Thomas Gordon Hake

Thomas Gordon Hake (10 March 1809 – 11 January 1895) was an English physician and poet.

Life

Hake was born in Leeds on 10 March 1809, and was descended from an old Devonshire family who had 'lived on the soil for many years without being distinguished in any branch of science, literature, or art.' His father, whose usual residence was Sidmouth, possessed considerable musical acquirements. His mother, fourteen years older than the father, was of the Huntly branch of the Gordon family, being eldest daughter of Captain William Augustus Gordon, and aunt of General Charles Gordon. His father died when Hake was three years old and his mother, left with a moderate competence, continued to live in Devonshire, and obtained for her son an admission to Christ's Hospital, where, first at the preparatory school at Hertford and afterwards in London, he received most of his education.

Having determined upon a medical career, Hake studied at Lewes under Thomas Hodson, 'the highest authority in his profession within the bounds of Sussex,' afterwards at St. George's Hospital, and at the University of Edinburgh and University of Glasgow, at which latter he graduated. After travelling for some time in Italy he settled at Brighton, where he was for five years physician to the dispensary, then proceeded to Paris for a year's study, and on his return in 1839 published Piromides, a tragedy on the mysteries of Isis, and the 'nebulous but impressive romance,' as Mr. W. M. Rossetti calls it, Vates, or the Philosophy of Madness, first issued in four incomplete numbers, with illustrations by Charles Landseer (1840, 4to), and afterwards republished in Ainsworth's Magazine as 'Yaldarno, or the Ordeal of Art-Worship.'