memory from her childhood), in order to dissipate the gloom of the passing
hour. Its effects on the fancy of Cowper had the air of enchantment. He
informed her the next morning that convulsions of laughter, brought on by
his recollection of her story, had kept him waking during the greatest part
of the night! and that he had turned it into a ballad. So arose the
pleasant poem of "John Gilpin."


Catalogue Making.--Mr. Nichols, in the fourth vol. of his _Literary
Anecdotes_, mentions that Dr. Taylor, who was librarian at Cambridge, about
the year 1732, used to relate of himself that one day throwing books in
heaps for the purpose of classing and arranging them, he put one among
works on _Mensuration_, because his eye caught the word _height_ in the
title-page; and another which had the word _salt_ conspicuous, he threw
among books on Chemistry or Cookery. But when he began a regular
classification, it appeared that the former was "Longinus on the Sublime,"
and the other a "Theological Discourse on the _Salt_ of the World, that
good Christians ought to be seasoned with." Thus, too, in a catalogue
published about twenty years ago, the "Flowers of Ancient Literature" are
found among books on Gardening and Botany, and "Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy" is placed among works on Medicine and Surgery.


Dickens' Origin of "Boz."--A fellow passenger with Mr. Dickens, in the
_Britannia_ steam-ship, across the Atlantic, inquired of the author the
origin of his signature "Boz." Mr. Dickens replied that he had a little
brother who resembled so much the Moses in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, that
he used to call him Moses also; but a younger girl, who could not then
articulate plainly, was in the habit of calling him Bozie or Boz. This
simple circumstance made him assume that name in the first article he