Carlyle.

Scott.

Thirty odd years ago, Carlyle, as a social power, or a social plague, was already troubling the still surface of London drawing-room life. "What is his talk like?" asked Miss Berry of her friend; and Kinglake answered, "Ezekiel." Thackeray said, "The man is a bully, but he can be silenced by persiflage ;" a remark that is interesting in connection with Carlyle's recorded verdict of Thackeray.

Scott was a fine humorist in conversation. Irving has preserved a good specimen of his talk. One morning at breakfast, when Dominie Thomson, the tutor, was present, Scott was going on with great glee to relate an anecdote of the Laird of Macnab, "who, poor fellow," premised he, "is dead and gone." "Why, Mr. Scott," exclaimed his lady, "Macnab's not dead, is he?" "Faith, my dear," replied Scott, with humorous gravity, "if he's not dead, they have done him great injustice, for they've buried him." The joke passed harmless and unnoticed by Mrs. Scott, but hit the poor Dominie just as he had raised a cup of tea to his lips, causing a burst of laughter which sent half of the contents about the table. Hogg said that Scott's anecdotes were without end; he was al

most certain they were all made off-hand, as he never heard one of them either before or after.

Lamb was present at a party of North Lamb. Britons, where a son of Burns was expected, and happened to drop a “silly expression" (in his South British way), that he wished it were the father instead of the son, when four of them started up at once to inform him that "that was impossible, because he was dead." An impracticable wish was more than they could conceive.

Ferrold.

"What sort of a man was Douglas Jer- Douglas rold?" was asked of Mr. Addey, an old London publisher. "He was a little man," was the reply, "about five feet high, long hair, prominent cheek-bones, a keen eye, and his form a little bent, and he looked up at you with a comical wag of his head. I knew him very well. He was really kindhearted and sympathetic, but he was so fond of fun and so sarcastic in his method that he sometimes indulged his wit at the expense of other people's feelings. Not many got ahead of him. His publishers, Bradbury & Evans, who, he thought, had treated him rather shabbily, gave him a couple of sucking pigs, which he took out

Ferrold's pigs.

to his suburban cottage, and put in a pen. He named them, one Bradbury and the other Evans. A couple of months after that, his publishers came out and dined with him. After dinner he took them out and showed them his pigs, and said, 'I have named them after you, gentlemen. They are growing wonderfully, and I believe if I keep them they will grow the greatest hogs in Europe, and I do not forget the donors.' Jerrold's conversation. sparkled with epigrams, and no man ever laughed more heartily at his own jokes. If you heard Douglas Jerrold roaring with delight and holding his sides, you immediately inferred that he had said something. His laugh was unaffected, and very contagious. Like all literary men, he was never half paid." He told Addey that for Black-Eyed his great comedy of Black-Eyed Susan, which still holds possession of the stage, he received just what Milton did for his Paradise Lost twenty-five dollars — and the publisher made fifteen thousand from it the first year.

Susan.

--

"Call that a kind man?" said an actor, speaking of an acquaintance; "a man who is away from his family and never sends them a farthing? Call that kindness?"

"Yes; unremitting," replied

Jerrold. Unremit

ting kind

Speaking of patriotism, he said, "When ness.
a man has nothing in the world to lose,
he is then in the best condition to sacri-
fice for the public good everything that
is his." "They say," he said, “a parson
first invented gunpowder, but one cannot
believe it till one is married."

There is a story of Moore asking Rogers what he did when people who wanted his autograph requested him to sign a sentence. "Oh, I give them, 'Ill-gotten wealth never prospers,' or 'Virtue is its own reward.' "Then the more shame for you," Luttrell broke in, "to circulate such delusions."

Dumas.

The wit of Dumas has been pronounced The wit of as near as any earthly thing may be to the wit of heaven, which, by the inimitable Sydney Smith, was called lightning. The story of his parentage is well known. A certain coxcomb, wishing to mortify the great dramatist, asked him point-blank who was his father. "A mulatto, sir," coldly replied Dumas, imperceptibly divining the intended insult. "And your grandfather?" "A negro, sir." "And your great-grandfather?" "A baboon, sir!" thundered

Dumas at his now terrified questioner; “a

A famous

bon mot.

Curran.

Rogers.

baboon, sir! My ancestry begins where

yours ends."
and scathes like the lightning. It bites
and crushes like a vise. Sugden hated
Brougham, and took his revenge in the
famous bon mot, that it was a pity he did
not know a little law, and then he would
have a smattering of everything. Lord
Thurlow was storming one day at his old
valet, who thought little of a violence with
which he had been long familiar, and “Go
to the devil, do!" cried the enraged master;
"Go, I say, to the devil." "Give me a
character, my Lord," replied the fellow,
dryly; "people like, you know, to have
characters from their acquaintances." Cur-
ran, being asked what an Irish gentleman,
just arrived in England, could mean by
perpetually putting out his tongue, an-
swered, "I suppose he's trying to catch.
the English accent." In his last illness,
his physician observing in the morning
that he seemed to cough with more diffi-
culty, he answered, "That is rather sur-
prising, as I have been practicing all night."

Wit of this sort strikes

Rogers was unceasingly at war with Lady Davy. One day at dinner she called across the table, "Now, Mr. Rogers, I am sure you are talking about me."