THISTLEDOWN

Synopsis

Humorous Scottish anecdotes have been an abundant crop; and collectors of them there have been not a few. Dean Ramsay’s garrulous and entertaining Reminiscences, and Dr. Charles Rogers’ Familiar Illustrations of Scottish Life excepted, however, the published collections of our floating facetiæ have been “hotch-potch” affairs. Revelations each of some little industry, no doubt, but few of them affording any proof of the compiler’s familiarity with the subject.

And as none of them have reached farther back than Dean Ramsay, and all have been content to take the more familiar of Ramsay’s and Rogers’ illustrations and anecdotes, and supplement[5] these in hap-hazard fashion with random clippings from the variety columns of the daily and weekly newspapers, the individual result has been such as Voltaire’s famous criticism eloquently describes:—They have contained things both good and new; but what was good was not new, and what was new was not good.

Similar Bookshelves