See George L. Walker’s Thomas Hooker (New York, 1891); the appendix of which contains a bibliography of Hooker’s published works.
HOOKER, SIR WILLIAM JACKSON (1785-1865), English botanist, was born at Norwich on the 6th of July 1785. His father, Joseph Hooker of Exeter, a member of the same family as the celebrated Richard Hooker, devoted much of his time to the study of German literature and the cultivation of curious plants. The son was educated at the high school of Norwich, on leaving which his independent means enabled him to travel and to take up as a recreation the study of natural history, especially ornithology and entomology. He subsequently confined his attention to botany, on the recommendation of Sir James E. Smith, whom he had consulted respecting a rare moss. His first botanical expedition was made in Iceland, in the summer of 1809, at the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks; but the natural history specimens which he collected, with his notes and drawings, were lost on the homeward voyage through the burning of the ship, and the young botanist himself had a narrow escape with his life. A good memory, however, aided him to publish an account of the island, and of its inhabitants and flora (Tour in Iceland, 1809), privately circulated in 1811, and reprinted in 1813. In 1810-1811 he made extensive preparations, and sacrifices which proved financially serious, with a view to accompany Sir R. Brownrigg to Ceylon, but the disturbed state of the island led to the abandonment of the projected expedition. In 1814 he spent nine months in botanizing excursions in France, Switzerland and northern Italy, and in the following year he married the eldest daughter of Mr Dawson Turner, banker, of Yarmouth. Settling at Halesworth, Suffolk, he devoted himself to the formation of his herbarium, which became of world-wide renown among botanists. In 1816 appeared the British Jungermanniae, his first scientific work, which was succeeded by a new edition of William Curtis’s Flora Londinensis, for which he wrote the descriptions (1817-1828); by a description of the Plantae cryptogamicae of A. von Humboldt and A. Bonpland; by the Muscologia Britannica, a very complete account of the mosses of Great Britain and Ireland, prepared in conjunction with Dr T. Taylor (1818); and by his Musci exotici (2 vols., 1818-1820), devoted to new foreign mosses and other cryptogamic plants. In 1820 he accepted the regius professorship of botany in Glasgow University where he soon became popular as a lecturer, his style being both clear and ready. The following year he brought out the Flora Scotica, in which the natural method of arrangement of British plants was given with the artificial. Subsequently he prepared or edited many works, the more important being the following:—
Botanical Illustrations (1822); Exotic Flora, indicating such of the specimens as are deserving cultivation (3 vols., 1822-1827); Account of Sabine’s Arctic Plants (1824); Catalogue of Plants in the Glasgow Botanic Garden (1825); the Botany of Parry’s Third Voyage (1826); The Botanical Magazine (38 vols., 1827-1865); Icones Filicum, in concert with Dr R. K. Greville (2 vols., 1829-1831); British Flora, of which several editions appeared, undertaken with Dr G. A. W. Arnott, &c. (1830); British Flora Cryptogamia (1833); Characters of Genera from the British Flora (1830); Flora Boreali-Americana (2 vols., 1840), being the botany of British North America collected in Sir J. Franklin’s voyage; The Journal of Botany (4 vols., 1830-1842); Companion to the Botanical Magazine (2 vols., 1835-1836); Icones plantarum (10 vols., 1837-1854); the Botany of Beechey’s Voyage to the Pacific and Behring’s Straits (with Dr Arnott, 1841); the Genera Filicum (1842), from the original coloured drawings of F. Bauer, with additions and descriptive letterpress; The London Journal of Botany (7 vols., 1842-1848); Notes on the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of the Erebus and Terror (1843); Species filicum (5 vols., 1846-1864), the standard work on this subject; A Century of Orchideae (1846); Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany (9 vols., 1849-1857); Niger Flora (1849); Victoria Regia (1851); Museums of Economic Botany at Kew (1855); Filices exoticae (1857-1859); The British Ferns (1861-1862); A Century of Ferns (1854); A Second Century of Ferns (1860-1861).
It was mainly by Hooker’s exertions that botanists were appointed to the government expeditions. While his works were in progress his herbarium received large and valuable additions from all parts of the globe, and his position as a botanist was thus vastly improved. He was made a knight of Hanover in 1836 and in 1841 he was appointed director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, on the resignation of W. T. Aiton. Under his direction the gardens expanded from 11 to 75 acres, with an arboretum of 270 acres, many new glass-houses were erected, and a museum of economic botany was established. He was engaged on the Synopsis filicum with J. G. Baker when he was attacked by a throat disease then epidemic at Kew, where he died on the 12th of August 1865.
HOOLE, JOHN (1727-1803), English translator and dramatist, son of a watchmaker and machinist, Samuel Hoole, was born at Moorfields, London, in December 1727. He was educated at a private school at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, kept by James Bennet, who edited Ascham’s English works. At the age of seventeen he became a clerk in the accountants’ department of the East India House, and before 1767 became one of the auditors of Indian accounts. His leisure hours he devoted to the study of Latin and especially Italian, and began writing translations of the chief works of the Italian poets. He published translations of the Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso in 1763, the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto in 1773-1783, the Dramas of Metastasio in 1767, and Rinaldo, an early work of Tasso, in 1792. Among his plays are: Cyrus (1768), Timanthes (1770) and Cleonice, Princess of Bithynia (1775), none of which achieved success. The verses of Hoole were praised by Johnson, with whom he was on terms of intimacy, but, though correct, smooth and flowing, they cannot be commended for any other merit. His translation of the Orlando Furioso was superseded by the version (1823-1831) of W. S. Rose. Hoole was also the friend of the Quaker poet John Scott of Amwell (1730-1783), whose life he wrote; it was prefixed to Scott’s Critical Essays (1785). In 1773 he was promoted to be chief auditor of Indian accounts, an office which he resigned in 1785. In 1786 he retired to the parsonage of Abinger, Surrey; and afterwards lived at Tenterden, Kent, dying at Dorking on the 2nd of April 1803.
See Anecdotes of the Life of the late Mr John Hoole, by his surviving brother, Samuel Hoole (London, 1803). Some of his plays are reprinted in J. Bell’s British Theatre (1797).
HOOLIGAN, the generally accepted modern term for a young street ruffian or rowdy. It seems to have been first applied to the young street ruffians of the South-East of London about 1890, but though popular in the district, did not attract general attention till later, when authentic information of its origin was lost, but it appears that the most probable source was a comic song which was popular in the lower-class music-hall in the late ’eighties or early ’nineties, which described the doings of a rowdy family named Hooligan (i.e. Irish Houlihan). A comic character with the same name also appears to have been the central figure in a series of adventures running through an obscure English comic paper of about the same date, and also in a similar New York paper, where his confrère in the adventures is a German named Schneider (see Notes and Queries, 9th series, vol. ii. pp. 227 and 316, 1898, and 10th series, vol. vii. p. 115, 1901). In other countries the “hooligan” finds his counterpart. The Parisian Apache, so self-styled after the North American Indian tribe, is a much more dangerous character; mere rowdyism, the characteristic of the English “hooligan,” is replaced by murder, robbery and outrage. An equally dangerous class of young street ruffian is the “hoodlum” of the United States of America; this term arose in San Francisco in 1870, and thence spread. Many fanciful origins of the name have been given, for some of which see Manchester (N.H.) Notes and Queries, September 1883 (cited in the New English Dictionary). The “plug-ugly” of Baltimore is another name for the same class. More familiar is the Australian “larrikin,” which apparently came into use about 1870 in Melbourne. The story that the word represents an Irish policeman’s pronunciation of “larking” is a mere invention. It is probably only an adaptation of the Irish “Larry,” short for Lawrence. Others suggest that it is a corruption of the slang Leary Kinchen, i.e. knowing, wide-awake child.