PREFACE. THE present volume is designed as a companion and sequel to the "New London Jest - Book." The latter purports to be an assemblage of anecdotes and sayings, of which the essential and indispensable characteristic is some facetious or jocular point. This new collection, on the contrary, comprises a series of select stories, which, though not necessarily destitute of humour, claim to possess an interest and value rather on an historical, literary, or biographical ground. The chief, if not the only, title which such a work has to public patronage lies, it is presumed, in the character of the materials employed, and great care has consequently been taken to insert nothing which did not seem likely, from the subject or persons referred to, to prove attractive to the general reader. The preference of popular traits and entertaining episodes to some of the more solid facts offered in the several collections of English and foreign Ana has been the directing principle here. Although he has not kept out of view by any means the advantage of continuing utili dulci, the aim of the Editor has been more to amuse than to instruct. Of the two things, the Editor hardly knows whether the former is not the more adventurous and doubtful; but at any rate, failure to make other people merry may be perhaps more easily forgiven than failure to make them more learned. It is a less dangerous, and therefore a more venial, class of presumption. For this reason, sparing use has been made of the table-talks of Luther, Selden, and Coleridge, admirable as they all are. On another account, no recourse has been had to the Johnsoniana and Walpoliana. In these cases the Editor was influenced by the want of freshness, not by the want of value. Everything known, or supposed to be known, respecting these two over-edited men has long been worn threadbare. It is the same in regard to other familiar matters, of which the exclusion was premeditated. The space at the Editor's disposal was limited, and he had to play the part of a sifter. W. C. H. KENSINGTON, ANECDOTES AND REMINISCENCES OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN AND WOMEN. I. A FRENCH student of medicine lodged in the same house in London with a man in a fever. This poor man was continually teased by the nurse to drink, though he nauseated the insipid liquids that were presented to him. At last, when she was more importunate than usual, he whispered in her ear" For God's sake bring me a salt herring, and I will drink as much as you please." The woman indulged him in his request; he devoured the herring, drank plentifully, underwent a copious perspiration, and recovered. The French student inserted this aphorism in his journal : "A salt herring cures an Englishman in a fever." On his return to France, he prescribed the same remedy to the first patient in a fever to whom he was called. A |