The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-06 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Good Things for Railway _Readers.
Pp. 164. Lockwood and Co.
A capital specimen, this little book is, of the
good results of a well-selected gathering together
of newspaper cuttings. The amusement derivable
from it is ingeniously expressed by the effective
woodcut chosen as its most appropriate frontis-
piece. This frontispiece being nothing less appro-
priate than a sketch taken from that delightful
portrait by Holbein of Will Sowers, the King's
Jester, laughirg through the lattice—a merry
effigy of the famous Court droll, familiar to every
visitor to Hampton Court Palau. The character of
this miscellaneous collectio❑ of entertaining trifles
may be understood the more readily when we
remark that, within less than two hundred pages,
there are amassed fully one thousand anecdotes. Con •
vtvialists, wits,and humourists chatter to us through
the book unceasingly. Oddities and eccentricities
are put upon record in great variety, and tc-
gether with these the narrative of divers strange
and wonderful occurrences. Lawyers and doctors,
artists and actors, warriors and statesmen,
men of the world and men of letters, contribute
their facetim abundantly—and occasionally, it must
be confessed, in absurd confusion. To read a book
like this through, consecutively, we take to be a feat
wholly impracticable. It can alone be read satis-
factorily iu snatches—dipped into hap-hazard, now
and again, according to the whim of the moment.
Otherwise the effort would inevitably be as cloying
and even nauseating as would be the making of a
dinner off sweetmeats, and nothing but sweetmeats
The result, indeed, of any consecutive perusal of an
anecdotal collection of witticisms, such as this,would,
beyond all manner of doubt, be simply intolerable.
Fancy reading uninterruptedly page after page by
the hour—" Upon one occasion as Sheridan was strol-
ling along Piccadilly"—or, " Jerrold once meeting
a friend at a dinner party"—or, "Rogers having
been invited to breakfast by Lord "As
Sydney Smith remarked to Tom Moore one day at
Holland House"—a hail storm, a douche, a cataract
of Good Things like that would fairly take away
one's breath. Here, however, as specimen bricks
from the house of Skolastikos—comical enough
in form, some of them, to be jutted out
as gargoyles from this Temple of Fun—let us pre-
sent to our readers four sample paragraphs from
" Good Things," or from this last published supple-
ment to "Joe Miller's Jest Book." And first we
will give, thus, an apt exemplar of—

One Vol.

DOUGLAS JERROLD'S DRY HUMOUR I
" A friend is anxious to awaken Mr. Jerrold's sympathies
in behalf of a mutual acquaintance who is. in want of a
round sum of money. But this mutual friend has already
sent his hat about among his literary brethren on more than
one occasion. Mr. —'s hat is becomiag an institution,
and friends were grieved at the indelicacy of the proceed-
ing. On the above occasion, the bearer of the hat was re-
ceived with evident dissa' isfaction. Well,' said Douglas
Jerrold, how much does -- want this time ?" Why,
just a four and two noughts will, I think, put him straight,'
the bearer of the hat replied. Jerrold—' Well, put me
down for one of the noughts,' "
Next take Earl Russell's evidence as to what we
would here venture to call—though it may appear a
bold thing speaking thus of such a" great gun" as a
Canon—