Edmund Yates

"... No one succeeds better than Mr. Thackeray in cutting his coat according to his cloth. Here he flattered the aristocracy; but when he crossed the Atlantic, George Washington became the idol of his worship, the "" the object of his bitterest attacks. These last-named lectures have been dead failures in England, though as literary compositions they are most excellent."

"... in collaboration with Harrington I wrote an entertainment for Mr. George Case, a well-known musical man and player of the concertina, who retired from the orchestra on his marriage with a Miss Grace Egerton, a pretty and uncommonly sprightly and clever little actress, who ought to have done better things. In buying a pair of horses from a dealer, the experienced purchaser is generally aware that he will become the owner of a good animal and a bad one, and the writer of entertainments for a married couple is very often in an analogous position."

"I have heard Dickens described by those who knew him as aggressive, imperious, and intolerant, and I can comprehend the accusation; but to me his temper was always of the sweetest and kindest. He would, I doubt not, have been easily bored, and would not have scrupled to show it; but he never ran the risk. He was imperious in the sense that his life was conducted on the sic vole sic jubeo principle, and that everything gave way before him."

"Dickens took great interest in theatrical affairs, and was very fond of theatrical society. He had a lifelong affection for , and a great regard for and ; of the latter he said once to me, "He has the brain of a man, combined with that strange power of arriving, without knowing how or why, at the truth, which one usually finds only in a woman." He had also a liking for , , , , and the . He saw most of the pieces which were produced from time to time, but he delighted in the irregular drama, the shows and booths and circuses."

"Seriously, Frank Churchill, it's time you began to look after a wife. In our profession, especially, it's the greatest blessing to have some one to care for and to be petted by in the intervals of business-strife. There used to be a notion that a literary man required to be perpetually 'seeing life,' which meant 'getting drunk, and never going home;' but that's exploded, and I believe that our best character-painters owe half their powers of delineation to their wives' suggestions. Women,—by Jove sir!—women read character wonderfully."

"But far the best of all these panoramic shows was the series exhibited at the in , called "The Overland Route," and representing all the principal places between Southampton and Calcutta. This was the work of those admirable scene-painters, and William Telbin, and was executed in their painting-rooms in , , a notorious thieves' quarter. The human figures were by , the animals by and . Such a combination of excellence had never seen, and a clear, concise, and most pleasantly delivered descriptive comment on the passing scene by , an author and journalist of the day, enhanced the success, which was tremendous."

"Gone is , with its very wide open pens and cattle-hutches; and gone with it is a good deal of the scandal of driving the wretched beasts through the streets, and whacking and torturing them in the most dreadful fashion. Enormous hordes of cattle for Smithfield Monday market, then—not as now, sent up by rail, bur driven long tedious journeys—used to arrive at on the Saturday, and pass the Sunday in the fields let out for the purpose."

"I look back to the six years which I passed at the with very little pleasure. The headmaster, Dr. Dyne was a capable pedagogue enough, not more than usually narrow-minded, priggish, and conventional. He was a type of the old-fashioned pedantic school, which looked upon Oxford as the "hub of the universe," thought the study of Latin and the primary object of our creation, despised modern languages and foreign countries, and believed thoroughly in the virtues of corporal punishment."

"In those days, too, we used to lunch at places which seem entirely to have disappeared. The is not so frequently met with as it was thirty years ago. The "alehouses" were, in fact, small shops fitted with a and a counter; they had been established by Mr. Crowley, a brewer of , on finding the difficulty of procuring ordinary public-houses for the sake of his beer; and at them was sold nothing but beer, es, bread and cheese, but all of the very best."