"Melmoth' was greatly praised by Scott and Byron and was widely read. The scene is laid in the seventeenth century. The hero is an Irish gentleman in financial difficulties. To escape from them he bargains his soul away to the devil in exchange for two hundred years of earthly life and power. Naturally it is a weird story and Thackeray tells how it used to frighten the boys at school. Melmoth soon tires of his power, and then commences his wanderings in search of some one to whom he can transfer his contract. He meets with persons suffering from all manner of human ills to whom he offers immediate relief, but the moment they understand the conditions they reject the offer. He watches and waits for years, but he can find no human soul willing to take his place and accept his fate. The wanderer's movements are surrounded by great mystery and he appears and disappears with great suddenness, but he can always be recognized by his glowing eyes that are visible even in the dark. Balzac was a great admirer of this novel and wrote a continuation of it entitled "Melmoth Reconciled to the Church," in which he tells how the hero was finally absolved from his curse.

This novel gave its author a wide celebrity and for a season he was one of the lions of London

society. The critics declared that posterity would rank "Melmoth" and "Bertram" with "Faust" and "Manfred," but the critics have not been justified by the event. by the event. The play and the novel are now quite forgotten. There are fine passages in the story and it is well worth reading.

THEODORE HOOK.

(1789-1841.)

GEORGE S. STREET, the well-known English critic and essayist, has been quoted as saying that Hook's humor was "merely mechanical and brainless, and could not outlive the generation it first amused."

Mr. Street's judgment is too sweeping. Hook's humor has outlived not only his own but several succeeding generations. I am free to admit that it is not a high class of humor.

It possessed nothing of the exquisite delicacy of Lamb's, the masculine heartiness of Sydney Smith's, or the elegance of Sheridan's. It bordered on buffoonery and hoaxing and practical joking formed a large part of it. Sheer impudence was often its origin, as when he once stepped up to a pompous gentleman walking in the Strand and inquired: “I beg your pardon, sir, but may I ask if you are anybody in particular?"

One almost envies the effrontery of it, for have

we not all seen just such characters at times to whom we would have liked to put a similar question?

Theodore Hook was a wit, practical joker, improvisatore, man about town, diner out, comedian of the parlor and the drawing-room, and raconteur, who flourished in London society during the first third of the last century. He wrote novels and edited the famous "John Bull" newspaper which earned an unenviable notoriety for its support of George IV. against Queen Caroline, and for its vulgar satire of the Whigs.

Both his novels and his newspaper are now forgotten, or are only remembered because of the historical interest they may possess.

For more than thirty years his life was a succession of boisterous buffooneries, in which he spared no one, until his name became synonymous all over London with hoaxing. If he could mystify or make fools of people, that was to him the height of humor, and he would convulse dinner parties or drawing-rooms by relating his drolleries of this kind. For Hook was a consummate actor and master of pantomime, and could present the scenes most vividly to his hearers. Or he would seat himself at the piano and tell the story in rhyme.

The

The story is quite familiar how he and Charles Mathews, rowing along the Thames one day, spied a signboard at the foot of a lawn on which they read, "Nobody permitted to land here. Trespassers prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law." Such a prohibition simply stimulated them to land. Using their fishing lines as measuring tapes they solemnly stalked back and forth, taking the dimensions as surveyors. Hook with book and pencil in hand and Mathews as clerk. irate owner and his lackeys rush down upon the intruders only to be coolly informed that they are the agents of the canal company which is to make a cut through these pleasure grounds. This so astounds the old gentleman that he finally invites the surveyors to dinner to talk the matter over. Nothing loath, they accept, and after a fine dinner and plenty of wine Hook seats himself at the piano and narrates the adventure in improvised verse, winding up with the announcement:

And we greatly approve of your fare,

Your cellar's as prime as your cook;
This clerk here is Mathews, the player,
And I'm Mr. Theodore Hook.

Another story is told of Hook and Coleridge, who, each in his particular way, were the lions at a party given by a gay young bachelor at his