of this book, and the task has not been easy. It is really extraordinary, to give but one instance of my difficulties, how frequently the most amusing work of comic writers is ruined by some chuckling jests about coffins, undertakers, or graves. If any reader in full health miss from this throng of glad faces, this muster of elated hearts, the most amusing and delightful of his familiar friends, let him ask himself, before he pass judgment on the anthologist, before he mistake a deliberate omission for a careless forgetfulness, whether those good friends of his, amiable and welcome enough at the dinner-table, are the companions he would choose for his most wearisome hours or for the bedside of his sick child. And if in these pages another should find that which neither amuses nor diverts his mind, that which seems to him to miss the magic and to lack the charm of happiness, let him pass on, with as much charity as he can spare for the anthologist, remembering the proverb of Terence and counting himself an infinitely happier man for this clear proof of his superior judgment.
I wished to include in this book, from the literature of other countries, such gentle, whimsical humour as one finds in the letters of FitzGerald or the Essays of Lamb. But, with all my searching I could find nothing of that kind, and judges whom I can trust assure me that no other literature has the exquisite note of happiness which sounds through English letters so quietly, so cheerfully, and so contentedly. Therefore my Bed-Book is almost entirely an English Bed-Book, for I liked not the biting acid of Voltaire's epigrams any more than the rollicking and disgustful coarseness of Boccaccio or Rabelais. It is an interesting reflection, if it be true, that English literature is par excellence the literature of Happiness.
"He who puts forth one depressing thought," says Lady Rachel Howard, "aids Satan in his work of torment. He who puts forth one cheering thought aids God in His work of beneficence." I have acted in the faith that life is essentially good, that the universe presents to the natural intuition of man a bright and glorious expression of Divine happiness, that to be fruitful, as George Sand has it, life must be felt as a blessing. One of the characters in a novel by Dostöevsky says, "Men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy."
Happiness, in its truest and only lasting sense, is the condition of a soul at unity with itself and in harmony with existence. To bring the sick and the sad and the unhappy at least some way on the road to this blissful state, is the purpose of my book; and it leaves me on its travel round the world with the wish that to whatever bedside of sickness, suffering, and lethargy it may come, it may bring with it the magic and contagious joy of those rare and gracious people whose longed-for visits to an invalid are like draughts of rejoicing health. I hope that my fine covers may soon be worn to the comfort of an old garment, that my new pages may be quickly shabbied to the endearment of a familiar face, and that the book will live at bedsides deepening and sweetening the reader's affection for its faded leaves till it come to seem an old, faithful, and never-failing friend, one who is never at fault and never a deserter, and without whom life would lose one of its fondest companionships.
DAUDET, ALPHONSE:
Tartarin de Tarascon 176
DICKENS, CHARLES:
Shy Neighbourhoods 70
The Calais Night-boat 200
Mr. Testator 329
DOBSON, AUSTIN:
The Secrets of the Heart 34
To "Lydia Languish" 137
The Cap that Fits 240
A Garden Idyll 286
Love in Winter 353
From the Ballad à-la-Mode 417
FITZGERALD, EDWARD:
Letters of Fitz 127
GASKELL, MRS.:
Cranford 291
GRONOW, CAPTAIN:
Sir John Waters 47
Lord Westmoreland 51
Colonel Kelly and his Blacking 52
John Kemble 53
Rogers and Luttrell 54
The Pig-faced Lady 57
Hoby, the Bootmaker, of St. James's Street 58
Harrington House and Lord Petersham 60
Lord Alvanley 61
Sally Lunn 66
"Monk" Lewis 67
HAYDON, B.R.:
Haydon's Immortal Night 181
H.B.:
Miss Stipp of Plover's Court 385
Two Old Gentlemen 424
HAZLITT:
Persons one would wish to have seen 180
Hobson's Choice 279
Wit and Laughter 351
HOLE, DEAN:
"The Vulgar Tongue" 146
The Happy Dean 249
HOOD:
The Carelesse Nurse Mayd 69
"Please to Ring the Belle" 248
Sally Simpkin's Lament; or John Jones's
Kit-cat-astrophe 307
"Love, with a Witness!" 328
Ode to Peace 404
INGOLDSBY:
Hints for an Historical Play; to be called
William Rufus; or, the Red Rover 122
The Tragedy 214
New-made Honour 312
J.B.:
Elia's Tail 192
JOHNSON, SAMUEL:
Music 402
Neatness in Excess 402
A Young Lady's "Needs" 403
"Irene" 403
JONSON, BEN:
The Woodcraft of Jonson 253
KEATS:
To his Brother 186
LAMB, CHARLES:
"Sixpenny Jokes" 185
Lamb's Task 186
In a Coach 197
LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE:
