits. Posidonius describes one 140 feet long, that inhabited the neighborhood of Damascus; and another whose lair was at Makra, near Jordan, was an acre in length, and of such bulk that two men on horseback, with the monster between them, could not see each other. According to Ignatius, there was in the library of Constantinople the intestine of a dragon 120 feet long, on which were written. the Iliad and Odyssey, in letters of gold!

But this is, properly speaking, a medieval dragon. A subject so full of mythical ideas and so pregnant with the wild and wonderful, was at once the favorite theme of religious legends, of knightly fiction, of song, and of ballad.

"The Dragon (says Mrs. Jameson, in a work just published on sacred and legendary art) is the emblem of sin in general, and of the sin of idolatry in particular; and the dragon slain or vanquished by the power of the cross, is the perpetually recurring myth, which, varied in a thousand ways, we find running through all the old Christian legends, and not subject to misapprehension in the earliest times; but as the cloud of ignorance darkened and deepened, the symbol was translated into a fact. It has been suggested that the dragon, which is to us a phantasm and an allegory, which in the middle ages was the visible shape of the demon adversary of all truth and goodness, might have been, as regards form, originally a fact; for wherever we have dragon legends, whether the scene be laid in Asia, Africa, or Europe, the imputed circumstances and the form are little varied. The dragons introduced into early painting and sculpture, so invariably represent a gigantic winged crocodile, that it is presumed there must have been some common origin for the type chosen, as if by common consent; and that this common type may have been some fossil remains of the Saurian species, or even some far off dim tradition of one of these tremendous reptiles, surviving in Heaven knows what vast desolate morass or inland lake, and spreading horror and devastation along its shores. At Aix, a huge fossilized