A Talk Over Autographs

FIRST PAPER.

“ March 23, 1854. A snowstorm. Write and send off twenty-four autographs.”

“ November 25, 1856. I have lying on my table more than sixty requests for autographs.”

“ January 9, 1857. Yesterday, I wrote, sealed, and directed seventy autographs. To-day I added five or six more, and mailed them.”

Such are the entries which from time to time Longfellow made in his journal, — entries which surely must have stirred remorse in the heart of many a collector of autographs. Not a word of impatience, much less of indignation, seems to have escaped from the gentle poet. He took the evil with the good, — the fame of a poet and the trouble which it brought with it. Of his Hiawatha ten thousand copies were sold in the first few weeks after publication. A little later he recorded that the sale was going on at the rate of three hundred a day. A snowy morning given up now and then to writing his name was not, he may have thought, too great a penalty to pay for the fame which he enjoyed and for the dollars which came pouring in. Lowell had none of his brother poet’s patience. He suffered under the infliction, and he made his sufferings known. An autograph book, he declared, was an instrument of torture unknown even to the Inquisition. When he did not recognize a correspondent’s handwriting he would leave the letter unopened, till a great pile slowly accumulated on his desk. “ I am thinking seriously,” he wrote, “ of getting a good forger from the state’s prison to do my autographs; but I suppose the unconvicted followers of the same calling would raise the cry of convict labor.”

Collectors do not go to work the right way when they want to get an autograph out of their man. They should approach him dexterously, and come unto him as delicately as Agag came unto Samuel. Now and then there has been seen a man as methodical as the Duke of Wellington, from whom an answer could always be drawn by a letter which had about it an air of business. It is said that his son’s tailor, or some autograph collector who passed himself off as his son’s tailor, —— Mr. Snip I will call him, — once wrote to the old soldier to beg him make the young man settle his account. He received the following answer : —

“ F. M. the Duke of Wellington begs to inform Mr. Snip that he is neither the Marquis of Douro’s steward nor Mr. Snip’s debt collector.”

A feigned letter of business, however, would very rarely be found successful. If any answer were sent, it would almost always be in the hand of a secretary or a wife. Honester and gentler means should be used. The man to be hooked, like Izaak Walton’s frog, “ should be used as though you loved him.” Dukes, no doubt, could not thus be caught; but then, fortunately, the signature of a duke, unless at the bottom of a check, with the rarest exceptions, is utterly worthless. If — which Heaven forbid! — I should wish to get an autograph out of a poet, I would address him after some such fashion as the following : —

DEAR SIR. — My love for your writings finds no other vent for its expression but in a way which I trust will not offend you by its being less spiritual than I could have wished. Will you accept a barrel of oysters which I am venturing to send you as a slight proof of my admiration of your genius ?

I am, dear sir,

Your ardent admirer,

AUTOGRAPH HUNTER.

POET LAUREATE, ESQ.

P. S. When you acknowledge the receipt of the oysters, I should esteem it a great favor if you would do so in verse. If you generally drink Chablis with oysters, I shall be happy to send you half a dozen bottles.

Should your author inhabit a foreign country, whither delicacies are not easily sent, the persuasive method might be varied. He might be addressed thus : —

DEAR SIR, — May I venture to ask you for your autograph ? The five-dollar bill which I beg to inclose will. I trust, he sufficient to cover the postage. Should there be anything over, I should esteem it a high honor if you would spend it in the purchase of a book, on the fly-leaf of which I would beg you to gum the subjoined inscription.

I am,

Yours respectfully and admiringly,

RARITY COLLECTOR.

NOVEL RUYTER, ESQ.

P. S. If you would add a sentiment to your autograph, I should esteem it an additional favor.

(Inscription.)

Presented to Novel Ruyter, Esq., as a slight tribute of respect for his genius, by an admirer in the New World.

I am assuming in all this that my autograph collector is willing to spend his money on his hobby somewhat freely. Without money, by those who are outside the world of letters, arts, science, or politics, a collection can scarcely be made. A hobby is generally a costly animal to keep ; but what is spent on it is often saved in doctor’s bills. It gives an interest to life, especially to the life of one who has retired from business. If ridden soberly, it is a good and faithful steed, on which for many a day a man may amble gently down the slope of life. It should neither be ridden to death, nor suffered to carry its bearer to the threshold of want. Poor men as well as the well-to-do sometimes get thrown by it to the ground. A second-hand bookseller once told me of a workingman who laid out at his shop much more than he could well afford. To escape the scoldings of his wife, he would smuggle each new purchase home at the bottom of the basket in which he brought from market the week’s supply of potatoes. A friend of mine gave me, in my younger days, a letter of Dr. Johnson’s. “ There,” said he, as I sat gazing on my treasure, “ if you will take my advice, you will at once throw that letter into the fire.” (A bright one was blazing before us on the hearth.) “ If you keep it, it will probably tempt you into an outlay beyond your means, as I have seen many a man before you tempted by his first autograph.” I did not follow his advice, — the letter, in a frame, hangs on one of the walls of my study, — but I laid to heart his warning. Perhaps the danger was the less in my case as I had long possessed a small collection which came to me by inheritance.

My friend had himself for many years been a dealer in autographs, and in the long course of business had slowly made a noble collection, which he carried away into retirement, the adornment of his old age. He one day showed me a forged letter of Lord . Byron’s. Many years ago, one of the great London auctioneers —either Christie or Sotheby. I forget which—asked him and old John Murray, the poet’s publisher, to call at his office, as he had a curiosity to show them. “ Here,” he said, when they came in, “ are some genuine letters of Byron’s, and here are forgeries of them. We must not mix them, for if we do we shall never be able to separate them.” The imitation, they found, was perfect, not only in the writing, but also in the postmark and the seal. The watermark of the paper, moreover, was earlier than the dates of the letters. They had been executed by a man who there was good reason to believe was Byron’s illegitimate son. By some curious chance the originals and the imitations had been sent in for sale at the same time. A day or two later the forger came to the office. “ I am not going to put up those letters for sale,” the auctioneer said to him. “ Then give me them back,” the man replied. “ No ; they are locked up in this desk, and there they will remain. They are forgeries.” The forger said nothing, but left the room. “ What became of him ? ” I asked my old friend. “ I believe he went to America,” was the reply ; “ and there, no doubt, if he is still living, he is forging Byron’s letters.” He would have been just the man to do the autographs for Lowell; but such a career as his was likely to have been prematurely cut short.

For a long time past the price of autographs has been so steadily rising that a collector might silence the whisperings of prudence, or the upbraidings of a careful soul of a wife, by the glittering hopes of a profitable investment. At all events, he might flatter himself that when his collection was dispersed no loss of capital would be incurred. In a large collection which had been made with knowledge and with coolness, this, very likely, would be the case; but if it were small, however well chosen it might be, the chances of loss would be great. Where there are few lots there are few purchasers, and where there are few purchasers the regular dealers are often able to form an unrighteous combination by which they get documents of great value for a mere trifle. Even when this danger is escaped, at a small sale chance and caprice have far greater play. The price, for example, of one of Dr. Johnson’s autograph letters has risen by about a pound in the last nineteen years. In 1875, eighteen were sold by auction in London at an average of four pounds, five shillings, and eightpence a letter. Between 1888 and 1891, fifteen, of which I have account, were sold at an average of five guineas. One letter, however, which fetched six guineas in 1875, by some chance went for only two pounds, eight shillings, in 1888; while, on the other hand, the price of another letter rose from six pounds, fifteen shillings, to ten pounds. In these averages I have not included three lots for which extraordinary sums were paid. In 1875, for the famous letter in which the dauntless old man wrote to Macpherson, “ I will not desist from detecting what I think a cheat from any fear of the menaces of a Ruffian,” ¹ no less than fifty pounds was given, and well given, too. For a fiddle three or four times as much has often been paid. The possession of such a letter surely confers more distinction than half a dozen fiddles. In 1888, to the great astonishment of collectors, forty pounds was given for the following brief note to Oliver Goldsmith : —

SIR, — I beg that you will excuse my Absence to the Club ; I am going this evening to Oxford.

I have another favour to beg. It is that I may be considered as proposing W Boswel [sic] for a candidate of our Society, and that he may be considered as regularly nominated.

I am, Sir,

Your most humble servant,

SAM: JOHNSON.

April 23, 1773

To DR. GOLDSMITH.

It sold at the rate of twelve shillings and a penny a word. For London Johnson was paid ninepence halfpenny a line, and for The Vanity of Human Wishes tenpence ; for each line in The Traveller Goldsmith received elevenpence farthing. This letter is distinguished from the hundreds of others in Johnson’s autograph mainly by the fact that it is the only one extant written by him to Goldsmith. At the same sale the biddings rose to even a higher sum. Forty-six pounds was given for the letter in which Johnson signed himself “ Yours hnpransus.” It is not too much to assume that of the forty-six pounds, forty were paid for this one word. Never, surely, has the greatest epicure or the wildest spendthrift been able to throw away on a dinner so much money as has been spent on the one modest word in which this needy author seems to hint to his employer that he was in want of one. “ It is remarkable,” writes Boswell, “that Johnson’s letter to Mr. Cave concludes with a fair confession that he had not a dinner.” What would have been the amazement of “ the very good company ” with whom the young author, fresh from Lichfield, used to dine at the Pine Apple, New Street, could they have known that the day would come when, for his hint that he wanted a dinner, enough would be given to pay his daily tavern-bill for nearly four full years! From what I learnt not long ago, I have little doubt that these high prices, though they were in part due to enthusiasm, were due also in part to fraud. Shortly before the sale, a dealer, who then held a high position, but who, a little later, died a bankrupt, sent to me, as the editor of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, the auctioneer’s catalogue, and, in the name of a collector, asked me to indicate which of the letters had a peculiar interest. I pointed out these two, and showed him in each case in what that interest consisted. The “impransus” letter, I knew, had been sold by auction, a little earlier, for seven or eight pounds. It might, I thought, fetch two or three more. For the other I had no expectation that so much even as seven or eight pounds would be given. My surprise was indeed great when I learnt the result of my advice. I have been informed since that when this dealer was bidding, there was often present at the sale a man who would bid against him, to whom no lot was ever knocked down. It was this mysterious person, it was said, who ran up the two lots to their extravagant prices. The collector who employed the dealer was charged by him a certain percentage on the sums paid, — for what, I suppose, he was pleased to call his judgment. The more the autographs cost, the better was this judgment rewarded. Had the fellow stuck to his trade, he might have died a rich rogue, but he took to dabbling in stocks and shares, and got ruined.

Most collectors, of course, name a sum beyond which their agent must not carry his biddings. Sometimes, however, the limit is fixed absurdly low. A few years ago, I was shown by an auctioneer the original document by which Blackstone sold the copyright of his famous Commentaries. In the hope that it would be secured for the University of Oxford, before which the book had been read by the author in the shape of lectures, I informed Bodley’s librarian of this great treasure. He undertook to direct his agent to bid for it. I was out of England at the sale, but on my return I inquired with eager hope whether it had been secured. “No,”the librarian replied. “ The amateur collectors have of late so much run up the price of autographs that it is almost useless for us to bid against them.” Chief among these collectors, if I remember rightly, he reckoned those wicked Americans, who, with their wealth, are sacking, as it were, the literary treasures of Europe. In the present case, however, these devastators were really not to blame. The librarian’s reserve price, I ascertain, had been fixed considerably below a pound ; at twelve shillings and sixpence, if my memory does not deceive me. For three dollars, even against Englishmen, Oxford could scarcely have hoped to secure so interesting an autograph of one of the most distinguished of her sons.

It too often happens that letters of great interest are destroyed through ignorance, indifference, or a perverted sense of duty. Boswell’s curious correspondence with his friend Temple, the grandfather of the present Bishop of London, was sold for waste paper in Boulogne. Some of it was rescued from the butterman and published, but there are great and melancholy gaps left. The letters which Boswell had himself received from many of the most eminent men of his time were, it is believed, destroyed by his executors. A lady who gave me a copy of one of Johnson’s autograph letters informed me that, many years ago, an old friend had sent her a whole bundle of them, bidding her keep as many as she pleased. In her unfortunate modesty she retained but one. He told her afterwards that she need not have been so scrupulous, for all that she had returned he had thrown into the fire. A man who burns an autograph shows such an insensibility of nature, such a want of imagination, that it is likely that, in a more cruel age, he would have burnt heretics. Like the inquisitors of old, men have condemned to the flames letters full of life and thought and feeling, in the belief that they were only doing their duty. They have been shocked by the wrong that at times has been done by the publication of matters which either should not have been divulged, or at all events should have been kept secret till one or two generations had passed away. Literary men, even, have been guilty of this crime, — men whose hours have slipped pleasantly by over the correspondence of Horace Walpole, Cowper, and Lamb. As I am writing, I see that Mr. Froude directed his executors to destroy all private letters belonging to him. In his case, this seems an affectation of discretion and of regard for the feelings of others. He is like the miser whose first and only display of charity is seen in the provisions of his will. If a man cannot trust his executors, he can at least bequeath his correspondence to a public library, with a direction that it shall be kept unpublished till after a long lapse of years.

Of my own modest collection I have no anecdotes to relate. No such luck ever befell me as befell Mr. Fields, who, in a book picked up at a stall, found inserted an autograph letter of Johnson’s. To my letters, such as they are, I now beg leave to introduce the readers of The Atlantic Monthly. I shall venture to act the part of showman, and to treat my audience as I sometimes treat my friends when I have got them safe in my study, and know that politeness will not for a good half hour allow them to save themselves by flight. There, as I place an autograph before them, I delight to talk about the writer, and, taking down from the shelves one book after another, to read out passages by way of illustration. As I am addressing mainly an American audience, I cannot do better than begin with an extract about America from a letter addressed by Miss Edgeworth, on July 27, 1826, to “ Mr. Hunter, 72 St. Paul’s Churchyard, London.” He was her publisher. Publishers have risen in the world since those days. No author would now venture to deprive them of the title of “Esquire.” But Miss Edgeworth belonged to the old landed gentry, and perhaps would not willingly have abandoned class distinctions. She writes : —

... I copy for you a letter I have this morning received from — Ralstone, one of my American Intelligencers.

“ Your great & good friend Sir Walter Scott’s last work Woodstock has met with the most brilliant reception among us and I regret much that the large profits of his American publishers cannot be divided with this inimitable writer. — Messrs Carey and Lea purchased the printed sheets from the English publishers for £150 and they were sent out to them as fast as they were printed & before they were bound; they were reprinted here, bound & distributed in most of our principal cities three weeks before a complete English copy arrived in this country. The sheets for the last vol. arrived in duplicate on board of three different ships which came to N. York on the same day & within a few hours of each other. They were sent to this city by express & within 23 1/2 hours after their rect they were printed folded bound & for sale. There were 185 persons employed in the various parts of this expeditious business — The public were equally prompt in purchasing as the enterprising Booksellers were in publishing. The work was for sale at 10 o’clock on Saturday morning — & in the evening of the same day there were short of 1000 copies left on hand. The edition consisted of 9000 copies. Messrs Carey & Lea contemplate publishing another edition of 3 or 4000 copies. There will be Editions published in Boston, N. York & other cities in a short time — We have a great advantage over you in the cheapness of books in this country. Woodstock for example was published in England in 3 vols & sold for thirty-one shillings (71/2 Dollars)—it was republished here in 2 vols. & sold for 1 1/2 Dollars or 6s. 9d — Most books are published at the same economical rate & few persons are so poor as to be unable to purchase as many as they desire to read.”

Nearly four months earlier than the date of Miss Edgeworth’s letter, on April 2, 1826, Scott had recorded in his Diary: “ I have the extraordinary and gratifying news that Woodstock is sold for £8228 [about $40,300] ; all ready money — a matchless sale for less than three months’ work.” Miss Edgeworth saw him in Edinburgh in 1823. Lady Scott was surprised that the two novelists had not met in 1803, on Miss Edgeworth’s first visit to that capital. “ Why, ‘ said Sir Walter, with one of his queer looks, “ you forget, my dear, Miss Edgeworth was not a lion then, and my name, you know, was not grown at all.”A few months before his death, when his mind was rapidly failing, after speaking of Miss Austen, he continued: “ ‘ And there’s that Irish lady, too — but I forget everybody’s name now.’ — ‘ Miss Edgeworth,’ — ‘ Ay, Miss Edgeworth ; she’s very clever, and best in the little touches, too. I’m sure, in that children’s story’ (he meant Simple Susan), ‘ where the little girl parts with her lamb, and the little boy brings it back to her again, there’s nothing for it but just to put down the book and cry.’ ” Ticknor was shown by Miss Edgeworth a letter from Dumont, — Mirabeau’s and Bentham’s Dumont, — who had lately met Madame de Staël, fresh from reading Miss Edgeworth’s Tales of Fashionable Life. Dumont reported that she had said of their author, and said perhaps with not a little truth, “ Vraiment elle était digne de l’enthousiasme, mais elle se perd dans votre triste utilité.” Macaulay once compared these women. “ Madame de Staël,” he wrote, “ was certainly the first woman of her age; Miss Edgeworth, I think, the second ; and Miss Austen the third. In the whole of this judgment the present age would not agree. Whatever place is assigned to Madame de Stael, Miss Austen would certainly be generally placed far above Miss Edgeworth.

In a copy of the Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth by his daughter, which I bought second-hand many years ago, I found the following curious manuscript note: “ Maria Edgeworth was plain. Her friend, Rev. H. Crofton, used to say of her that ‘ her beauty was turned outside in,’ & to her, ‘ Maria, God has not given you beauty, but He has given you a soul, & that is more than He vouchsafes to all women.’ One day she called on Mrs. Crofton, when Sarah Frances, then a very little girl, was in the room ; she said, ‘ Mamma, is it that ugly lady who tells such pretty stories ? ’ ‘ Hush, hush,’ said her mother. Miss Edgeworth laughingly said, ‘ Now, Fanny, don’t try to keep the truth down, for I am ugly, & I do tell pretty stories.’ ”

In the handwriting of Miss Austen I have nothing but the following lines : —

“ In order to prevent your thus losing the benefit of attending at Church, it has occurred to me that it will not be making an improper use of the time allotted us for public Instruction to turn your thoughts for a few Sundays to this subject.”

Underneath these lines is written : —

“ This is the handwriting, not the composition of my Aunt Jane Austen, Authoress of Pride and Prejudice

P. EDWD AUSTEN LEIGH.”

Such a passage as the above might have been an extract from a sermon preached by Henry Tilney, or Edmund Bertram, or Mr. Collins himself, even though his gracious patroness, Lady Catherine De Burgh, is not mentioned. From a sermon it has undoubtedly been cut out, for it is but a fragment of a page. How it came to pass that Miss Austen wrote it I can easily imagine. Of her Johnson never could have said, “ A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.” She never ascended a pulpit; but her father was a parson. In my boyhood I spent not a few of my holidays with an old clergyman who lived at Ambleside, at the head of Windermere. There I saw Wordsworth and Miss Martineau. I had not been in my friend’s house many days before he asked to see a specimen of my handwriting. He shook his head sadly over it. Had it been legible, he said, he would have got me to copy out sermons. He was too modest to preach his own, and he did not think it decent to take a printed book into the pulpit. It was therefore a happy day for him when he could secure a scribe. In one respect, at all events, either nature or art, perhaps both, favored me more highly than Jane Austen. Her clear hand must have been of great service to her father. She could never have rejoiced, as I did, in writing badly.

I have a long letter by Miss Martineau, dated February 27, 1863. Like Miss Edgeworth’s, it deals with America. I have seen her described by a Boston divine as “ a foreign carpet-bagger.” He resented her visit to the United States and the part she had played in the antislavery movement. Paul at Athens was “ a foreign carpet-bagger,” who attacked the peculiar institution of the Unknown God. Nevertheless, so far, I believe, he has escaped the reverend gentleman’s reproaches.

Miss Martineau writes : —

. . . That Liverpool paper that you sent is among provincial journals the very lowest, — & much what the “Record” is among theological papers. It starts a new idea however. It never occurred to me to make money out of the North. What shall I ask ? one thousand or five ? But I am afraid they won’t give me anything — I am such a hopeless free-trade writer. Of coui’se it is needless ; but yet I shd. like just to put you in possession of the fact that 1 have never made a penny of profit of the American case. I write a certain proportion of the “ leaders ” in “ D. News ” on topics of present interest wh I understand : & if it had not been the American business (wh. I do understand more of than any other writer in this country) it w’! have been whatever other was uppermost. India is always mine; & 3 or 4 more.

The “ interest “ to us in that letter of Mackay’s that you speak of was in seeing how far even his impudence would go in relying on the ignorance of English readers. He has the audacity to drop out of mention the class in the South, — wh is larger than the slaveowners who are only 347,000,—the hirers of slaves — & to call them “mean whites.” The shopkeepers & artisans of the towns are not “ mean whites.” Those of them who do not own a slave or two hire negroes. The “ mean whites ” in the towns are the mere “ loafers,” such as hang about all towns. The main body are in the country. If you really have any wish to learn the facts about them you will find in the appendix to Professor Cairnes’s new edition the fullest & best authorised account that exists. — Mackay has done one excellent service in that part of his letter, — by a singular heedlessness on his part, & on that of the Times in publishing it. He admits a fact fatal to the Southern case in showing that, by the threefifths suffrage, every white citizen has more political power than any citizen in the North. This is the true & sufficient answer that has always been given to the Southern cant about being overborne by the tyranny of the North ; & it is owing to this anti-republican & thoroughly vicious Southern privilege that the Slave Power has predominated so long. Mackay does not see what he has done in proving the great Northern point for a Southern purpose, — any more than Lawley sees what a figure he cuts in ridiculing the idea of negro regiments when the negro regiments are already proved, by their achievements, the very best in the field ; — with as much valour, as much efficiency of mind & hand as any of the whites, & better discipline. It is really glorious to see what their military capacity is, & how it strikes a sudden light into Northern minds as to the true character & destiny of the people who have been so carefully kept from showing what they cd do. The white officers are in high admiration. . . .

I saw Miss Martineau at an evening party given by the old squire of Ambleside. She sat in state in an armchair, and people came up one by one to talk with her. With the shyness of boyhood T stood afar off, wondering how any one had courage to speak into her long eartrumpet. “ The ear - trumpet,” wrote Hawthorne, “seems a sensible part of her, like the antennæ of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in, and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you ; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you.” He describes her as “ a large, robust, elderly woman, and plainly dressed ; but withal she has so kind, cheerful, and intelligent a face that she is pleasanter to look at than most beauties. She is the most continual talker I ever heard ; it is really like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible, too.” Macaulay, with perhaps some of the jealousy of a rival continual talker, listening one day to the even flow’ of her voice, broken by nothing but the occasional fall of rubbish in a house hard by which was coining down, whispered to his neighbor : —

She had lately published those Letters to Mr. Atkinson which provoked some wit to say, “ Miss Martineau’s creed is of the briefest, — there is no God, and Mr. Atkinson is his prophet.” In 1837, Carlyle, writing of her, said : “ She pleased us far beyond expectation. She is very intelligent - looking, really of pleasant countenance, was full of talk, though, unhappily, deaf almost as a post.” Nine years later it was in a very different strain that he wrote : “ Miss Martineau was here and is gone ; broken into utter wearisomeness, a mind reduced to three elements : Imbecility, Dogmatism, and Unlimited Hope. I never in my life was more heartily bored with any creature.”

Carlyle was a harsh judge when his fellow-writers stood at his bar. Of Lamb, “ the frolic and the gentle,” he wrote: “ Insuperable proclivity to gin in poor old Lamb. His talk contemptibly small, indicating wondrous ignorance and shallowness, even when it was serious and good-mannered, which it seldom was; usually ill-mannered (to a degree), screwed into frosty artificialities, ghastly make believe of wit. He was cockney to the marrow.” Even in his cups Lamb did not lose his enjoyment of perfect verse. “ Both tipsy and sober,” wrote H. C. Robinson to Landor, “ he is ever muttering Rose Aylmer.”

Of Lamb I have the following autograph. It bears no date, but the postmark shows that it was written in 1814.

SIR,—Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede to your proposal most willingly.

As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call upon you for your part of the engagement (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, & thence forward if it suit you quarterly — You will occasionally wink at BRISKETS & YEINY PIECES.

Your Obt Svt

C. LAMB.

Saturday.

J. SCOTT, ESQ.,

3 Marda Place, Edgware road.

Briskets and veiny pieces, as a notable housewife informs me, are inferior portions of meat. Lamb, who had undertaken to write for The Champion, warns the editor, in the language of the market, that his contributions will not always be of prime quality. Eleven years later he wrote to one of his friends : “ Why did poor Scott die ? There was comfort in writing with such associates as were his little band of scribblers : some gone away, some affronted away, and I am left as the solitary widow looking for water-cresses.” He thus mentions him in another letter : “ Patmore is a very hearty, friendly fellow, and was poor John Scott’s second, as I will be yours, when you want one. May you never be mine.” Scott fell in a duel. He met his death, says Talfourd, “ almost by lamentable accident, in the uncertain glimmer of moonlight, from the hand of one who went out resolved not to harm him.” In the index to Canon Ainger’s edition of Lamb’s Letters there is a strange confounding of the persons under the article John Scott. There are mixed up in one whole, John Scott of Amwell. the Quaker poet, who hated

Lord Nelson’s secretary, whose name also was Scott, killed by his master’s side at Trafalgar ; and John Scott the editor, who, to add to the confusion, having been shot by Mr. Christie, is stated to have fallen in a duel with Lockhart.

From Mr. Ruskin I have the following letter, written to me eleven years ago, when I was wintering at San Remo.

BEANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE, 7th Dee —83.

MY DEAR SIR, — I ’ve just time to thank you, by this post — but please let me know if your address is permanent

— I had totally forgot the passage ! — but I don’t think the young generation will teach me much about clouds! It is a curious feeling in old age — Homer has his word about that, too, — has n’t he ? — that nobody knows one’s own sinews Ever gratefully yrs

J. RUSKIN.

Why Mr. Ruskin felt so grateful to a stranger is explained by the following passage in his first lecture on The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century : —

“ When, in the close of my lecture on landscape, last year, at Oxford, I spoke of stationary clouds as distinguished from passing ones, some blockheads wrote to the papers to say that clouds never were stationary. Those foolish letters were so far useful in causing a friend to write me the pretty one I am about to read to you, quoting a passage about clouds in Homer which I had myself never noticed, though perhaps the most beautiful of its kind in the Iliad. In the fifth book, after the truce is broken, and the aggressor Trojans are rushing to the onset in a tumult of clamor and charge, Homer says that the Greeks, abiding them, ‘ stood like clouds.’ My correspondent, giving the passage, writes as follows : —

“ ‘ SIR.— Last winter, when I was at Ajaccio, I was one day reading Homer by the open window, and came upon the lines —

“ But they stood, like the clouds which the son of Kronos stablishes in calm upon the mountains, motionless, when the rage of the north and of all the fiery winds is asleep.” 1 As I finished these lines, I raised my eyes, and, looking across the gulf, saw a long line of clouds resting on the top of the hills. The day was windless, and there they stayed, hour after hour, without any stir or motion. I remember how much I was delighted at the time, and have often since that day thought on the beauty and the truthfulness of Homer’s simile.

“ ‘ Perhaps this little fact may interest you, at. a time when you are attacked for your description of clouds.

“ ‘ I am, sir, yours faithfully,

G. B. HILL.’ ”

The following letter, also by Mr. Ruskin, was written at a much earlier date than the first quoted, about the year 1858: —

Dear-: Would you be so very kind as to write down for me the titles in English of those illustrated works by Richter, with the place where you got them — so that I can send the same to Printers, in my catalogue of works to be studied at the end of my book for beginners.

Ever affectionately yours

J. RUSKIN.

Tell Jones his glass won’t quite do. I want to talk to him about it but can’t find a day, — but he ought to get a bit of pure 13th century glass done, and put beside his ; then he would feel what is wanted I fancy, namely greater grace in the interlacing forms and more distinctness in the figures as emergent from ground.

“ Jones ” is our great painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones. I should not have given his name had I not received his permission. He has no doubt, he sends me word, the criticism was entirely just, but no one had the hardihood to tell him of it, so he has never heard it till now. One hot June morning, thirty-seven years ago, I watched him painting a cluster of crown lilies in the garden of Red Lion Square. It was, I believe, the first time that he worked in oils.

Judge Maule, one of the wittiest men that ever sat on the bench, irritated by the conceit of a young barrister who, with an air of superiority, was stating his case in the most confusing manner, exclaimed: “ Sir, in this court counsel usually follow some order in their statement of facts: some follow the chronological order, but as for you, sir, you had better keep to the order of the alphabet.” In the selection of my autographs I am disregarding both chronology and the alphabet, and am taking my readers backwards and forwards as I please. Neither shall I pay much regard to subjects, but shall pass lightly from one to the other. From Mr. Ruskin and thirteenth-century painted glass let us turn to that venerable mass of vast legal learning and Tory obstinacy which was embodied in Lord Chancellor Eldon. His letter is addressed to his brother-in-law, Mr. Alderman Burdon, Newcastle - on - Tyne. Above the address is written the date, “ London, March Fifteenth, 1815,” and in the left-hand corner, “ Eldon.” By writing the date and his name on the cover the Chancellor franked the letter, — sent it through the post free of charge. This privilege, which was enjoyed by the members of both Houses of Parliament, was abolished, in 1840, on the introduction of penny postage.

h[OUSE] OF LDS [LORDS]

Wednesday Morning.

DEAR SIR, — I thank you for your kind Letter. We are all safe & well. At present Tranquillity seems to he restored — Whether the Mob only sleep, or have ceased to exist, seems very uncertain. I hope I did not disgrace my Situation as a Magistrate, when I came into Contact with the Rioters : and I hope so the rather, because I am satisfied that, if I did not act as stoutly as the Law would authorise me to act, my Example might have done much Mischief.

Yrs affcly

ELDON.

Nothing authentic at this hour from France.

11 o’clock Wedy Morng.

The rioters had risen against an increase in the tax on corn. The misery of the people was already great, and once more legislation was to make it still greater. The mob had torn up the iron railings in the front of Lord Eldon’s house in Bedford Square, and, using them as crowbars, had forced an entrance. He and his family escaped by a back door into the garden of the British Museum. There they found a guard of a corporal and four privates. The story shall go on in the Chancellor’s words : “ I proposed to the corporal that we should proceed out of my study into the great room which adjoins it, and from that into the dining-room ; and, the mob being in the hall and a little adjoining room, we should be able to surprise and secure them. He was a Scotchman, and said:

‘ We are not strong enough to keep them in, but with good management we may drive them out. I won’t let my men put powder and ball into their muskets, but they shall fix their bayonets, and if you will go with me, and, when we get out of this study into the hall, will give me your orders to charge them with the bayonets. I will, and my men shall obey those orders ; but we must make the best appearance we can, and as there are only four soldiers, they must follow one by one, and we must so manage the matter that the mob may suppose that there will be no end of them that are coming.’ Accordingly we so advanced, and the corporal calling out to his soldiers to come in language tending to make it believed that they were numerous, the mob fled with great precipitation. The front door being demolished, two soldiers guarded the entrance, crossing their muskets. The mob held a consultation at the top of Keppel Street, whether they should attack the house again ; but, conceiving the military corps inside to be strong, they gave it up. I brought into the house by their collars two of the mob. and told them they would be hanged. One of them bid me look to myself, and told me that the people were much more likely to hang me than I was to procure any of them to be hanged. They were sent before a justice of the peace; but the soldiers said they would do their duty as soldiers, but they would not be witnesses.”

“ My poor excellent corporal and commander,” adds Lord Eldon, “ was shot at Waterloo.” Across France Napoleon, escaped from Elba, iwas hurrying towards Paris and the imperial crown. What was the life of one poor Scotchman to him? Five days before the date of the letter, on March 10, Romilly recorded: “ As I was coming out of the Court of Chancery to-day I was told that intelligence hail just arrived that Bonaparte had landed in the south of France on the 1st or 2d of this month, and was marching towards Grenoble. I gave no credit to the information, but I find it is but too true. It is in everybody’s mouth, and has filled every one with consternation.” It is to this dreadful rumor that the postscript of Lord Eldon’s letter refers.

The Chancellor’s eldest brother, William Scott, under the title of Lord Stowell, is famous as the great judge of the High Court of Admiralty. Strong as the heads of the two brothers were for law, scarcely less strong were they for port wine. When some one asked Lord Eldon what exercise his brother took, “ None that I know of,” he replied, “ except the exercise of eating and drinking.” In spite of hard work and the bottle they both outlived by many years the Psalmist’s limit of life. The president of an Oxford college told me that his father, a clergyman of the Church of England, once took the chair at a dinner given by one of the London companies, at which Lord Eldon was the chief guest. When the table had been cleared, the old man, who was past eighty, said to his host, “ I always like to know how I am going on with my port, so you must let me have a bottle to myself which shall not circulate. I have given you two pieces of preferment in the Church ; so you must now show your gratitude by filling my glass for me.” Before long the old fellow remarked, “ You are not showing your gratitude ; you are leaving my glass empty.” When he had finished his two bottles he said, “ When I was Chancellor and hard - worked I often drank three bottles at a sitting, and now and then four.” Once he and Chief Justice Kenyon came to a political meeting at the Duke of Wellington’s house, both drunk. They were not, however, without excuse; their loyalty had overcome them at the table of one of the royal dukes which they had just left. It was remarked that while the Chief Justice “talked exceeding nonsense,” the exChancellor talked sense. Drunk or sober, steady on their legs or reeling, both of these noblemen were always justly looked upon as pillars of the Church.

These reminiscences of great men are leading me too far astray. I will now give William Scott’s letter : —

MY DEAR SIR, — The K. is better. It is fit it should be known that the Increase of his Malady the other Day was produced by the following circumstances — He was perfectly collected & composed on Thursday Morning ; and expressed a great desire to settle the Matter of breaking up the Establishment of the deceased P. Amelia. He was so well that the Physicians saw no objection to it, particularly as He said that if the Matter was once off His Mind, He shd feel Himself much relieved. He went through the whole detail in the most accurate manner, settling all the Pensions, Allotments & Allowances with the utmost propriety correcting the Mistakes of other Persons concerned and referring most minutely to former conversations upon it — But unfortunately the business lasted three hours; It fatigued Him, and the fatigue brought on restlessness & irritation — Thank God He is now recovering from it.

I am, dear Sir,

very faithfully yours,

W. SCOTT

LONDON, November nineteenth, 1810 Worshipful THOMAS BURDON ESQ Mayor of Newcastle on Tyne.

Geoi’ge III.’s mind never recovered from the shock given it by the death of his favorite daughter. He lived ten years longer, bereft of that reason which, when it had been in force, had worked mankind such dreadful wrong. The princess died on November 2. Miss Burney thus describes her third birthday, kept at Windsor on August 7, 1786: —

“ The manner of keeping the birthdays here is very simple. All the Royal Family are new-dressed; so — at least so they appear — are all their attendants. [As George III. had fifteen children, there were, with his birthday and the Queen’s, seventeen birthdays to keep every year, and seventeen new suits required.] The dinners and deserts are unusually sumptuous. ... If the weather is fine all the family walk upon the terrace, which is crowded with people of distinction. It was really a mighty pretty procession. The little Princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and a fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted in the parade, and turning from side to side to see everybody as she passed ; for all the terracers stand up against the walls to make a clear passage for the Royal Family, the moment they come in sight.”

George Birkbeck Hill.