1820.
"Hook had returned to England penniless; but he brought with him stores, the result of increased knowledge of the world and of an observation active under every vicissitude of fortune, which, with his singular facility in composition, were readily reducible to current coin. According, notwithstanding the harassing and protracted business at the Audit-office, he found time to strike off a succession of papers and pamphlets, the proceeds of which for some months formed his sole income. These, for obvious reasons, were published anonymously; and from this fact, and that of their being for the most part mere hits at the politics of the day, they have, with scarcely an exception, been swept from the face of the literary globe, and are only to be met with in the museums of such curious collectors as Tom Hill and the like.
"One of these jeux d'esprit, entitled 'Tentamen; or, an Essay towards the History of Whittington, some time Lord Mayor of London, by Dr. Vicesimus Blinkinsop,' produced no little sensation, and ran rapidly through two or three editions. Hook, however, we believe, was not suspected to be the author. This opusculum, which is now extremely rare, and a copy of which would fetch quadruple its original price, was an attack, conducted in a strain of elaborate irony, equal to the happiest efforts of Martinus Scriblerus, upon the worthy Alderman Wood (a portrait of whom adorned the title-page), and his royal protégée."—Barham.
TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
AUGUSTUS FREDERICK, DUKE OF SUSSEX,
Earl of Inverness, and Baron Arklow: