nk,
"Festus Bailey" came to be, to the general mind, an amusing kind of
appanage of his own work, which was now taken as read, but ceased to
have readers. How happy a little imperviousness may make a good man!

Tom Taylor, the dramatist, Punch contributor, and society wit, I
remember only as a pale face and a black beard. His wit had something
of a professional tang. There are many like him in club-land and hanging
about the stage; they catch up and remember all the satirical sayings,
the comicalities, and quips that they hear, and they maintain a sort
of factory for the production of puns. Their repartee explodes like an
American boy's string of toy crackers, and involves, to set it going,
no greater intellectual effort. They are not, in their first state, less
intelligent than the common run of men--rather the contrary; but as
soon as they have gone so far as to acquire a reputation for wit, their
output begins to betray that sad, perfunctory quality which we find in
wound-up music-boxes, and that mechanical rattle makes us forget that
they ever had brains. However, Tom Taylor, with his century of plays and
adaptations--among them "Our American Cousin," which the genius of
an actor, if not its own merit, made memorable--should not be deemed
unworthy of the reputation which, in his time and place, he won. He was
at his best when, stimulated by applause and a good dinner, he portrayed
persons and things with a kind of laughable extravagance, in the mode
introduced by Dickens. Men of his ilk grow more easily in our soil than
in the English, and are much less regarded.

Henry Stevens--"the man of libraries," as my father calls him--was a
New-Englander, born in Vermont; he took betimes to books, came abroad,
and was employed by the British Museum in getting together Americana,
and by various collectors as an agent to procure books, and in these
innocent pursuits his amiable life was passed. He had a pleasing gift of
drollery, which made his companionship acceptable at stag-parties and
in the smoking-room of the clubs, and he had also a fund of special
information on literary subjects which was often of value. I met him
in after-life--twenty-five years after--and age had not altered him,
though, perhaps, custom had somewhat staled his variety. He was of
medium stature, dark haired and bearded. With him was often seen the
egregious Mr. Pecksniff (as Samuel Carter Hall was commonly known to
his acquaintances since the public