Mr. John Ragsdale, of Richmond, in Surrey, who was the intimate friend of Collins, states that some of his Odes were written while on a visit at his, Mr. Ragsdale's house. The poet...
In the reigns of William III., of Anne, and of George I., even such men as Congreve and Addison could scarcely have been able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their writi...
The Earl of Dudley, in his Letters, (1814) says:--"To me Byron's Corsair appears the best of all his works. Rapidity of execution is no sort of apology for doing a thing ill, but w...
The following were Dr. Johnson's several places of residence in and near London:-- 1. Exeter-street, off Catherine-street, Strand. (1737.) 2. Greenwich. (1737.) 3. Woodstock-street...
When Hannah More came to London in 1773, or 1774, she was domesticated with Garrick, and was received with favour by Johnson, Reynolds, and Burke. Her sister has thus described her...
Lord Brougham, during his indefatigable canvass of Yorkshire, in the course of which he often addressed ten or a dozen meetings in a day, thought fit to harangue the electors of Le...
A fellow passenger with Mr. Dickens in the Britannia steam-ship, across the Atlantic, inquired of the author the origin of his signature, "Boz." Mr. Dickens replied that he had a l...
The poet Cowley died at the Porch House, Chertsey, on the 21st of July, 1667. There is a curious letter preserved of his condition when he removed here from Barn Elms. It is addres...
A few days before the close of 1840, London lost one of its choicest spirits, and humanity one of her kindest-hearted sons, in the death of Thomas Hill, Esq.--"Tom Hill," as he was...
Perhaps, in Cobbett's voluminous writings, there is nothing so complete as the following picture of his boyish scenes and recollections: it has been well compared to the most simpl...
Lord Brougham says:--"The dreadful malady under which Bolingbroke long lingered, and at length sunk--a cancer in the face--he bore with exemplary fortitude, a fortitude drawn from...
Locke, the brilliant author of the Essay on the Human Understanding, was once introduced by Lord Shaftesbury to the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Halifax. But the three noblemen, ins...
The house in which Dr. Johnson was born, at Lichfield--where his father, it is well known, kept a small bookseller's shop, and where he was partly educated--stood on the west side...
It was on a visit to the parliament house that Mr. Henry Erskine, (brother of Lord Buchan and Lord Erskine,) after being presented to Dr. Johnson by Mr. Boswell, and having made hi...
Pope was one evening at Button's Coffee-house, where he and a set of literati had got poring over a Latin manuscript, in which they had found a passage that none of them could comp...
"Curran!" (says Lord Byron) "Curran's the man who struck me most. Such imagination!--there never was anything like it that I ever heard of. His published life--his published speech...
Incredible as it may appear, it is sometimes stated very confidently, that English authors and actors who give dinners, are treated with greater indulgence by certain critics than...
Walpole relates, after an execution of eighteen malefactors, a woman was hawking an account of them, but called them nineteen. A gentleman said to her, "Why do you say nineteen? th...
Joe Miller, (Mottley,) was such a favourite at court, that Caroline, queen of George II., commanded a play to be performed for his benefit; the queen disposed of a great many ticke...
When Dr. Chalmers first visited London, the hold that he took on the minds of men was unprecedented. It was a time of strong political feeling; but even that was unheeded, and all...
More drolleries are uttered unintentionally than by premeditation. There is no such thing as being "droll to order." One evening a lady said to a small wit, "Come, Mr. ----, tell u...
"Dryden," says Leigh Hunt, "is identified with the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. He presided in the chair at Russell Street (Will's Coffee-house); his plays came out in the theat...
Johnson, the publisher in St. Paul's Churchyard, obtained the copyright of Cowper's Poems, which proved a great source of profit to him, in the following manner:--One evening, a re...
When Victor Hugo was an aspirant for the honours of the French Academy, and called on M. Royer Collard to ask his vote, the sturdy veteran professed entire ignorance of his name. "...
After Coleridge left Cambridge, he came to London, where soon feeling himself forlorn and destitute, he enlisted as a soldier in the 15th Elliot's Light Dragoons. "On his arrival a...
This romance, on its first appearance, roused the attention of all the literary world of England, and even spread its writer's name to the continent. The author--"wonder-working Le...
Fielding having finished the manuscript of Tom Jones, and being at the time hard pressed for money took it to a second-rate publisher, with the view of selling it for what it would...
Sir John Malcolm once asked Warren Hastings, who was a contemporary and companion of Dr. Johnson and Boswell, what was his real estimation of Boswell's Life of Johnson? "Sir," repl...
Of Butler, the author of Hudibras--which Dr. Johnson terms "one of those productions of which a nation may justly boast"--little further is known than that his genius was not suffi...
Dr. Johnson's wigs were in general very shabby, and their fore-parts were burned away by the near approach of the candle, which his short-sightedness rendered necessary in reading....