TOOKE, JOHN HortNE (1736-1812). An Eng lish etymologist and political adventurer. He was horn in London, and was the son of John Horne, a poulterer. He was educated at West minster and Eton, and at Saint John's College, Cambridge. He entered the Church strongly against his own wish, and in 1760 became curate at New Brentford. In 1763 he traveled in France for a year as the tutor of the son of John Elwes, and two years later, while acting as the tutor of another boy, he met John Wilkes (q.v.). When Wilkes stood as a candidate for the County of Middlesex, Tooke zealously aided him, but the pair afterwards quarreled. Tooke still, however, continued to meddle in political affairs, and ventured to encounter Junius, with whom some have even sought to identify him. In 1773 he resigned his living at New Brentford, and com menced the study of law. About this time he rendered some important private service to Tooke of Purley in Surrey, who intended to make him his heir. In consequence he adopted the surname of Tooke, by which he is now known. In 1775 he was fined and imprisoned in the King's Bench for publishing an advertisement in which he accused the King's troops of barbar .ouslv murdering the Americans at Lexington.
While in prison he penned his celebrated Letter to Mr. Dunning (dated April 21, 1778), in which are to be found the germs of his Diversions of Purley. On his release Tooke made an attempt to gain admission to the bar, but was refused on the ground of his clerical orders. Soon afterwards he returned to political writing, and in a Letter on Parliamentary Refor•mi advocated universal suffrage. In the struggle between Pitt and Fox he wrote pamphlets on the side of the former, but soon got to hate Pitt, as he had learned to hate most other public men. In 1786 appeared the first volume of his famous Epea I'teroenta, or• the Diversions of Purley (vol. ii., 1S05), a work on the analysis and ety mology of English words. Tooke's passion for polities soon drew him from literature into pub lic life, and in 1801 he, the great enemy of rotten boroughs, entered Parliament for the most notori ous rotten borough in England—Old Sarum ; but he made no figure there. The best edition of the Di-versions of Purley is that of Taylor (London, 1840). Consult Stephens, Memoirs of John Horne Tooke (London, 1813).