Jas Hook at Eton,
or The Solitary
With but moderate success I have been trying lately to collect some facts about the early days of Jas Hook, the pirate captain, an "old boy" of whom Eton has preserved few traditions. In no accepted book of reference have I found his name mentioned, nor should we know even that he had been an Etonian but for the statement "Eton and Balliol" in a work that is largely fanciful. On this same doubtful authority we learn that his last words were "Floreat Etona'; if this was so they became him better than any of his other words, for let us admit that Hook in his glory was no Sir Galahad. I read that there is in contemplation a life of Hook in two volumes, 8vo, which, after the fashion of today, will put a gloss upon his deeds, but I have no such intention here; my sole object is to record the few details I have gathered about the youth of a misguided though brilliant man who at the last seems to have been true to his old school.
Of Hook at Balliol I may say that I know almost nothing, have pursued no inquiries into his life there, and leave that virgin soil to any son of the college who is filially inclined. Hook was certainly in residence at Balliol for several years and a clever (?) undergraduate informs me that in the old library lists (no longer kept) there are slips showing that one of that name did take out a number of books, all of them, oddly enough, poetry and mostly of the Lake School. A red query against these volumes indicates that they were never returned to the library, and my young friend assures me that at an Oxford secondhand bookshop, he lately bought one with the arms of the college
