OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
"A Delightful book," quoth the Baron, "is David Garrick, written by my worthy friend, Joseph Knight, F.S.A. Let me recommend this work as one to be placed by your reading chair, and to be taken up, as was Mrs. Gamp's bottle, when so dispoged, and oftentimes will you thus enjoy a Knight with Garrick." One of the most humorous among very many anecdotes in this book is that about Boswell going to the Shakspeare Fête costumed as a Corsican, within his pocket a poem he had written for the occasion, and "which," says Mr. Knight simply, "he intended to speak, but the crowd would not suspend its diversions to hear him." That's all: but isn't it delightful! Poor Bozzy!!
The Baron is more than pleased to see once again the deft hand of Mr. T. H. S. Escott at work in reviews and magazines. His paper, entitled "Edmund Yates, an Appreciation and a Retrospect," is most interesting to the Baron, who can call to mind the persons he mentions in literary and journalistic connection with Edmund Yates—though the Baron does not happen to remember them in this particular connection, but as a band of brothers quite apart, and all of them younger by some years than Edmund Yates, who, at the time Hood, Prowse, H. S. Leigh and others were commencing, had made his name in literature, was Charles Dickens's henchman, and had been also more or less successful, in combination with a Mr. Harrington, as a dramatist. The time I speak of is when H. J. Byron "flourished," and when "all the world was young." The World itself, of course, not having been born or thought of. Looking back to those days the Baron thinks that Mr. Escott does himself an injustice, and that he is younger than he thinks he is. Be this as it may, he will in any case have a stock of pleasant memories to draw upon, and now, if his health permit, all will look forward to what he cannot look forward to himself, i.e., his reminiscences. "Prosit! Mr. Escott! Your health, happiness, and a long life to you, quoth the gladsome
Baron de Book-Worms.
OUR FEMALE DECADENTS.
Bulkeley Bigge (a charming fellow, but a bad dancer). "I can't think what all the Girls are coming to! They've got no Back-bones! Five wanted to sit out a Dance with me to-night!">[