Literature and the Drama have been the most munificent contributors to our ANA. If the sayings reported of or by actors and authors were subtracted from the grand total, the residuum would assuredly display a very deplorable shrinkage; and this is easily capable of explanation in a manner which itself explains the corrupt form in which much of this lore has descended to us. For the whole atmosphere of the theatre is conducive to the suggestion of odd circumstances and situations, and the professional writer enjoys peculiar facilities, through his reading and associates, for making himself master of the good sayings of his own circle and of other times. As Bacon observed, “Reading makes a full man, and conversation a ready man”; the caterer for the stage or the booksellers finds that it enters into his business to store his brain with such _bons-mots_ and pieces of harmless scandal as he picks up in books or in society; and these are naturally apt to undergo, before they reach other ears, a polishing operation or the action of the churn. For, as they came to him, they offended in some particular, perchance, his artistic eyes, or it seemed good to change the bill. To this kind of agency, no doubt, is owing the large stock, which survives in print in most languages, of various readings of stories; but a second and very different influence, not less potential, has been concurrently at work in the same direction. From time immemorial the professional joke-dresser has ranged at will over the whole field, and kept the market excellently well supplied with goods of this special description in every variety at the lowest possible figure. Malone, in his _Recollections_, says of Richardson the artist: “He was a great news- and anecdote-monger, and in the latter part of his life spent much of his time in gathering and communicating intelligence concerning the King of Prussia, and other topics of the day, as Dr. Burney, who knew him very well, informs me.” This extract furnishes in some degree the key to the origin of a large share of the amusing tales, _jeux d’esprits_, and repartees, which the various extant collections offer to our consideration--that is to say, to their origin _in a second or third state_, as the printseller expresses it; and beyond question, if there is any branch of facetious biography or history which has reached us in an artificial condition, it is _par excellence_ that which deals with alleged episodes in the careers of high-born personages, not merely of remote times, but of an approximate generation or so--nay, even of the great folks with whom we might touch elbows, _si fas esset_.