The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore HookHook, Theodore Edward
General
The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore Hook
Hook, Theodore Edward
English wit and humor
President of the Society of Arts; Grand Master of the United Grand
Lodge of the Ancient Masons of England; Colonel of the Honourable
Artillery Company; Colonel Commandant of the Loyal North Britain
Volunteers; Vice President of the Bible Society; of the Infirmary
for Asthma, Union Street, Bishopsgate; of the London Dispensary,
Artillery Street, Bishopsgate; and of the Public Dispensary, Bishop's
Court, Chancery Lane; of the Universal Medical Institution, Ratcliff
Highway; of the _Original_ Vaccine Pock Institution, Broad Street,
Golden Square; of the Free Masons' Charity, St. George's Fields, and
one of the Trustees of the same; Patron of the Mile End Philanthropic
Society; Vice Patron of the Westminster General Dispensary, 32,
Gerrard Street, Soho; of the Society for the Relief of the Ruptured
Poor; of the Universal Dispensary for Children, St. Andrew's Hill,
Doctors' Commons; of the Lancasterian School Society, Borough
Road; Patron of the Choral Fund, and of the Northern Dispensary,
Duke's Road, New Road; Vice President of Queen Charlotte's Lying-in
Hospital, Lisson Green; of the Benevolent Institution for delivering
Married Women at their own Habitations, Hungerford Coffee House,
Strand; and of the General Central Lying-in Charity, Great Queen
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields; Knight of the Garter; President of
the Beef Steak Club; One of His Majesty's _most_ Honourable Privy
Council; and a FISHMONGER.[27]
SIR,--Your connexion with the fine arts and the city of London so
honourably celebrated in the preceding enumeration of your titles,
is a combination of merits wholly unexpected and unprecedented. You
alone, Sir, among the members of scientific bodies, can glory in
being a Fishmonger; and you alone, among Fishmongers, can boast of
being President of the Society of Arts.
Glorious, and more truly honourable, than rank or ribbons, is the
list of the numerous charities of which your Royal Highness is the
ostensible head. It may seem, at first sight, inconsistent with the
Christian precepts to give so much notoriety to benevolent actions;
but, even in this view, your Royal Highness's conduct is above all
imputation: that precept applies to the hand, and not to the head;
and though your Royal Highness gives your great personal weight to
the chair of those associations, your worst enemy cannot say that
you were ever known to give any thing else. Your left hand (which,
agreeably to the scriptural suggestion, is as discerning as your
Royal Highness's intellect) does certainly not know of any particular
charity, performed by your Royal Highness's right hand.
You are thus enabled, Sir, to extend the sphere of your utility and
beneficence. Actual donations must have had a limit; but the charity
which costs nothing, may, as we see in your Royal Highness's case, be
indefinitely extended, to the great encouragement and increase of the
contributions of others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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