good; it did not exhibit the author of “John Gilpin” in a brilliant light; it was not even uttered by the poet—­he had merely smiled at it; yet it had the effect of rekindling the vapid embers about the dear old hearthstone of Olney, and the shy, gentle creatures that used to disport there among the hares when nobody was looking became for a moment more real from the citation.  Now, the question is, What is the superiority of a new piece of gossip like this, which involves no witticism and confers no wisdom, over the next bit of history that will be exchanged between the heroines of the alley-gate?  When Mrs. Jones tells Mrs. Baker that Mrs. Briggs has delivered a daughter, and that Mr. Briggs said he had rather she had given him a wooden leg, the epigram is quite as good as a Bric-a-Brac anecdote, the people are quite as worthy as Cowper’s barber, and the effect upon the history of letters quite as close and important.  With this demurrer, we will apply ourselves for a moment to Mr. Stoddard’s last collection, which of course we relish as much as anybody.  We could wish that, after discharging his very well-executed duty of writing the preface, he could find some further time for elucidating the text.  The present book being about three people, whose memoirs are taken from three volumes, it is confusing to the reader to find on a page headed “Rogers” or “Scott” a foot-note about what “my father” said or what “my friend” remembered, without anything to point out that the authority is other than Mr. 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. Moncrief, who would never have prepared the story for the stage if Dickens had intimated his objection.