Theodore's father, a clever but weak man, was easily persuaded not to send him back to Harrow. He was proud already of his boy, found his company at home a great solace at first, and even before the house received its new mistress, had begun to discover that one of his precocious talents might be turned to some account financially. Theodore had an exquisite ear, and was already, living from the cradle in a musical atmosphere, an expert player on the pianoforte; his voice was rich, sweet, and powerful; he could sing a pathetic song well, a comic one charmingly. One evening he enchanted his father especially by his singing, to his own accompaniment, two new ballads, one grave and one gay. Whence the airs--whence the words? It turned out that verse and music were alike his own: in the music the composer perceived much that might be remedied, but the verses were to him faultless--meaning probably not much, but nothing more soft than the liquid flow of the vocables, nothing more easy than the balance of the lines. Here was a mine for the veteran artist; hitherto he had been forced to import his words; now the whole manufacture might go on at home. Snug, comfortable, amiable domestic arrangement! The boy was delighted with the prospect--and at sixteen his fate was fixed. In the course of the following six years Theodore Hook produced at least a dozen vaudevilles, comic operas, and dramatic pieces for the stage, which all enjoyed a considerable run of popularity in their time, but are now entirely, and perhaps deservedly, forgotten. His _coup-d'essai_ in this line appeared in 1805, under the title of "The Soldier's Return; or, What can Beauty do? a comic opera in two acts, as performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane." It would be as absurd to criticise such a piece as last year's pantomime--like that, it answered its purpose and its author's, and no more is to be said. At the same time, amidst all its mad, impudent nonsense, there are here and there jokes which, if unborrowed, deserved the applause of the pit. A traveller coming up to an inn-door, says, "Pray, friend, are you the master of this house?" "Yes, sir," answers Boniface, "my wife has been dead these three weeks." We might quote one or two more apparently genuine Theodores. The dialogue, such as it is, dances along, and the songs read themselves into singing. His _modus operandi_ in producing this earliest piece, was ingenious. He bought three or four French vaudevilles, filched an incident from each, and thus made up his drama.