SATURDAY EVENING GAZETTE:
"A large store of delightful literary entertainment. It is written in a graceful, fluent, and attractive style, and with an easy liveliness that makes it peculiarly pleasing in the perusal. We know of no volume in which is presented so vast a fund of interesting gossip about the world's great ones in art, literature, and science as is here set forth. Every page is abundant in anecdote, of which there is such a copious shower that it even overflows into foot-notes. It would be next to impossible to describe the work in detail, so extensive is the field it covers and so luxuriant is it in illustration. It is enough to state that it will be found fascinating by every reader of refined and educated taste, and attractive and edifying by all, not only for what it tells, but for the bright, chatty, and spirited manner in which it is told."
MASSACHUSETTS PLOUGHMAN:
"One of the most agreeable books. It is a work teeming with delightful information and anecdote gathered from the broad fields of literature and art. The great charm of the book is its colloquial and epigrammatic style, conveying a whole volume of suggestiveness and facts on every page. Open it where we may, it reads charmingly, and one is loath to lay it aside until every page has been perused. In saying that the book is one of real and permanent value, we pay it a just and merited tribute."