Stoddard's father or friend. Other
peculiarities, too, suggest that the pretty little volume is clipped
instead of edited: on page 134 we find that "William, who had lived
many years with Hook, grew rich and saucy. The latter used to assert
of him that for the first three years he was as good a servant as ever
came into a house; for the next two a kind and considerate friend;
and afterward an abominably bad master." And on page 240, that when
_Rogers_ was condoled with about the death of an old servant, he
exclaimed, "Well, I don't know that I feel his loss so much, after
all. For the first _seven_ years he was an obliging servant; for the
second _seven_ years an agreeable companion; but for the last seven
years he was a tyrannical master." This duality of epigrams seems to
show a discrepancy somewhere; or are we to believe that the wits of
the Regency used to drive their jokes as hired hacks, like the livery
carriages employed by faded dowagers in Hampton Court? The rest of the
little book is perhaps free from duplicates. It is a good one to turn
over for an hour in the cars, which is perhaps all it claims to be.
The anecdotes are good old familiar anecdotes, but it is pleasant to
have them strung on a thread. We are reminded that the original
Bride of Lammermoor was a Miss Dalrymple; that the "laughing Tom"
of Thackeray's "Ballad of Bouillabaise" was Thomas Frazer, Paris
correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_; that the dramatist of
_Nicholas Nickleby_, so savagely assaulted by Dickens in the course of
the work, was a Mr.
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