The last time he went out to dinner was with Colonel Shadwell Clarke, at Brompton Grove. While in the drawing-room he suddenly turned to the mirror and said, "Ay! I see I look as I am,—done up in purse, in mind, and in body, too, at last!"
He died on the 24th of August, 1841.
Yes, when I knew most of him, he was approaching the close, not of a long, but of a "fast" life; he had ill used Time, and Time was not in his debt! He was tall and stout, yet not healthfully stout; with a round face which told too much of jovial nights and wasted days,—of toil when the head aches and the hand shakes,—of the absence of self-respect,—of mornings of ignoble rest to gather strength for evenings of useless energy,—of, in short, a mind and constitution vigorous and powerful: both had been sadly and grievously misapplied and misused.
No writer concerning Hook can claim for him an atom of respect. His history is but a record of written or spoken or practical jokes that made no one wiser or better; his career "points a moral" indeed, but it is by showing the wisdom of virtue. In the end, his friends, so called, were ashamed openly to give him help,—and although bailiffs did not, as in the case of Sheridan,
"Seize his last blanket,"
his death-bed was haunted by apprehensions of arrest; and it was a relief, rather than a loss to society, when a few comparatively humble mourners laid him in a corner of Fulham churchyard.
Alas! let not those who read the records of many distinguished, nay, many illustrious lives, imagine, that, because men of genius have too often cherished the perilous habit of seeking consolation or inspiration from what it is a libel on Nature to call "the social glass," it is therefore reasonable or excusable, or can ever be innocuous. Talfourd may gloss it over in Lamb, as averting a vision terrible; Seattle may deplore it in Campbell, as having become a dismal necessity; the biographer of Hook may lightly look upon the curse as the springhead of his perpetual wit. I will not continue the list,—it is frightfully long. Hook is but one of many men of rare intellect, large mental powers, with faculties designed and calculated to benefit mankind, who have sacrificed character, life, I had almost said soul, to habits which are wrongly and wickedly called pleasures,—the pleasures of the table. Many, indeed, are they who have thus made for themselves miserable destinies, useless or pernicious lives, and unhonored or dishonorable graves. I will add the warning of Wordsworth, when addressing the sons of Burns:—
"But ne'er to a seductive lay
Let faith be given,
Nor deem the light that leads astray
Is light from heaven."
FOOTNOTES:
[B] In "Gilbert Gurney," Hook makes Daly say, "I am the man; I did it; for originality of thought and design, I do think that was perfect."