Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/116

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and wives,—and that wives like Hooker's wife are in the great minority.

Anthony Wood called her a "clownish, silly woman, and withal a mere Xanthippe." Walton said that she was "ill-tempered, neither rich nor beautiful," and he believed that she would never have become Mrs. Hooker if the usually judicious gentleman "had not been near-sighted and bashful," which latter characteristic would imply that Hooker was wooed, and won, in Leap-Year—Old Style! The marriage, according to all accounts, was not a very happy one. Nevertheless Hooker, in his last will and testament, made his "well beloved" wife "his sole executrix and residuary legatee"; and in the same document he paid a passing compliment to his father-in-law!

In the College-books the Judicious Hooker was very variously spelled: hooker, huker, hoocker; always without the capital H. It does not seem to have been dropped, that H, in its pronunciation; but in type and in manuscript it was let down to what proof-readers and type-setters in our day call, technically, a lower font or case.

There is a tradition, accepted at first as truth by the present chronicler, that Hooker's were the rooms designated as "No. Two Pair Right, in the Library Staircase, in the Front Quadrangle"; but the Rev. Thomas Fowler, D.D., LL.D., F.S.A.,