Part 1 (1/2)
Quips and Quiddities.
by William Davenport Adams.
PREFACE.
This is a modest little volume. It consists but of selections from the Editor's note-book, and its object is but to amuse. It does not even aspire to be read consecutively. The Compiler's hope is only that it may be found a pleasant companion at spare moments--that it may be considered handy for the pocket, and be thought agreeable to dip into.
To that end, two things have been aimed at in selecting--brevity and variety. There is scarcely anything in the volume that cannot be read almost at a glance, and the matter ranges over a wide extent of literary effort--over play and poem, over essay and novel, over maxim and epigram, over memoir and diary. There is pun, and there is parody; there is satire, and there is sarcasm.
In a word, the little book may say, with Lafontaine, ”Diversite c'est ma devise.” There is diversity even in the arrangement, which consists merely of a general alternation of the prose and verse. For the rest, the quips and quiddities are in intentional disorder.
Let it be added that, though there are a few anonymous pa.s.sages, most are duly attributed to their writers, together with references to the volumes from which they have been taken. In this, every care has been exercised to arrive at accuracy. The idea of completeness is, of course, foreign to a selection of this sort, and it may be mentioned that the Editor has been specially anxious to avoid as much as possible the ground covered by Mr. Leigh in his ”Jeux d'Esprit,” and by Mr. Dobson in his ”Literary Frivolities.” His aim, indeed, has been to take the freshest and least hackneyed of the pa.s.sages in his collection, though he has not hesitated to include a venerable saying when it has seemed to him as good as it is venerable.
In conclusion, the Compiler desires to express in the most hearty manner his indebtedness to those numerous living writers whose bright and airy fancies form, in his opinion, one of the chief attractions of the book. He ought, perhaps, to apologize to those writers for presenting their fancies in a manner so generally fragmentary and disconnected. But that the contents of the book should be thus disconnected and fragmentary was part and parcel of its plan and origin, and, that being the case, the Editor hopes to be excused.
He may state that, in those few cases where a piece of verse is given entire, it is distinguished by the presence of a heading. The epigrams, maxims, and anecdotes are, of course, reproduced as written--being, in their very nature, of the brevity essential to a quip.
Further: on the principle that no book, however unpretending, should be without an Index, the Compiler has supplied one for the present volume.
W.D.A.
”Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?”
”Yes, faith; and let it be an excellent good thing.”
I _Henry IV._, ii. 2.
QUIPS AND QUIDDITIES.
When Miss Callender, afterwards Mrs. Sheridan, published a novel, the hero of which commits forgery, that wicked wit, Sydney Smith, said he knew she was a Callender, but did not know till then that she was a Newgate Calendar.
f.a.n.n.y KEMBLE, _Record of a Girlhood_.
An estate and beauty joined, are of an unlimited, nay, a power pontifical; make one not only absolute, but infallible. A fine woman's never in the wrong.
_Lady Betty_, in CIBBER's _Careless Husband_.
_THEOPHILUS._
When I'm drinking my tea I think of my _The_; When I'm drinking my coffee I think of my _Offee_; So, whether I'm drinking my tea or my coffee, I'm always a-thinking of thee, my Theoffy.
ROGERS, _apud_ MOORE.