William Lyon Phelps, a celebrated university professor and literary critic, was born at New Haven, Connecticut, January 2, 1865. He has written “Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Thomas Gray,” “Irving’s Sketch Book,” “The Best Plays of Chapman,” “The Novels of Samuel Richardson,” (20 vols.), “The Works of Jane Austen” (12 vols.), “Stevenson’s Essays,” “The Pure Gold of Nineteenth Century Literature,” “Essays on Modern Novelists,” “Essays on Russian Novelists,” “Essays on Books,” “The Advance of the English Novel,” “The Advance of English Poetry,” “Reading the Bible,” “Essays on Modern Dramatists.”
He is one of those wise philanthropists who in a time of famine would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks.
—Douglas Jerrold.
Douglas William Jerrold, a noted English humorist, was born in London, England, January 3, 1803, and died there June 8, 1857. Some of his well-known works are: “The Rent Day,” “Retired from Business,” “Story of a Feather,” “Nell Gwynne,” “The Bubbles of the Day.”
You can’t expect anything from a pig but a grunt.
“Fairy Tales,”—Grimm.
Jacob Grimm, a famous philologist, archæologist, and folklorist, was born at Hanau, January 4, 1785, and died at Berlin, September 20, 1863. He wrote: “The Poetry of the Meistersingers,” “German Mythology,” “History of the German Language,” “German Grammar,” etc. His fame rests, however, upon his celebrated work, “Fables for Children,” written in collaboration with his brother Wilhelm, and best-known as, “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Brewster’s “Memoirs of Newton,” Vol. ii, Chap. xxvii.—Isaac Newton.
Sir Isaac Newton, the renowned English philosopher and mathematician, was born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, January 5, 1643, and died at Kensington, March 31, 1727. Among his works are: “Principia,” “Theory of Light and Colors,” “Optical Readings,” “On Motion,” “Opticks,” etc.