392 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
painted the scenes for a play called ‘Obi; or, Three-fingered 
Jack ;” also for a piece called “ Indiana,” and for another called 
“The Vampire.” This was in 1835. 
Cook was frequently employed by owners of peep-shows to 
paint scenes for them. Peep-shows are, I believe, gone out of 
fashion ; but most of us remember the peep-shows that frequented 
the Plymouth November fairs, for some of which Cook painted 
scenes. While on the subject of peep-shows, I may add an anec- 
dote connected with Samuel Cook. He was staying with his 
friend William Hicks, of Bodmin, at a time when a peep-show in 
that town had been accidentally destroyed by fire. William Hicks, 
then keeper of the asylum at Bodmin, was solicited for a sub- 
scription ; and Samuel Cook, who had become an artist of repute, 
put his hand in his pocket, and gave the poor woman whose 
peep-show had been burnt a sovereign. Then turning to Mrs. 
Hicks, who was present, he said, ‘I remember when I painted 
scenes for peep-shows for a living.” 
At the age of twenty-six Cook married the excellent and worthy _ 
wife who still lives amongst us. Two sons were the result of that 
marriage. The eldest died in 1866; the younger one is a well- 
known artist resident in this town. It was only a short time before 
his marriage that Samuel Cook had set up himself in business as a 
painter and glazier, and he was by this time becoming known as a 
clever decorative painter, Mr. George Wightwick, the architect, 
being one of his earliest friends and patrons. 
All his leisure was devoted to out-door sketching from Nature, 
and his especial haunts for this purpose were about the quays and 
by the sea-side. Indeed, he seemed thus early to have been 
imbued with an artistic love of the sea and its belongings ; and it 
was this artistic love of the sea that led him on to be one of the 
most poetic sea-coast artists of his day. 
His sketches at this period of his career were distinguished by 
delicacy and timidity of colour. The truth was in them, but it 
was understated. He felt his way to colour by degrees, and it is 
invariably found that the greatest artists began in the same manner. 
Cox, De Wint, Varley, Prout, and Turner, all began by a timid 
method of colouring, as if afraid of it, and gradually increased 
their strength and power and brilliancy of colour as they gained 
experience, I have seen many of Cook’s sketches in his early 
career, and have found them always low in tone, grey and quiet in 
