A Talk Over Autographs: Second Paper

THE following letter I received from the late Astronomer Royal, Sir G. B. Airy, when I was writing the Life of my uncle, Sir Rowland Hill. A few years ago, an American gentleman, to whom I was showing Oxford, spoke of Sir Rowland Hill as if he had not only reformed the postal system of the world, but had also, by way of Sabbath day rest, cracked a good many jokes in the pulpit. When I pointed out to him the strange confusion he was making, he replied, “ Down in Illinois we always think the postal reformer and the great pulpit humorist one and the same man.” The indexmaker of the Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle has fallen into the same blunder. Carlyle, writing of the Rev. Edward Irving, says, “ Unless he looks to it, he bids fair for becoming a kind of theological braggadocio, an enlarged edition of the Rev. Rowland Hill.” In the index this passage is referred to under “ Hill, Sir Rowland.” Some of the passages in Sir G. B. Airy’s letter are on a subject too deep both for my understanding and for the columns of a magazine. These I omit. Lord Macaulay’s “ astounding blunder” is to be found in his History of England (vol. v. p. 96 of the original edition), where he says, “ In America the Spanish territories spread from the equator northward and southward through all the signs of the Zodiac far into the temperate zone.” The “ lady ” was Mrs. Oliphant, “ whose admirable stories,” wrote Sir Rowland Hill, “ I never miss reading.” She in Whiteladies represents “ a new moon making her way upwards in the pale sky.”

ROYAL OBSERVATORY, GREENWICH,

LONDON S. E., 1879, November 2.

DEAR SIR, — I have spent a Sunday morning on the paper containing the Astronomical parts of Sir Rowland Hill’s Biography. And I have been much interested in it. ... I remember the 1811 Comet well. I am surprised that R. H. does not mention the 1807 Comet; I (then in my 7th year) saw it; my father tied a telescope into some pales to show it to me. . . .

Lord Macaulay’s blunder is astounding. But you must pardon the lady. Until there is an Academy for Lunarian appearances, ladies, painters, and poets will claim the privilege “ quidlibet audendi.” Perhaps I may mention the following. A real astronomer had made a picture containing the moon, without any leading stars. On looking at it I said, “ This drawing must have been made about the middle of August, between 3h and 4h in the morning.” And this proved strictly true. My friend was much surprised at my relying on ¹ the accuracy of his lunar picture. . . .

I am, dear Sir,

Faithfully yours,

G. B. AIRY.

The great comet of 1811 Harriet Martineau, “ then,” as she tells us, “ nine years old, and with remarkably good eyes,” could not see, apparently from a strange kind of nervous excitement. “ Night after night,” she records, “ the whole family of us went up to the long windows at the top of my father’s warehouse ; and the exclamations on all hands about the comet perfectly exasperated me, — because I could not see it! ‘ Why, there it is! ’ ‘ It is as big as a saucer.’ ‘ It is as big as a cheese-plate.’ ‘ Nonsense ; you might as well pretend not to see the moon.’ Such were the mortifying comments on my grudging admission that I could not see the comet. And I never did see it.”

My Life of Sir Rowland Hill, with which was incorporated his History of Penny Postage, — a posthumous publication,—I dedicated to Mr. Gladstone, a statesman for whom he had always entertained a feeling of great respect and strong affection. I received the following letter in acknowledgment: —

10 DOWNING STREET, WHITEHALL,

Dec. 11, 1880.

MY DEAR SIR, — Upon receiving your kind gift, which I highly value, I was sanguine enough to begin the perusal of the Life, in the hope of associating with my thanks some evidence that your work had not been unappreciated. I was very greatly interested in the account of the family. . . . But the urgent circumstances of the present winter have arrested my progress for the time. . . .

Your Uncle was unhappy in the original association of his measure with a state of chronic deficiency for which he was in no ways responsible; but on the other hand happy beyond almost all other great projectors in the rapidity with which his plans informed and spread throughout the world, under his eyes.

I remain, my dear Sir,

Faithfully yours,

W. E. GLADSTONE.

G. B. HILL, ESQ.

Matthew Arnold, as all who are acquainted with his prose writings know to their cost, was as strong on the unlawfulness of a widower’s marriage with his deceased wife’s sister as Dr. Primrose was on the monogamy of priests. While the worthy vicar never wearies us by insistence on his great doctrine, Mr. Arnold sometimes bores even those who are of his own way of thinking by his iteration, and now and then, by his want of taste, offends those whose opinions he attacks. In the following correspondence, however, he is seen in that pleasant, gentle light which he so well knew how to diffuse around him : —

To MATTHEW ARNOLD, ESQ. :

MY DEAR SIR, — I hope you will excuse this letter’s liberty and abruptness. Weak sight makes writing painful, but a sense of duty compels the effort. You are a powerful public teacher, and must feel how important it is that your teaching should be sound. On one point on which I have a strong personal feeling I deem it otherwise. Again and again you have thrown ridicule on those who seek to remove the prohibition on marrying a deceased wife’s sister. Now that prohibition has kept me a widower nearly forty years, the alternative having been to act unjustly to my sister-in-law and to my children, mutually and strongly attached. In effect, out of the eighty years of my life I have passed but eight in the married state, and I cannot but thank and honour those who would have released me and many more from a very painful and most unprofitable dilemma.

Pray forgive me for thus writing, and believe me,

Ever yours sincerely,

To—— ESQ. :

WESLEYAN TRAINING COLLEGE,

WESTMINSTER S. W., December 19th, 1878.

MY DEAR SIR, — I have to thank you for your letter, and I assure you I was both interested and touched in reading it. I need not remind you that a rule may operate severely in individual cases, and yet may be for the general advantage. For instance, I can conceive a case in which the prohibition to marry one’s niece (a marriage permitted in Protestant Germany) may be felt to press hardly ; yet I have no doubt at all that such a prohibition is for the general advantage. Still, though I may continue to differ from you on the main point in question, I am not the less grieved to have said anything to give pain to one for whom I feel — if you will allow me to say so — such sincere esteem and regard as yourself.

Believe me, dear Mr. —

Most truly yours,

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

My readers must not infer from the address of this letter that Matthew Arnold, who was never weary of scoffing at the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant Religion, lived in the Wesleyan Training College. It was, no doubt, as an inspector of schools that he was visiting it. While the students were writing their answers to the questions he had set them, he would fill up the time by his private correspondence. Against his confident belief on this marriage question it is interesting to set the no less confident belief on the same question of a brother poet, a man of vast learning and a strong Churchman. “ Has it never occurred to you,” wrote Robert Southey, “that this law is an abominable relic of ecclesiastical tyranny ? Of all second marriages, I have no hesitation in saying that these are the most natural and the most suitable.”

Few among my autographs do I value more highly than the following letter from Sir Thomas Browne to the antiquary Dugdale, the author of the Monasticon. Browne, Johnson, and Blackstone are the great boasts of Pembroke College, Oxford, in which I passed nearly four years of my student life. By the side of these three great luminaries, her other sons, such as Shenstone and Whitefield, are stars of small magnitude. “ Sir Thomas Browne,” writes Johnson, “ was the first man of eminence graduated from the new college, to which the zeal or gratitude of those that love it most can wish little better than that it may long proceed as it began.” De Quincey, in his Essay on Rhetoric, speaks of him as “ deep, tranquil and majestic as Milton.” Johnson, however, described his style as “ indeed a tissue of many languages.” Nevertheless he sometimes imitated it. When he tells how Frederick the Great “ commanded one of liis Titanian retinue to marry a tall woman that they might propagate procerity,” Boswell accuses him of “ indulging his Brownism.” The “ defect of faith ” with which Browne had been charged, Johnson victoriously repels. “Nor,” he writes, “can contempt of the positive and ritual parts of religion be imputed to him who doubts whether a good man would refuse a poisoned eucharist, and ‘ who would violate his own arm rather than a church.’ ” In his Dictionary, the great lexicographer, quoting this passage, defines “ violate ” “to injure by irreverence.” In the year in which Browne wrote his letter to Dugdale he took unto himself a wife. The marriage was a happy one, even though he had lately declared in his Religio Medici that “ the whole world was made for man, but only the twelfth part of man for woman,” and that “ man is the whole world, but woman only the rib or crooked part of man.” With such doctrines as these, he is not likely to be held in high esteem in Radcliffe College.

HONORD SIR, — Though somewhat late I returne you most heartie thancks for your excellent booke ; For wh the whole nation oweth you soe many acknowlegdments. I thinck myself exceeding happy to have the libertie of communication with a person of so approoued worth ingenuitie knowledge & integritie as yourself. I should bee restlesse to do you service if it were possibly in my power, & I beseech you to retaine a sensible apprehension of my earnest desires & true affection unto you. I would not omitt to enclose this wh somewhat concerneth the discourse of the fennes of wh I am very glad to learne the world shall not long languish in expectation, worthy Sir I am

Your most affectionat friend

servant & honorer

THO. BROWNE.

Sept xi,

NORWICH.

To my worthy & truly

honord friend Mr Dugdale

to bee left at the

Heralds office

London.

[Endorsed, probably by Dugdale.]

“ Dr Browne of Norwich his Letter upon receipt of the second volume of the Monasticon Sept xith, 1661.”

Among Browne’s posthumous pieces is included Answers to Sir William Dugdale’s Enquiries about the Fens.

On July 11, 1853, Macaulay recorded in his Diary: “ Read Haydon’s Memoirs. Haydon was exactly the vulgar idea of a man of genius. He had all the morbid peculiarities which are supposed by fools to belong to intellectual superiority, — eccentricity, jealousy, caprice, infinite disdain for other men ; and yet he was as poor, commonplace a creature as any in the world. He painted signs, and gave himself more airs than if he had painted the Cartoons. Whether you struck him or stroked him, starved him or fed him, he snapped at your hand in just the same way. He would beg you in piteous accents to buy an acre and a half of canvas that he had spoiled. Some good-natured Lord asks the price. Haydon demands a hundred guineas. His Lordship gives the money out of mere charity, and is rewarded by some such entry as this in Haydon’s journal: ‘ A hundred guineas, and for such a work ! I expected that for very shame he would have made it a thousand. But he is a mean, sordid wretch.’ In the mean time the purchaser is looking out for the most retired spot in his house to hide the huge daub which he has bought for ten times its value out of mere compassion.” There is somewhere in America, unless the flames have claimed their own, Haydon’s “ great picture ” of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. It was exhibited in London in 1820 ; if we can trust the painter’s account, more than fifteen hundred pounds were taken in shillings at the door. It is said that he estimated that his genius deserved three thousand pounds a year, and that at the rate of three thousand pounds a year he had a right to live, whatever income he made. The base tradesmen with whom he dealt, indifferent to genius and its rights, not getting their accounts settled, twice threw him into a debtors’ prison. That he would condescend to receive small payments is shown by the following letter, addressed to my mother’s cousin, Mr. Tilt, a London publisher, for whom he seems to have been engraving some plates : —

DEAR SIR, — Cash & activity are the sinews of War — if you proceed as you began — You are the man.

I send you 12

To 12 Num. — £2. 5

The rest as soon as dry; the bearer is trustworthy

Yours &c

B R HAYDON

Ju. 7, 1835.

MR TILT Fleet St.

The following letter from Professor Jowett, the famous Master of Balliol College, was written when I was working at my edition of Boswell. It was by the Clarendon Press —the press and publishing house of the University of Oxford — that the book was brought out. This great establishment was founded with the money made by the sale of Clarendon’s History of the Great Rebellion. Soon after the middle of last century it had sunk into the neglect that overwhelmed learning in the university. In a curious manuscript volume in the possession of the Delegates of the Press it is stated that in 1764 “ the under-servants and pressmen were a set of idle, drunken men, and the house appeared more like an ale-house than a printingroom.” Of the men who did most to give it fresh life, Sir William Blackstone stands among the first. It has long been famous for the beauty and excellence of its printing. Americans who come to Oxford commonly pay a visit, I am told, to the little shop in the High. Street where its publications are sold, so that they may carry away a memorial of the place. A family Bible, I learn, is what they almost always select, — an admirable choice, no doubt, in itself, but not one which brings any satisfaction to authors. They should procure also a specimen of that great division of the Clarendon Press which has always been known as the Learned Side ; the wing of the printing-house, that is to say, in which everything is printed which is not a Bible, a prayer-book, or a hymn-book. The general excellence of the workmanship was attested by the Grand Prix which was awarded to the Press at the last great Exhibition in Paris. Nay, even with this distinction the stream of honors did not cease to flow, as is shown by the following invitation : —

“ Le Président de la République et Madame Carnot prient Monsieur Clarendon Press Grand Prix (Cl. 9) de leur faire l’honneur de venir passer la Soirée au Palais de l’Elysée le Jeudi, 17 Octobre, à 9 heures et 1/2. “ On Dansera.

“ Carte personelle à remettre en entrant.

“ MONSIEUR CLARENDON PRESS, à Oxford, Auglcterre.”

The Press is governed by a board of university men, professors, tutors, and fellows of colleges, known as the Delegates, — a close corporation ; for every vacancy is filled by the votes of the survivors. The vice-chancellor of the university, during his four years of office, is chairman of the board. It was fortunate for me that so sound and ardent a Johnsonian as the Master of Balliol College held this post when I sent in my proposal for a new edition of Boswell. His letter was addressed to Professor Price, at that time secretary of the Press, now Master of Pembroke College.

DEAR PROFESSOR PRICE, — Will you tell Dr. Birkbeck Hill that I shall be vexy happy to read his notes to the life of Boswell, if he thinks I can be of any use to him.

My impression of Boswell is that he was a great genius, which is the most natural explanation of his having written a great book, but weak and vainglorious like Goldsmith, and also a rake and a sot unlike Goldsmith, and always sinning and always repenting, which has a most comical effect. The letters to the Revd. Mr. Temple, the Bishop of Exeter’s Grandfather, though they are chiefly a chronicle of rather low amours, are as well and graphically written as the life of Johnson. Macaulay’s paradox “that he wrote a good book because he was a great fool,” and Carlyle’s correction “ that he wrote a good book in spite of being a great fool,” almost equally miss the mark : the real truth is that he wrote a good book because he was an extraordinary genius of a peculiar kind, gifted with the greatest love of truth and the skill to express it where it would have been impossible to others; also with the strongest power of attaching himself to others, and drawing them out by sympathy ; and he was the most social of human beings, and the greatest lover of human life in every variety of form.

I have been reading lately a book which no doubt Dṛ Hill knows well: Hawkins’ Life of Johnson, well worth reading though prolix. Mṛs Piozzi’s diary throws an entirely new light on the family of Thrale. There is also a book about Johnson published by a Dṛ Campbell, or rather professing to be written by him and published about 30 years ago in N. S. Wales. It contains accounts of Conversations with Johnson — which I believe to be forgeries, though I remember Lord Macaulay reproving me for doubting them. The book was reviewed in the Edinburgh about 28 or 30 years ago, and would be worth looking up for a new life of Boswell. My reason for thinking it a forgery is that it agrees too much with Boswell.

I remain,

Yours ever,

B. JOWETT.

OXFORD, Dec. 3ṛd [1882].

The Master had undertaken a much heavier task than he had dreamed of when he offered to read my notes. In those years he was the busiest man in the university, vice-chancellor, master, professor, and author all rolled into one. After he had seen a few of the proofsheets he confessed that he was satisfied. To him I dedicated my edition of the Life of Johnson. I had to Some extent anticipated his view of Boswell’s character in a work published a few years earlier under the title, Dr. Johnson : His Friends and his Critics. How hard I labored at that little book, for it was my first, and what high hopes I formed ! A year passed away, when one morning I received from my publishers, not a check, but a bill for the few copies I had given away to my friends. My ardor for giving away copies of my various works has ever since remained damped, if not indeed quenched. I still think I was ill used by the world, for who with a calm mind can see his first-born slighted ? Let no one suspect me of any greater sin than vanity in thus mentioning my book. It is out of print, and can be found only at second-hand stalls. I do not know that a much better fate befell Boswell’s Letters to the Rev. Mr. Temple. They have been published nearly forty years, and though they deserve all the praise the Master of Balliol bestowed on them, they have seen no second edition. The “ accounts of conversation,” which he believed to be forgeries, are, I think, genuine. It is indeed a suspicious circumstance that the author puts a profane expression into Johnson’s mouth. Beyond all manner of doubt it was never uttered. Campbell, though a doctor of divinity and a parson, was also an Irishman, and therefore likely enough to have been so free in the use of oaths himself as, without any sense of incongruity or impropriety, to intersperse them wherever a due regard to emphasis seemed to require it. The late Dr. Findlater, the learned editor of Chambers’s Encyclopædia, gave me an instance of this kind of reporting. One day, in company with a most respectable clergyman of the Church of England, a man as highly starched as his own white tie, he went fishing on a loch near Edinburgh. They had two men to row their boat. One of them, a profane fellow, could not open his mouth without letting fly an oath. The clergyman, greatly shocked, rebuked him more than once. On their return to the inn, the second boatman, without any sense of humor, but with a certain touch of Herodotus’s manner of reporting a conversation, told the landlord that his mate had sworn so much that at last the English minister had cried out that he would be d— to h— if he would stand it any longer.

I received a second communication from the Master of Balliol a year later, from which I extract the following acute piece of criticism. The original letter I have had the pleasure to add to the great Johnsonian collection of my friend Mr. R. B. Adam, of Buffalo.

“ It is a curious question whether Boswell has unconsciously misrepresented Johnson in any respect. 1 think, judging from the materials which are supplied chiefly by himself, that in one respect he has — lie has represented him more as a sage and philosopher in his conduct as well as his conversation than he really was, and less as a rollicking ‘ King of Society.’ The gravity of Johnson’s own writings tends to confirm this, as T suspect, erroneous impression. His religion was fitful and intermittent, and when once the ice was broken he enjoyed Jack Wilkes, though he refused to shake hands with Hume. 1 was much struck by a remark of Sir John Hawkins (excuse me if I have mentioned this to you before) : ‘ He was the most humorous man l ever knew.’ I shall be most happy to talk about the subject when you return to England ; ἐμοὶ πϵρὶ ∑ωκρáτoυς ϵἰπϵῖν τε καὶ ἀκοῦσαι ἀεὶ ἥδιστον.” ²

The passage in Hawkins to which the Master referred is as follows : “ In the talent of humour there hardly ever was Johnson’s equal, except perhaps among the old comedians.” I shall not, in this article, include the autograph which I possess of the great man, for I have already printed it among his Letters. I have in my collection the following curious cutting from a London newspaper, published a day or two after his body was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey : —

“ There were present at the ill-performed service of yesterday not a single Bishop, and not six Curates. — Not one titled individual of our own country, or of the numerous foreigners amongst us. — No official deputations from our Universities or establishments of science. — Scarcely any of the learned professions. — Not even the Choir, and but four of the Chapter of the Cathedral which was honoured with his interment. — The Dean did not make one of those four.

“ The only persons who understood themselves and their condition enough to attend as mourners on this sad solemnity were about thirty individuals, distinguished purely by science, sentiment and taste.”

Among the mourners were Reynolds and Burke. What was the whole bench of bishops, or a dozen mourning-coaches full of “ titled individuals,” weighed against either of them ?

Shenstone, to whom I will next introduce my readers, was one of “ that nest of singing-birds ” who last century gave renown to Pembroke College. He died a bachelor ; yet he must have known what love was when he wrote so prettily : —

It was as a melancholy bachelor that he knew so well how to sing the praises of an inn: —

His letter, which bears no address, is as follows: —

Sunday 23d Sept. 1759.

My Compṭs Mṛ Prattenton sent hither last night to request a Few Fish, of any sort, for his Father’s Feast (who is Bailiff elect) on Thursday week — I am as unwilling to excuse myself as I am unable to oblige him, from any Pool of mine at the Leasowes — Could Mṛ Hylton or Mṛ Smith of Lapall contrive any means of procuring a good handsome dish, which I should be very glad to send him, at any reasonable expence ? I am to let him know this afternoon.

I forgot to acquaint Mṛ Hylton yṭ his method of coloring my grove &c. is to finish everything yṭ requires one Color, first ; then every thing of another, &c. By this means he will be able to compleat flue while he does one ye other way — ’Tis ye grand arcanum in all manufactures. — Did I give Mṛ Hylton all my Kingfishers? For upon examining my Drawer I can find none — I should be glad of a middlin Dose of Rhubarb & Crem. Tartar by the Bearer.

WILL : SHENSTONE.

Mṛ Hodgetts & his Sister here — For what various uses, in the Name of Wonder, is ye Implement intended, that came Last Night ?

4 o’clock Afternoon — Admiral Smith & a Mṛ Wood in one Chaise, Mṛ Harris & Miss Milward in another — Left me about 3 — Lord Stanford’s Servants &c. The Day exquisitely fine.

The Leasowes, — Shenstone’s pretty place in Worcestershire, — though it covered but a few acres of ground, nevertheless, by the landscape-gardening with which he adorned it, swallowed up most of his fortune. No sooner did he come into possession of the property than “he began to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters ; which he did with such judgment and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great, and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.” It long remained a show place. I have heard my father say that, in his boyhood, he and his schoolfellows, on a holiday, would walk over to see it all the way from a town many miles off. The bailiff-elect — the office corresponded to that of mayor — probably belonged to Hales - Owen, the neighboring market town. In its grammar school Shenstone was educated, and in its churchyard he found his last resting-place. The poet’s equanimity must have been greatly disturbed by the request for fish. “ His pleasure was all in his eye ; he valued what he valued merely for its looks ; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fish in his water.”

Some years ago, in the course of my reading I came across the following passage in Mrs. Piozzi’s Journey through Italy: “ I have no roses here [at Florence] equal to those at Lichfield, where on one tree I recollect counting eightyfour within your reach ; it grew against the house of Dr. Darwin.” It raised in my mind so pleasant a picture of the home of the poet who sang of the Loves of the Plants that I sent a copy to the great naturalist, Charles Darwin, who was, I knew, writing Erasmus Darwin’s Life. He replied : —

DOWN, BECKENHAM, KENT,

July 1st.

DEAR SIR, — I am much obliged to you for your kindness in writing to me. My notice of the life of my grandfather will be very short, and I doubt whether I shall go into such detail as to justify my using the little fact communicated by you.

Yours faithfully & obliged,

CH. DARWIN.

When we reflect on the place Darwin holds in the realm of science, — a place which no one has held since Newton died, — the two following entries have a certain air of strangeness about them. Macaulay recorded in his diary on July 17, 1856, “ In the evening, Darwin, a geologist and traveller, came to dinner ” (at Lord Stanhope’s). Little did Macaulay suspect that one greater than Macaulay was there. There is this to be said by way of excuse for him, that The Origin of Species had not at that time been published. Of that work Carlyle wrote, “ Wonderful to me, as indicating the capricious stupidity of mankind ; never could read a page of it, or waste the least thought upon it.” A contemporary of Milton’s described the immortal poet as “ one Mr. Milton, a blind man.” Carlyle, with all his learning and all his genius, here puts upon himself a scarcely less ridiculous mark.

From the gentle poet William Cowper I have a letter dated Olney, March 8, 1786, addressed to

Mr. Johnson, Bookseller

No. 72

St. Paul’s Church Yard

London.

It is marked “Post pd 4ḍ ” Had Cowper been writing to a man whom he considered his equal or superior in rank, he would not have prepaid his letter. To do so might have been looked upon as an insult, for it would have implied that his correspondent was too poor to afford the postage. Above the address there is the following strange endorsement : —

Capt. Parker

on board Sarah

Griffin’s Warf [sic]

Cask of wine

Stone Bottlells [sic]

A Cradle &c.

As this letter is printed in full in the fifteenth volume of Southey’s edition of Cowper’s works, I shall quote no more than this extract : —

“ I learn with pleasure from my friends in Town that the Subscripṭ prospers, and is likely to be brilliant and numerous. It is very little that in my situation I can contribute to it myself. I have however disposed of most of my papers, and some time about Easter, a friend of mine will attend you with 2 or 3 names and payments that have been pick’d up in this part of the world. The name of that friend is Bull. He is an Humourist and in some respects an oddity, but at the same time a man of excellent qualities and of much learning. Him I can see but seldom, for he lives at the distance of 5 miles from Olney, and he is the only neighbour of mine with whom I can converse at all.”

It was a new version of the Iliad that Cowper was publishing by subscription. He had begun it almost by chance. Three months before the date of his letter he had written to John Newton: “ For some weeks after I had finished the Task, and sent away the last sheet corrected, I was through necessity idle, and suffered not a little in my spirits for being so. One day, being in such distress of mind as was hardly supportable, I took up the Iliad; and merely to divert attention, and with no more perception of what I was then entering upon than I have at this moment of what I shall be doing this day twenty years hence, translated the twelve first lines of it. The same necessity pressing me again, I had recourse to the same expedient, and translated more.” With the success of the subscription he was well pleased. “ All the Scotch universities subscribed. Some friend who tried his influence at Oxford received for answer that they subscribed to nothing.” To Cambridge he felt himself “ much more obliged, and much disposed to admire the liberality of the spirit which had been shown there.” Oxford had indeed sunk low in this indifference to literature, and had sunk rapidly. A quarter of a century earlier, when an edition of Swift’s works, in seventeen volumes, octavo, was announced, fifty-two copies were subscribed for by the college libraries and residents in Oxford, while in addition fifty-four were ordered by the booksellers. In Cambridge, but thirty copies in all were taken. Pope’s success was far greater than Cowper supposed, for he had five hundred and seventy-five subscribers at six guineas each. By the further payment which his bookseller undertook to make he received over five thousand pounds.

Mr. Bull, “ the humourist,” Cowper sometimes addressed in his letters as “ Carissime Taurorum.” He described him as “ a dissenter, but a liberal one ; a man of letters and of genius; a master of a fine imagination; or rather, not master of it, — an imagination which, when he finds himself in the company he loves and can confide in, runs away with him into such fields of speculation as amuse and enlighten every other imagination that has the happiness to be of the party ; at other times he has a tender and delicate sort of melancholy in his disposition not less agreeable in its way. No men are better qualified for companions in such a world as this than men of such a temperament. . . . Such a man is Mr. Bull. But — he smokes tobacco. Nothing is perfect.

From the recluse of Olney — as timid as his own pet hares — to that king of blusterers, Daniel O’Connell, is a long stride; the gulf between the two men can be bridged by verse. Whether the following lines, which are in the handwriting of the great agitator, were composed by him I do not know. Mr. John Dillon, to whom I repeated them, had never heard them before.

DANIEL O’CONNELL.

29th April, 1837.

The first couplet recalls two lines in Pope’s Sappho to Phaon : —

A high place, indeed, did O’Connell hold in “ the warm hearts and generous affections ” of his countrymen. A year earlier than the date of this autograph Lord Brougham wrote: “Right or wrong, O’Connell has the Irish so attached to him that I see no other way of keeping that country quiet but through him.” In 1826, Crabb Robinson chanced to he his fellow-traveler in crossing Ireland. “ It was known on the road that ‘ the glorious Counsellor ’ was to be on the coach, and therefore at every village and wherever we changed horses there was a knot of people assembled to cheer him.” Carlyle, who visited Dublin twenty years later, thus describes “this Demosthenes of blarney:” “I saw Conciliation Hall and the last glimpse of O’Connell, chief quack of the then world ; first time I had ever heard the lying scoundrel speak. Every sentence seemed to me a lie, and even to know that it was a detected lie.” Another twenty years passed by, when John Bright, in one of his great speeches, said of the old agitator, “ I know of nothing that was favorable to freedom, whether in connection with Ireland or England, that O’Connell did not support with all his great powers.” Cobden, however, had never trusted him, though they were so often found voting in the same lobby. “ He always treated me with friendly attention,” he wrote, “ but I never shook hands with him or faced his smile without a feeling of insecurity.”

In the following letter Miss Mitford is, I think, writing about, a collection of autographs and letters which she was having bound. These words of hers, coming from no remote past, will be read with all the greater pleasure in Boston, recalling as they do so pleasantly and so truthfully the memory of Mr. Fields.

SWALLOWFIELD, Friday.

No parcel yet, my dear Mṛs H——, and what is worse I have just received a packet from Boston, — autumn leaves from the American Forests, collected for me by Mṛs Sparks, wife of the President of Harvard University, — which looks as if the steamer by which our parcel might have arrived had come in, so that for this week I have no hopes. Yet I have a letter to-day from Mṛs [illegible], so it is not sent there, and all I wḍ ask of you is to contrive that room may be left to insert the contents when time permits of their coming, for of Mṛ Fields I am quite sure, — he never failed in an act requiring energy and kindness in his life, and would certainly not begin by failing towards me. What I asked of him was Portrait and Autograph of Longfellow and a drawing of Washington’s House; Portrait and autograph of Whittier; Dọ of Holmes, of Ticknor, and of Hawthorne, and I think I said Prescott. To this I added a sweeping clause that we should be glad of as many things bearing upon the book as he could pick up. I also expect from another quarter autographs of Mṛ Macaulay and Alfred Tennyson ; I expect that the friend who has promised these is waiting to bring them to me and prevented by weather, — he lives nine miles off, — but they could go, I suppose, on the top or bottom of the page, pasted on. So probably could some that I expect of Mṛ [illegible] & Gerald Griffin. By the way, there is a portrait of the last prefixed to his brother’s Life of him, a not uncommon book.

Mṛ Kingsley came to me on Monday all through the rain & sate with me three hours. He brought the promised autograph, but it, turned out to be a sonnet to myself so full of gracious compliment as to be quite unfit to send to yon — so the note, which is very characteristic and has a date, which the sonnet has not, must do instead. He tells me that the lithograph is a caricature, but that a good print of himself is coming out, if you think it worth keeping a place for. He is a charming person.

I have to-day a delightful letter from Mṛ Dillon, to whom I am about to write forthwith. Make my kindest compliments to Mṛ H——. If they have had similar rain in Holland Amsterdam must be under water. Our meadows are turned into lakes. Ever, dear Mṛs H——, faithfully yours,

M. R. MITFORD.

Crabb Robinson, who met Miss Mitford in 1824, describes her as having “ pleasing looks, but no words.” A very different account of her talk is given by Ticknor, who visited her eleven years later. “ She seemed,” he writes, “ about fifty, short and fat, with very gray hair, perfectly visible under her cap, and nicely arranged in front. She has the kindest, and simplest manners, and entertained us for two hours with the most animated conversation and a great variety of anecdote, without any of the pretensions of an author by profession, and without any of the stiffness that generally belongs to single ladies of her age and reputation. We liked her very much, and the time seemed to have been short when, at ten o’clock, we drove back to Reading.”

The letter printed below, a mere nothing in itself, but nevertheless showing the natural gracefulness of the writer, was given me by a young Englishman, who by his great learning had won Renan’s esteem: —

PERROS-GUIREC (CÔTES DU NORD), 11Août, 1889.

CHER MONSIEUR ——: Nous serons ici jusqu’aux premiers jours d’octobre. Votre visite serait pour nous la plus vive des joies. Venez ; nous n’avons que des rochers ; mais ils sont de belle qualité. Nous vous les montrerons.

Croyez à ma meilleure amitié.

E. RENAN.

Ecrivez-moi quand vous vieudrez. Je vous donnerai l’itinéraire pour atteindre notre désert.

From Renan who escaped from the Church of Rome to Newman who escaped to it the transition is not difficult. The cardinal, some years ago, rewrote certain scenes in Terence’s Eunuchus, so as to render it fit for boys to act. My father, an old schoolmaster, who in his younger days had often made his pupils perform Latin plays, expressed his pleasure in a letter which Newman saw. He in his turn was pleased, as the following letter shows. I have been told by a friend who for many years lived with him in the closest intimacy that he was peculiarly sensitive to the opinion of others. He always wished to stand well with the world. A defense of himself he had long meditated, when Kingsley, by his onslaught, gave him an opportunity. He seized it with eagerness, caring next to nothing about his assailant, but very much about the esteem of his countrymen. He read with the greatest satisfaction all the favorable reviews of his Apologia which came before him. A laudatory article in the London Times, when a cardinal’s hat was conferred on him, kept him in high spirits for some days.

REDNALL, Septṛ 21, 1870.

DEAR SIR, — Your uncle’s letter has gratified me very much, and I thank you for showing it to me.

It is a bold thing to alter a Classic, and I only did it for our own boys. In receiving the commendation of strangers, I gain what I never aspired to, and what is a pleasant surprise to me.

When you write to Mṛ Hill, I hope you will express my acknowledgements to him.

I am, dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours,

JOHN H. NEWMAN.

From Cardinal Newman, the mender of plays, I pass easily to Mr. Henry Irving, with whom I corresponded last summer about a Johnsonian treasure in his possession. He wrote to me as follows :

LYCEUM THEATRE, 14 July, 1894.

MY DEAR SIR, — I have no doubt that it was from Thomas Osborne, as you suggest, Johnson received the Shakespeare folio (“ The Second Impression ”) which I possess.

There are three inscriptions, which run thus : —

(1.) “Boṭ at Dṛ Johnson’s Sale Feb. 18. 1785. S. I.”

(2.) “This book at ye death of Theobald the editor of Shakspear came into the hands of Osborn ye bookseller of Gray’s Inn —who soon after presented it to the late Dṛ Johnson.

S. I. Feb. 25, 1785.”

(3.) (This is a printed cutting pasted in.) “ In the late sale of Dṛ Johnson’s books there were several articles which sold wonderfully cheap, particularly the following — a folio edition of Shakespeare, the second, with a large number of notes, MS., in the margin, Johnson’s own handwriting. The book had this further incidental circumstance enhancing its value, that it had been the property of Theobald and had many notes also written by him. The title and part of another leaf were wanting. These were the only articles on the per contra side ; and the book, thus extremely curious, sold for only a guinea ! ”

I paid £100 for it !

I am, dear Sir,

Faithfully yours,

HENRY IRVING.

P. S. Who “ S. I.” was I have no idea.

“ It has,” writes Boswell, ££ been confidently related, with many embellishments, that Johnson one day knocked Osborne down in his shop with a folio, and put his foot upon his neck. The simple truth I had from Johnson himself. ‘ Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him. But it was not in his shop ; it was in my own chamber.’ ” May it not be the case that Mr. Irving’s treasure is this great historic folio ? In the good old days, in our grammar schools, the unhappy culprit was often required to provide at his own cost the rods with which he was to be birched. Might not Osborne, in like manner, have provided the folio with which he was to be knocked down ? Even his “ impassive dulness which deadened the shafts of Pope’s satires ” would scarcely have been proof against a beating with his own gift. Nichols, indeed, maintains that it was with a “ Biblia Græca Septuaginta fol. 1594, Frankfort,” that the deed was done. He had himself seen the book in the shop of one Thorpe at Cambridge, and read a note in it by the Rev. Mr. Mills which certified the fact. This folio is not mentioned, however, in the Auction Catalogue of Johnson’s Library. A Greek Bible, I must admit, was left by him as a legacy to a friend. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that so devout a man as the great moralist would have made so profane a use even of the Septuagint. He who took off his hat when he walked over the ground where a chapel had once stood was little likely to select a Bible wherewith to floor his adversary.

George Birkbeck Hill.