made it hard to be often in his society without regarding him with as much of fondness as of admiration.’ His defects were a moral vulgarity, far more offensive than the social vulgarity it ridiculed, and a want of every quality especially characteristic of a high-minded man. In the less exalted sphere of the social affections he was exemplary, and much of his apparent dissipation was forced upon him by the necessity of keeping in society to keep out of gaol. ‘His real tastes,’ says Lockhart, ‘were simple enough.’ His unflagging literary industry in the midst of so many hindrances and temptations is highly to his credit. Though he sold his pen, he did not prostitute it; the side in support of which his wit and scurrility were enlisted was really his own. His natural powers were extraordinary. ‘He is,’ said Coleridge, ‘as true a genius as Dante.’ With regular education and mental discipline he might have done great things; his actual reputation is that of a great master in a low style of humour, and the most brilliant improvisatore, whether with the pen or at the piano, that his country has seen.
A portrait of Hook, by Eden Upton Eddis, is in the National Portrait Gallery.
[R. H. Dalton Barham's Life and Remains of Hook; Quarterly Review, vol. lxxii., a most interesting essay, evidently by Lockhart. The ‘new life’ prefixed to the collection of his humorous works published in 1873 is plagiarised from these sources. The Diary quoted by Lockhart has not been published; it is to be hoped that it is not lost.]
HOOK, WALTER FARQUHAR (1798–1875), dean of Chichester, eldest child of the Rev. James Hook [q. v.] and Anne his wife, and the nephew of Theodore Edward Hook [q. v.], was born in London 13 March 1798, at the residence in Conduit Street of his maternal grandfather, Sir Walter Farquhar, bart. [q. v.] His early childhood was spent at his father's rectory of Hertingfordbury, and at the age of nine he went with his only brother, Robert, to a school at Hertford, kept by Dr. Michael Henry Thornhill Luscombe [q. v.], and after about two years there to Tiverton, where the teaching was indifferent. In 1812 he was entered at Commoners, Winchester, where he formed a lasting friendship with William Page Wood [q. v.] He had no great aptitude for pure scholarship, and no liking for ordinary school games, although he was strong and muscular and a good swimmer. He was enthusiastically devoted to English poetry, biography, and history. He succeeded in getting into the sixth form at Winchester, and twice won the silver medal for recitations on the speech day.
In 1817 his grandfather, Sir Walter Farquhar, obtained a nomination for him from the prince-regent to a studentship at Christ-Church, Oxford. His life there was somewhat isolated, he had no sympathy with the ordinary course of study, and found his chief recreation in reading Shakespeare. His friend Wood was at Geneva. Hook's father and mother, as partisans of George IV, objected to their son associating with the son of Sir Matthew Wood [q. v.], the confidential ally of Queen Caroline; but the friends corresponded constantly, and met again in 1822. Hook was deeply disappointed by his failure in 1821 to get the Newdigate prize for an English poem, the only university honour which he tried to obtain. He was glad to leave the university after graduating B.A. 1821 (M.A. 1824, B.D. and D.D. in 1837).
On 30 Sept. 1821 he was ordained deacon, and until 1826 was his father's curate at Whippingham in the Isle of Wight. Hook was practically curate in charge. In a little wooden hut which he set up near the corner of the churchyard he worked with great energy at a course of theological and historical study previously marked out for himself from an early hour daily till two or three o'clock in the afternoon. The rest of the day he devoted to his parish. ‘The strong pastoral feeling,’ he wrote subsequently in reference to his life at Whippingham, ‘is generated in the country, and I attribute what little success I have had entirely to my country breeding.’ The parish included East Cowes, two miles distant from the rectory. There was no church in East Cowes, but Hook held a service in a sail-loft there every Sunday evening after two full services in the parish church.
In 1822, while still only a deacon, he preached at the Bishop of Winchester's visitation at Newport, as a substitute for his father, who was ill. The subject of the sermon was ‘The peculiar character of the Church of England independently of its connection with the State.’ He confidently argued that it is the duty of Englishmen to belong to the church, not because it is established, but because it is a pure branch of the church catholic, which can exist in purity and vigour under any form of government, either severed from the state or connected with it. This view he maintained through life. At the request of the bishop (Dr. Tomline) the sermon was printed. Soon afterwards Hook's former schoolmaster, Dr. Luscombe, pointed out the need of an archdeacon or bishop to superintend the scattered congregations of the English church on the continent. The proposal to appoint a suffragan to the Bishop of London,
