No one knew how to apologize for an affront with better grace, or with more delicacy, than Lord Byron. In the first edition of the first canto of Childe Harold, the poet adverted i...
However great talents may command the admiration of the world, they do not generally best fit a man for the discharge of social duties. Swift remarks that "Men of great parts are o...
George Colman, the younger, notes:--"There is no Shakspeare or Roscius upon record who, like Foote, supported a theatre for a series of years by his own acting, in his own writings...
Lord Brougham, in an essay published long ago in the Edinburgh Review, read a smart lesson to Parliamentary wits. "A wit," says his lordship, "though he amuses for the moment, unav...
Horace Walpole records Lord Hervey's memorable saying about Lord Burlington's pretty villa at Chiswick, now the Duke of Devonshire's, that it was "too small to inhabit, and too lar...
The celebrated Mrs. Thicknesse undertook to construct a letter, every word of which should be French, yet no Frenchman should be able to read it; while an illiterate Englishman or...
M. Agassiz, the celebrated palaeontologist, is known to have relinquished pursuits from which he might have been in the receipt of a considerable income, and all for the sake of sc...
Sir Joshua Reynolds used to relate the following characteristic anecdote of Johnson:--About the time of their early acquaintance, they met one evening at the Misses Cotterell's, wh...
In a journey which Mademoiselle Scudery, the Sappho of the French, made along with her no less celebrated brother, a curious incident befell them at an inn at a great distance from...
Little Britain, anciently Breton-street, from the mansion of the Duke of Bretagne on that spot, in more modern times became the "Paternoster-row" of the booksellers; and a newspape...
This remarkable book was written upon covers of letters and scraps of paper of such description as was nearest at hand; the greater part at a house in Princes-street, Soho. Colton'...
Lord Byron, in a conversation with the Countess of Blessington, said that he wept bitterly over many pages of Anastasius, and for two reasons: first, that he had not written it; an...
Fraulein Dorothea Schlozer, a Hanoverian lady, was thought worthy of the highest academical honours of Goettingen University, and, at the jubilee of 1787, she had the degree of Doc...
The late Mr. Tegg, the publisher in Cheapside, gave the following list of remunerative payments to distinguished authors in his time; and he is believed to have taken considerable...
Leigh Hunt pleasantly says:--"I can no more pass through Westminster, without thinking of Milton; or the Borough, without thinking of Chaucer and Shakspeare; or Gray's Inn, without...
Thomas Warton, in his Account of Oxford, relates that at the sign of Whittington and his Cat, the laborious antiquary, Thomas Hearne, "one evening suffered himself to be overtaken...
In the year 1809 was interred, in the churchyard of St. Martin's in the Fields, the body of one Hew Hewson, who died at the age of 85. He was the original of Hugh Strap, in Smollet...
It is said that Owen, the divine, greatly admired Bunyan's preaching; and that, being asked by Charles II. "how a learned man such as he could sit and listen to an itinerant tinker...
Gibbon, when speaking of his own genealogy, refers to the fact of Fielding being of the same family as the Earl of Denbigh, who, in common with the Imperial family of Austria, is d...
A Dean of Gloucester having some merry divines at dinner with him one day, amongst other discourses they were talking of reconciling the Fathers on some points; he told them he cou...
Marvellous anecdotes are related of Dr. Thomas Fuller's memory. Thus, it is stated that he undertook once, in passing to and from Temple Bar to the farthest conduit in Cheapside, t...
The author of this very successful work, (originally published in Blackwood's Magazine,) was a Mr. Mick Scott, born in Edinburgh in 1789, and educated at the High School. Several y...
There is no book, except the Bible, which Bunyan is known to have perused so intently as the Acts and Monuments of John Fox, the martyrologist, one of the best of men; a work more...
Sir John Hawkins, in his "Memoirs of Johnson," ascribes the decline of literature to the ascendancy of frivolous Magazines, between the years 1740 and 1760. He says that they rende...
The chemical philosophers, Dr. Black and Dr. Hutton, were particular friends, though there was something extremely opposite in their external appearance and manner. Dr. Black spoke...
This distinguished surgeon died suddenly on April 29, 1842, at Hallow Park, near Worcester, while on his way to Malvern. He was out sketching on the 28th, being particularly please...
Canning was once asked by an English clergyman, at whose parsonage he was visiting, how he liked the sermon he had preached that morning. "Why, it was a short sermon," quoth Cannin...
Fontenelle, who lived till within one month of a century, was very rarely known to laugh or cry, and even boasted of his insensibility. One day, a certain bon-vivant Abbe came unex...
Hallam's History of the Middle Ages was the last book of any importance read by Sir Samuel Romilly. Of this excellent work he formed the highest opinion, and recommended its immedi...
An Edinburgh acquaintance is related to have sent to Shenstone, in 1761, as a small stimulus to their friendship, "a little provision of the best Preston Pans snuff, both toasted a...