(flarttell Utiiuwatty Etbrarg Jltlfaia, Nem ^arfe BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 I 3 1924 093 830 929 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924093830929 ]\i/M^j^u<^M( Talks About A U r O GRAPHS BY GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL EDITOR OF BOSWELL's LIFE OF JOHNSON BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 03t Jlitietstbe JStt-Ss, (lamfinbgr 1896 A^io, Copyright, i8g6. By GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge^ Mass., If. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. TO FRANKLIN CARTER, LL. D. PRESIDENT OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF RESPECT AND REGARD AND IN MEMORY OF THE PLEASANT DAYS OF THE COMMENCEMENT OF 1896 THIS WORK IS DEDICATED LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Portrait of G. Eirkbeck Hill, from a crayon drawing in the Common Room of Pembroke College, Oxford, by W. R. Sy- monds Frontispiece Window of Johnson's Room, Pembroke College, Oxford. (The middle window in the tower was his.) Drawn by J. FuUeylove . lo Portraits of the Edgeworth Family (Maria wearing a hat) from an original drawing in the possession of her niece, Mrs. Arthur G. Butler, Oxford 14 Facsimile Letter of Charles Lamb 24 Facsimile Letter of John Ruskin 26 Statues of Lord Stowell and Lord Eldon in the Library of University College, Oxford 34 Facsimile Letter of W. E. Gladstone. (First and last pages) . 40 Facsimile Letter of Sir Thomas Browne 44 Facsimile Invitation to M. Clarendon Press 48 Facsimile Address of Cowper's Letter to Mr. Johnson . . 60 Autograph of Daniel O'Connell 64 Portrait of Miss Mitford, from the Hope Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford, England 66 Facsimile of Bill of Sale of "the Lands of the late King, Queen, and Prince" 88 Facsimile Letter of Robert Southey 92 Nab's Cottage, the home of Thomas De Quincey and Hartley Coleridge 9^ vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of General Gordon 104 Portrait and Signature of Alexis de Tocqueville . . .112 Facsimile Note from the Khedive to General Gordon . .120 Autograph of George Washington 122 Portrait of D. G. Rossetti, drawn by himself and presented to Arthur Hughes 134 Facsimile of Portion of Letter of D. G. Rossetti .... 138 Portrait of Leigh Hunt, from the Hope Collection in the Bod- leian Library 1 50 Ruins of the Column of Vendome shattered by the Commu- nards of 1871 158 Facsimile of Letter of St. Cecilia, General of the Commu- nards, 187 1 164 Facsimile Address of Balloon Letter 168 Facsimile Billet de Logement 180 Facsimile of Last Page of Letter of W. L. Garrison . . i86 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS I "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 2 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 instru- ment 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 fol- lowers 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 Wel- lington, 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 : — TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 3 "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 in general 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 fol- lowing : — 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 ven- turing to send you as a slight proof of my admi- ration of your genius ? I am, dear sir, Your ardent admirer. Autograph Hunter. Poet Laureate, Esq. 4 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 per- suasive 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, be 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. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 5 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, espe- cially 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 6 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 adorn- ment 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 ear- lier 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 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 7 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 liv- ing, 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 up- braidings of a careful soul of a wife, by the glit- tering 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. 8 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 auto- graph 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," ^ 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. 1 I quote from the original as given in tlie auctioneer's catalogue. In the copy of the letter dictated by Johnson to Boswell from mem- ory this sentence runs, "I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian." I wish the fortunate owner of the original would publish a facsimile, or at all events an exact copy. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 9 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 M' Boswel [i-zV] 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 impransus." It is not too much to assume that of the forty-six pounds, forty were paid for this one word. Never, surely, has 10 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 confes- sion 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 bank- rupt, 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 " im- pransus " 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 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS I I 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 auc- tioneer the original document by which Blackstone sold the copyright of his famous Commentaries. In the hope that it would be secured for the Uni- versity 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 trea- sure. He undertook to direct his agent to bid for it. I was out of England at the sale, but on my 12 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 libra- rian'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, Ox- ford could scarcely have hoped to secure so interesting an autograph of one of the most dis- tinguished of her sons. It too often happens that letters of great inter- est are destroyed through ignorance, indifference, or a perverted sense of duty. Boswell's curious correspondence with his friend Temple, the grand- father 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 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 13 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 na- ture, 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 exec- utors 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 14 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS bequeath his correspondence to a pubHc Hbrary, with a direction that it shall be kept unpublished till after a long lapse of years. Of my own modest collection I have no anec- dotes to relate. No such luck ever befell me as befell the late James T. Fields, who, in a book picked up at a stall, found inserted an autograph letter of Dr. Samuel Johnson's. To my letters, such as they are, I now beg leave to introduce my readers. I shall venture to act the part of show- man, 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, tak- ing 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 Edge- worth, on July 27, 1826, to "Mr. Hunter, 72 St. Paul's Churchyard, London." He was her pub- lisher. 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 : — < H o w o a w w w H TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 15 ... 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. — Mess? 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 com- plete 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 ex- press & within 235^ hours after their reel 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 con- sisted of 9000 copies. Mess? Carey & Lea con- l6 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS template 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. ' Wood- stock ' for example was published in England in 3 vols & sold for thirty-one shillings (7I Dollars) — it was republished here in 2 vols. & sold for I3- Dollars or 6s. gd — 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 extraor- dinary 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 Edge- worth'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 mane, 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 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 1 7 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 Stael, fresh from reading Miss Edge- worth's " Tales of Fashionable Life." Dumont reported that she had said of their author, and said perhaps with not a little truth, " Vraiment elle etait digne de I'enthousiasme, mais elle se perd dans votre triste utilite." Macaulay once compared these women. " Madame de Stael," 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. What- ever 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 l8 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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, & 1 do tell pretty stories.' " In the handwriting of Miss Austen I have no- thing 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 sub- ject." Underneath these lines is written : — " This is the handwriting, not the composition of my Aunt Jane Austen, Authoress of ' Pride and Prejudice ' P. Edw° 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 him- self, even though his gracious patroness. Lady Catherine De Burgh, is not mentioned. From TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 19 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 im- agine. 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 Words- worth 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." 20 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS He resented her visit to the United States and the part she had played in the anti-slavery move- ment. Paul at Athens was "a foreign carpet- bagger," vi^ho 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 course it is needless; but yet I sh? like just to put you in possession of the fact that I 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 \v\ I under- stand: & if it had not been the American busi- ness (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 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 21 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, — w^ is larger than the slave-owners 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 ser- vice 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 three-fifths sufferage, 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 South- ern privilege that the Slave Power has predom- inated so long. Mackay does not see what he has done in proving the great Northern point for a Southern purpose, — any more than Lawley 22 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 c'? 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 I stood afar off, wondering how any one had courage to speak into her long ear-trumpet. " The ear-trumpet," wrote Hawthorne, " seems a sensible part of her, like the antennae of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in, and she helps you to make re- marks 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 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 23 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 coming down, whispered to his neighbor : — " Here falling houses thunder on your head, And here a female atheist talks you dead." She had lately published those Letters to Mr. Atkinson which provoked some wit to say, " Miss Martineau's creed is one 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 exjDectation. She is very intelli- gent-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 m)'- life was more heartily bored with any crea- ture." 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 24 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS small, indicating wondrous ignorance and shallow- ness, even when it was serious and good-man- nered, 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 will- ingly. As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call upon you iox your part of the engagement (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the i".' of March next, & thence forward if it suit you quarterly — You will occasionally wink at Briskets & Veiny Pieces. Your Ob* Sv' C. Lamb. Saturday. J. Scott, Esq., 3 Maida Place, Edg^vare road. Briskets and veiny pieces, as a notable house- wife informs me, are inferior portions of meat. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 25 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 equality. 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 scrib- blers : some gone away, some affronted away, and I am left as the solitary widow looking for water- cresses." He thus mentions him in another let- ter : " 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 confound- ing of the persons under the article John Scott, There are mixed up in one whole, John Scott of Amwell, the Quaker poet, who hated " That drum's discordant sound, Which goes parading round and round ; " 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. Christis, is stated to have fallen in a duel with Lockhart. 26 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS From Mr. Ruskin I have the following letter, written to me eleven years ago, when I was win- tering at San Remo. Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, ;th Dec —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 land- scape, 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 CfBntKijiit.jprsitfBBliirt 1 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 2^ 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 correspond- ent, giving the passage, writes as follows : — " ' Sir, — Last winter, when I was at Ajaccio, I was one day reading Homer by the open win- dow, and came upon the lines — AW ejJLevov, vetfjeXycTLV iotKore'; as re KpovtW NT^ve^tT/s k(jrrjp' tvSrjcri p,evoi Bopeao Koi oiAAoov Za^eiuiv dv£/i*o)v, otVe I'e'^ea crKwevra TlvoLycriv Xvyvprjcn StacrKtSi'Scrtv dcyres • 'Q "/ ' ( 44 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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." John- son, however, described his style as " indeed a tissue of many languages." Nevertheless he sometimes imitated it. When he tells how Fred- erick the Great " commanded one of his Titanian retinue to marry a tall woman that they might propagate procerity," Boswell accuses him of " in- dulging his Brownism." The " defect of faith " with which Browne had been charged, Johnson victoriously repels. " Nor," he writes, " can con- tempt of the positive and ritual parts of reli- gion 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 lexi- cographer, 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 " Reli- gio 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." TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 45 With such doctrines as these, he is not Hkely to be held in high esteem in RadcHffe College. HoNORD Sir, — Though somewhat late I re- turne you most heartie thancks for your excel- lent booke ; For wh the whole nation oweth you soe many acknowlegdments. I thinck myself exceeding happy to have the libertie of com- munication 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 dis- course of the fennes of wh I am very glad to learne the world shall not long languish in ex- pectation, 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. [Indorsed, probably by Dugdale.] " Dr Browne of Norwich his Letter upon receipt of the second volume of the Monasticoti Sept xitt 1661." 46 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS Among Browne's posthumous pieces is in- cluded " Answers to Sir William Dugdale's En- quiries about the Fens." On July II, 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 sup- posed by fools to belong to intellectual supe- riority, — 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, TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 47 unless the flames have claimed their own, Hay- don's " great picture " of Christ's entry into Jeru- salem. 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 conde- scend 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 trust- worthy Yours &c B R Haydon Ju. 7, 1835. Mr Tilt Fleet St. 48 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 manu- script 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 printing-room." 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 com- monly 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 Claren- don Press which has always been known as the ^n|^ < z, < o z o TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 49 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 workman- ship 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 President de la Republique et Madame Carnot prient Monsieur Clarendon Press Grand Prix (CI. 9) de leur faire I'honneur de venir passer la Soiree au Palais de I'Elysee le Jeudi, 17 Octo- bre, a 9 heures et ^. " On Dansera. " Carte personelle a remettre en entrant. "Monsieur Clarendon Press, ^ Oxford, Angleterre." 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 pro- posal for a new edition of Boswell. His letter was addressed to Professor Price, at that time so TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS secretary of the Press, now Master of Pembroke College. Dear Professor Price, — Will you tell D! Birkbeck Hill that I shall be very 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 explana- tion 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 Rev"! Ml 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 John- son. 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 o-ood 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. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 5 1 I have been reading lately a book which no doubt Dr Hill knows well: Hawkins' Life of Johnson, well worth reading though prolix. M'? Piozzi's diary throws an entirely new light on the family of Thrale. There is also a book about Johnson published by a D". 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. yi [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, pro- fessor, and author all rolled into one. After he had seen a few of the proof-sheets 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 52 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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. Be- yond 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 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 53 impropriety, to intersperse them wherever a due regard to emphasis seemed to require it. The late Dr. Findlater, the learned editor of Cham- bers's Encyclopccdia, 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 Edin- burgh. 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 re- spect. I think, judging from the materials which are supplied chiefly by himself, that in one respect 54 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS he has — he 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 I 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. I 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 I ever knew.' I shall be most happy to talk about the subject when you return to England ; ifiol nspl l.axpd'tovg einelv te xai axovdaL del yiSidtov." ^ 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 pos- sess 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 ser- ' " For to me there is no greater pleasure than to have Socrates brought to my recollection ; whether I speak myself, or hear an- other speak of him." TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 55 vice 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 Universi- ties 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 individ- uals, 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 indi- viduals," 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 Col- lege. He died a bachelor ; yet he must have known what love was when he wrote so prettily : " She gazed as I slowly withdrew ; My path I could hardly discern ; So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return." It was as a melancholy bachelor that he knew so well how to sing the praises of an inn : — 56 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS " Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn." His letter, which bears no address, is as fol- lows : — j^ Sunday 23d Sept. 1759. My Comp'.' My 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 My Hylton or M! 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 My Hylton y! his method of coloring my grove &c. is to finish everything y! requires one Qo\ox, first ; then every thing of another, &c. By this means he will be able to compleat five while he does one ye other way — 'T is ye grand ' arcanum in all manufactures. — Did I give My 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. My Hodgetts & his Sister here — For what various uses, in the Name of Wonder, is ye Im- plement intended, that came Last Night } TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 57 4 o'clock Afternoon — Admiral Smith & a M! Wood in one Chaise, My 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 vis- ited 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 school- fellows, 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 equa- nimity 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 58 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 eighty-four 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 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 59 17, 1856, " In the evening, Darwin, a geologist and traveller, came to dinner " (at Lord Stan- hope'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, " Won- derful to me, as indicating the capricious stupid- ity of mankind ; never could read a page of it, or waste the least thought upon it." A contem- porary 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 01ne5^ March 8, 1 786, addressed to Mr. Johnson, Bookseller No. 72 St. Paul's Church Yard London. It is marked " Post pd 4"! " 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 follow- ing strange indorsement : — 6o TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS Capt. Parker on board Sarah Griffin's Warf l_sic'] Cask of wine Stone Bottlells \_szc^ 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 Subscrip' 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 New- .■«-v^ & %S smj -cr^rf *% '.^^y ■:m ADDRESS OF COWPER'S LETTER TO MR. JOHNSON TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 6l ton : " 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 support- able, 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 sub- scribed to nothing." To Cambridge he felt him- self " much more obliged, and much disjoosed 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 rap- idly. A quarter of a century earlier, when an edition of Swift's works, in seventeen volumes, octavo, was announced, fifty-two copies were sub- scribed 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 62 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS hundred and seventy-five subscribers at six guineas each. By the further payment which his book- seller undertook to make, he received over five thousand pounds. Mr. Bull, " the humourist," Cowper sometimes addressed in his letters as " Carissime Tauro- rum." 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. ' Nihil est ab omni Parte beatum.' " 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 be- tween the two men can be bridged by verse. Whether the following lines, which are in the handwriting of the great agitator, were composed TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 63 by him I do not know. Mr. John Dillon, to whom I repeated them, had never heard them before. Still shalt thou be my waking theme, Thy glories still my midnight dream, And every thought and wish of mine, Unconquered Erin ! shall be thine ! , . , Daniel O'Connell. 29th Apnl, 1837. The first couplet recalls two lines in Pope's " Sappho to Phaon : " — " 'T is thou art all my care and my deUght, My daily longing and my dream by night." 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 be 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 wher- ever 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 Concili- ation Hall and the last glimpse of O'Connell, chief quack of the then world; first time I had 64 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 feel- ing of insecurity." In the following letter Miss Mitford is, I think, writing about a collection of autographs and let- ters 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 : — SwALLOWFlELD, Friday. No parcel yet, my dear M'.' H , and what is worse I have just received a packet from Boston, — autumn leaves from the American Forests, col- lected for me by M'? Sparks, wife of the Presi- dent of Harvard University, — which looks as if the steamer by which our parcel might have TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 6$ arrived had come in, so that for this week I have no hopes. Yet I have a letter to-day from M" [illegible], so it is not sent there, and all I w? ask of you is to contrive that room may be left to insert the contents when time permits of their coming, for of M' Fields I am quite sure, — he never failed in an act requiring energy and kind- ness 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; D? of Holmes, of Tick- nor, and of Hawthorne, and I think I said Pres- cott. 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 M' 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 prob- ably, could some that I expect of M^ [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. M' Kingsley came to me on Monday all through the rain & sate with me three hours. He brought the promised autograph, but it 66 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS turned out to be a sonnet to myself so full of gracious compliment as to be quite unfit to send to you — 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 MJ. Dillon, to whom I am about to write forthwith. Make my kindest compliments to M' H . If they have had similar rain in Holland Amsterdam must be under water. Our meadows are turned into lakes. Ever, dear M'.' H , faithfully yours, M. R. MlTFORD. 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 man- ners, 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 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 67 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 grace- fulness of the writer, was given me by a young Englishman, who by his great learning had won Renan's esteem : — Perros-Guirec (C6tes du Nord), II Aout, 1889. Cher Monsieur : Nous serons ici jus- qu'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 qualite. Nous vous les montrerons. Croyez a ma meilleure amitic; E. Renan. Ecrivez-moi quand vous viendrez. Je vous donnerai I'itineraire pour atteindre notre desert. 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 68 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 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 sensi- tive to the opinion of others. He always wished to stand well with the world. A defense of him- self 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 satisfac- tion 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, Sepf- 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 com- mendation of strangers, I gain what I never as- pired to, and what is a pleasant surprise to me. When you write to M' Hill, I hope you will express my acknowledgements to him. I am, dear Sir, Very faithfully yours, John H. Newman. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 6g 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: — (i.) " Bo' at D! 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 D' Johnson. S. I. Feb. 25,1785." (3.) (This is a printed cutting pasted in.) " In the late sale of D' 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 hand- writine. 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 ^0 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS articles on the per contra side ; and the book, thus extremely curious, sold for only a guinea!" I paid /lOO 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 re- lated, 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 cham- ber.' " 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. Nich- ols, indeed, maintains that it was with a " Biblia Graeca Septuaginta fol. 1594, Frankfort," that the deed was done. He had himself seen the book in the shop of one Thorpe at Cambridge, and TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS /I 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 where- with to floor his adversary. Ill For many years I was a regular contributor to the " Saturday Review," — the " Superfine Review" of Thackeray, the " Great Saturday Reviler " of John Bright. With the poHtical part of that jour- nal I had nothing whatever to do. Its politics, the editor told me, were Liberal with a small /. The / was so small that I never discovered it. In religious matters the "Saturday Review "was a pil- lar of the old-fashioned Church and State party. If the first editor was orthodox, he must neverthe- less have been a somewhat strange prop for a church, for he swore like a trooper. There was, I was told, only one man in the ofifice who could stand up against his volley of oaths, and that was the manager, — a quiet-looking old gentleman, whose name of David Jones, pleasant as it looked at the bottom of his quarterly checks, was in itself somewhat suggestive of marine profanity. He was so religious a man that he would not have submitted to be damned even by a prince without rebuke. The proprietor of the i^aper, Mr. Beres- ford Hope, one of the two members of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, used every year to give the contributors a grand dinner at Green- TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 73 wich. How oppressive was the bill of fare ! What courses had to be struggled through, — courses each with its own appropriate wine ! One year I chanced to sit by one of the first physicians of London. When he saw me pass over course after course, and reject wine after wine, he broke out into indignant remonstrances. My delicate state of health, I said, forced me to be abstemious. " My dear sir," he replied, " you should have done as I always do on such occasions. For the last three days I have carefully prepared myself for this dinner, and you can easily see how thorough and successful my preparation has been." I told him that he reminded me of the great Abernethy, who, early in the century, had stood at the head of the medical profession in England. In one of his works he had laid it down as an invariable rule that no more than eight ounces of animal food should be taken in a single day. From time to time he would give a dinner to the most promis- ing of his hospital students. " Now, my lads," he used to say, as they sat down to a well-spread table, " hang the eight-ounce rule ; " and they did sus- pend it for that night, at least. I went on to say that I always wished, at these Greenwich dinners, that every guest were provided with the placard which in certain towns I had seen hung outside the omnibuses when there was room for no more passengers, — " Full inside." Furnished with it. 74 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS a man, when he had had enough, could enjoy a quiet talk with those sitting near him without be- ing worried at every moment by the waiter thrust- ing dishes and bottles of wine over his shoulder. At one of these Saturday Review dinners, the cook had forgotten to bring up the rear of the Ions line of dainties with those boiled beans and bacon in which the man of oaths took special de- light. This happened before I had begun to write for the paper, so that I did not witness the strange scene which followed. The landlord was sent for, and on him was opened a battery of the strongest and most original profanity, worthy of the rage of a man who, having dined on turtle-soup, fish of a dozen varieties, fowl, flesh, and venison, felt that, without beans and bacon, all was vanity and vexa- tion of spirit. The memory of such a man should surely be honored in Boston. Scarcely less strange a pillar of the Anglican Church was my kind friend the second editor. In his early manhood he had filled the pulpit in the Unitarian chapel in London in which Mr. Moncure Conway so long officiated in later years. A Unitarian, I believe, he remained till the end of his life. Like Lord Chancellor Eldon, he was a buttress rather than a pillar of the Church, for he was never seen inside. His were the palmy days of the " Saturday Review." He was supported by a large and strong staff of reviewers. Matthew TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 75 Arnold once said to me that it was easy to see that every subject was intrusted to a writer who was master of it. Amonq- the contributors were E. A. Freeman and J. R. Green, the historians, Sir Henry Maine and Lord Justice Bowen, Sir James Stephen and his brother Mr. LesHe Ste- phen, and Professor Owen. It was in the " Sat- urday Review" that Mr. Freeman and some of the younger writers of his school so often exposed the blunders into which Mr. Froude was always fall- ing. In this exposure, Mr. Green, I have little doubt, often bore his part. I was told that when he was still a young writer, — ■ unhappily he did not live to be an old one, — at an evening party, the lady of the house brought him up to introduce him to Mr. Froude. The great man looked coldly at him for a moment, and then exclaimed, " Sat- urday Reviewer ! Don't want to know him." It is a pity that Mr. Froude could not have laid to heart the lessons that were taught him by his re- viewers, however bitter was the language in which they were imparted. Of strict accuracy he seemed incapable by nature; just as Johnson's friend, Bennet Langton, " had no turn to economy," so Mr. Froude had no turn to truthfulness. Where nature had fallen short, inclination and study did little to remedy the deficiency. He was not, per- haps, aware of his failings. I once sent him a few notes about some errors in his Life of Carlyle. j6 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS He replied, " The utmost care will not prevent mistakes. Printers blunder when no blunders could be anticipated, and the eye passes over them unconsciously." In this defense of himself against the suspicion of carelessness he was so careless as to send his letter unsigned. My friend the editor, from whom I have been led away by this digression, however severe was the formidable " Review " which he so ably con- ducted, was himself the most kindly and gentle of men. He was rarely to be seen anywhere but in his office and his home. He never went to a club, and he never dined out except on a Satur- day when the week's work was done. His daugh- ter, under the name of Ross Niel, had published a few volumes of poetical plays, written with great taste and spirit. His one relief from work was music. Every evening he played on the violon- cello, while she accompanied him on the piano. However late his task was finished, — and every Thursday night it went on to the small hours of the morning, — he soothed his tired nerves by this little concert. How the nerves of the authors were soothed, who were often so mercilessly criti- cised, is matter for conjecture. He once sent me for review the longest modern novel I have ever seen. It could scarcely have fallen short of Richardson's "Clarissa." It was so long that some of the volumes I made no pretense TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS TJ of reading. I did not even cut their leaves. To my surprise, my article was not inserted, though I received for it the usual payment. The author — an old soldier — had just had a play brought out at one of the London theatres, and had re- ceived some compliments in the " Saturday Re- view." He wrote so grateful a letter of acknow- ledgment that my friend owned to me that he had not the heart to ridicule his foolish novel, and so had committed my article to the waste-paper basket. One day he told me of a vexatious blunder into which he had fallen. I had sent him an article on school histories, in which I maintained that Goldsmith's History of Greece with all its errors, written as it was by a man of genius, was a far better book for young people than Dr. Smith's History with all its accuracy and all its dullness. Dr. Smith was a big man in the literary world of London, not by his schoolbooks, though they brought him in many thousands of pounds every year, but as the editor of the " Quarterly Review," that famous " Review " which, years earlier, was thought to have " snuffed out " poor Keats's soul. He had long wished to know my friend, and had asked a common acquaintance to let them meet at his dinner-table. The dinner was fixed for a certain Saturday. On the morning of that very day appeared my article. It had been in type for 78 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS some weeks. That it contained an attack on Dr. Smith's History had altogether escaped my friend's memory. The awkward blunder which he had made he discovered an hour or two before the dinner-party. It was with a heavy heart that he went to meet this brother editor. It was im- possible to allude to the article, and explain his entire innocence of any wish to give offense. He felt sure it would be believed that it was a pre- meditated slight. The meeting was a cool one. Dr. Smith, he told me with a smile, never ex- pressed the slightest wish to see him again. My friend had also an amusing story to tell of the editor of the " Westminster Review," one Mr. H , a successor, though not the immediate successor, of John Stuart Mill in that post. Mr. H published a book on theology, in which he supported his views by citations from the Greek fathers. Of Greek, however, he knew next to nothing, and so he sought the aid of a learned friend in his translations of these passages. Un- fortunately, it too frequently happened that learn- ing and his theological theories were at variance. In those cases it was learning that had to jdeld. The fathers were made to say, not what they had said, but what they ought to have said, and what undoubtedly they would have said had each of them been a Mr. H . He begged my friend, who was at this time assistant editor of the " Sat- TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 79 urday Review," and whom he had long known, to get his book noticed in that journal. All he asked for was a review, — whether favorable or unfavorable he cared not a jot. The work was accordingly sent to a learned critic, who, without any pity, mercilessly exposed the writer's mon- strous blunders. So severe was the criticism that the assistant editor did all he could to keep it from appearing. Just as, in the Reign of Terror, a friendly clerk in the office of the Committee of Public Safety often saved a man's life by keeping the paper containing his case at the bottom of the pile, so the assistant editor for many weeks kept this review at the bottom of the pile of articles that were awaiting insertion. The only result was a succession of bitter reproaches from the author for his indifference to an old friend, who asked for nothing but a review, and cared not whether it was friendly or hostile. At last the review was printed. Mr. H at once quarreled with his old friend, and never spoke to him again. It was not till about the year 1869 that I be- came a contributor to the " Saturday Review ; " but when I had once begun to write there were few numbers for some years in which I had not an article. The editor discovered in me a certain vein of humor, and for the most part sent me books to review which deserved little more than ridicule. What havoc I made among the novel- 8o TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS ists and the minor poets! I amused my readers because I was first amused myself by the absurd- ities which I everywhere found in these writers, and by the odd fancies which rose in my mind as I read their works. At last, however, my humor began to fail. It was over the minor poets that I first became dejected. Even in their tragedies I no longer found anything amusing. I entreated my friendly editor to hand them over to a fresher hand. With the novelists I struggled on for some while ; but finally even they could no longer raise a natural laugh. My mirth was becoming forced, and I let them follow the poets. Now and then, it is true, I lighted upon a pretty story. I recall with pleasure Mrs. Parr's " Dorothy Fox" and Mrs. Walford's " Mr. Smith." Whenever I met modest worth, I hope I always did it justice. One result of all this novel-reading was a total incapacity, lasting for many years, of reading any novels except those which were the favorites of my younger days. To read a novel became so inseparably connected, in my mind, with three pounds ten shillings (about seventeen dollars), the usual payment for a " Saturday Review " article, that without the one I could not undertake the other. All in vain have friends urged me to read the works of Black, Blackmore, Hardy, Howells, Henry James, Stevenson, and Kipling. Not a single story of any one of these writers have I TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 8r ever read, or am I likely ever to read. Perhaps, however, I should be less confident on this matter, for I have just been induced to listen to Miss Jew- ett's " A Marsh Island." It pleased me so much that I see it is possible that stories may solace the hours of my old age, as it draws on, as they charmed those of my youth. Among my autographs there are not a few letters from those who had suffered from my re- views. They were forwarded to me by the editor; for my name was not known, as the contributions were anonymous. An enraged po- etess warned me that the day would come when women would have their rights. Then the das- tardly man who insolently compared the flights of a swan to the waddlings of the domestic duck would have to meet her whom he had thus wronged, face to face, pistol in hand. She was far fiercer than a brother poet who had insisted on being reviewed. " When I read my own poems," he wrote to the editor, " and remember that they are written by a man not yet twenty-one, I am astounded at my own genius. Other men would say ability ; but genius I say, and genius I mean." All I recall of his verse is a single line, in which he describes how the sea " Burst in one terrific boil." A year or so later we received from him the fol- lowing letter : — 82 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS Sir, — You reduced me to a jelly re my " Throbs of Genius." Can you find it in you to discover balm in Gilead for " After-Throbs " ? Your broken-boned Augustus Jinks.' He wrote too late. My review of "After-Throbs " appeared the very day on which I received his letter, and it was not balm that it contained. Unhappy poet! may his genius have long ceased to astound him, but may it be the object of the ardent if somewhat perplexed admiration of a dutiful and loving wife ! Now and then my reviews brought me letters of a different character. One was from a grand- niece of Sir Walter Scott, who was grateful for the resentment I had shown when a popular female novelist, with a great parade of conferring a ben- efit on the world, began to serve up a miserable hash of his stories, each in a penny number some twenty or thirty pages long. In her abridgment of " Rob Roy " she had been so shameless as to make one of the purest of writers guilty of a coarse jest. There was something in this abridg- ment which led me to suspect that it had not been made from the original, but in the very wantonness of indolence from the dramatized 1 I have changed the names of the poet and his works, so that he may not be recognized. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 83 version. I turned to the play, and my suspicions were confirmed, for there I found this same coarse jest. " It is," wrote Scott's niece, " a real pleasure to me to thank you, those who would have done so far better than I being all dead. . . . There is something touching in the fact that Sir Walter's fame lives in children ; we must be men and women to thoroughly appreciate him, but it is as children that we learn to love him and his crea- tions." The following letter came to me from the west coast of Ireland : — Dear Mr. Literary Critic, — I 'd rather like to make your acquaintance in the flesh, as I have done long since in the spirit — for you seem to have a good deal of fun in you, and some feeling ; I say some feeling with caution, for in many ways you are utterly without heart, witness the cruel way you cut up those poor lady-novelists. You hash their grammar — their best and most finely- turned phrases, their plots, their spelling, every- thing is made mince-meat of, without mercy, and without remorse. In the review I have just laid down after some minutes of quiet enjoyment of Mrs. 's novel, how you ravened like a wolf among her pet descriptions (there 's a bit of meta- phor for you now to carp at), and then you were coarse, not to say brutal, when you said that you 84 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS could have seen her heroine hanged with much complacency. I often think you are a sour dis- contented old bachelor with a natural antipathy to the sex — when suddenly you turn round and by a little sentence betray more feeling than I could give you credit for, which makes me sup- pose you are lord of a happy household of girls and boys with quite a fund of general benevo- lence in your composition. Now it was not to tell you all this I have taken the trouble on this blessed Valentine's Day to sit down and write to you. It is to tell you (and here, if you have got so far, you smile sardonically) I too am among the foolish women. I have written a book — of verses — and published them. I have put dashes purposely between each word to give you time to breathe — and I want to know will you review it ? or has it come to you ? or would you if I sent you a copy .'' You said in one of your late " Saturdays " that though nearly every one who can rhyme tries his or her hand at a sonnet — very few succeed. I send you four sonnets. Do you think them any good ? Some reviewer in this sweet little Ireland, peaceful, prosperous, happy Ireland — said I had been following in Mrs. Browning's footsteps, of course I love and honour her — and admire her with all my heart, but I never had the presumption to fancy I could follow her even afar off. One day after I had TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 85 read these remarks, the thought stuck to me, till I wrote these things I send you. When first her sonnets from the Portuguese were given me — I lived on them. I don't know if this letter will ever reach its destination. I have a very vague idea about a re- viewer in the " Saturday." He is a sort of myth — and yet a very palpable reality. ... I 'd almost rather be cut up than passed over in contemptu- ous silence, and I don't think any one with a soul worth calling a soul would let it be " snuffed out by an article." I 'm perfectly sure Keats never deserved that line of Byron's — poor fellow — there was " death in his hand " long before the review in the " Quarterly " was put into it. Farewell. May you live to write many more critiques — but not on me — clever, satirical, abusive, amusing, admirable, as yours sometimes are. I 's,2c^ sometimes — as I before ?,2\.^ some — for you are not infallible. Truly yours, . I cannot call to mind whether we received this lady's poems. Her letter shows that she might have done something better than write sonnets. Anybody can write sonnets, though few can read them. The following letter was written to one of my uncles, a young barrister, by Major John Cart- 86 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS wright, a radical of the old school. So early as 1774, he had published a "Letter in Defence of American Independence." He was at that time an officer in the navy. Fond as he was of his profession, he threw it up rather than take part in the war against our colonies. He entered the militia, and rose to the rank of major. Three years before the date of his letter, he had been present at a meeting held in Birmingham for the purpose of electing a " legislatorial attorney," who was to knock at the door of the House of Com- mons, and claim the right to look after the inter- ests of that great town in Parliament. With all its population, its industry, and its wealth, it was unrepresented. In its case, and in the case of many another English town in those evil days, taxation went without representation. The major and four gentlemen who stood by his side at the meeting were put on their trial at the Warwick assizes for misdemeanor. Another of my uncles had been on the platform, but he was young and insignificant enough to escape prosecution. His brother, the barrister, was one of Cartwright's counsel. On the morning of the trial, the old fellow said to him, " I hope they will send me to prison. It will be the best thing for the cause, for I am sure to die there. I hope they will send me to prison." The judge was too wise to make such a martyr. Cartwright's four friends were TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 87 punished with imprisonment, but he himself was let off with a fine of a hundred pounds. From one of the pockets of his waistcoat, which, after the fashion of the previous century, he wore of a great size, he drew out a large canvas bag, from which he slowly counted one hundred pounds in gold. " He believed, he said, they were all good sovereigns.'" Even the judge himself was amused by his composed manner and his dry tone. Cart- wright outlived his trial three years, dying at the age of eighty-four. His statue stands before his house in Burton Crescent, London. His niece, Mrs. Penrose, under the assumed name of Mrs. Markham, used to be well known to the children of my younger days by her histories. Dear Hill, — Colonel de Vergier and two other French officers, escaped from Bourbon Dungeons, dine with me on Thursday at 5. Make one with us if you can. Yours truly, J. Cartwright. Remember the Titles of the several Acts re- specting Juries. Burton Crescent, Tuesday, 12 Nov. 1822. M. D. Hill, Esq. Boswell Court, Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn. 88 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS The major, it is said, usually signed his letters, " Yours radically." These French officers had escaped from that tyranny which the armies of the allies had imposed on France, and on so much of Europe, after the defeat of Napoleon. The common tyrant had been caged in St. Helena, but over each unhappy nation the tyrant of the ancient stock was only the more firmly fixed. What the rulers of the earth were doing in the year in which this letter was written is thus shown by Miss Martineau : " The king of Prussia amused himself and his advisers with devising a plan of a new order of nobility which should sud- denly become as imposing and influential as if it had been a thousand years old. Ferdinand of Spain was inventing tinsel ornaments for the Virgin. The restored Bourbons of France were studying how best to impose dumbness on their noisy nation. The king of Sardinia was swim- ming paper ducks in a wash basin to while away his time." My father met one of the French officers who had escaped from the Bourbon dun- geons, who said to him, in English with a foreign accent which added not a little to his humor, " I was once hanged in France, but, very fortunately, I was not present on the occasion." He and his fellow-prisoners who had been happy enough to escape the gallows, to which some of their asso- ciates were sent, had been hanged in effigy. The same officer told my father that many of his THe Contradtors for fale of theJLands and Poffefsions of the late King, ^een and Prince, Iiave rcfolved to begin their fittings for Sales upon Monday the Fourth of ^March, 1^49. as to all fuch of the faid Lands Conely) before that time Surveyed, and Certified to the Regifter, whereof there, fhall be immediate Tenancies • from which day the refpe(aive pre- emptions of the immediate Tenants are to be- gin : And for all fuch of the Lands , whereof there are fuch imniediatc Tenancies, and where- of the Surveys {hall be returned after that day, the faid refpedlive preemptions to commence ac- cording to a late Additional Ad of the 18''' of Febu 16^9. William Tayteure Clerk, aneoding, the Contradlors. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 89 countrymen maintained that the French had gained the battle of Trafalgar. " Yes, I reply," the officer continued. " It is true we gained the battle ; but, unfortunately, our French sailors were so ignorant of navigation that they steered their own ships, and their English prizes also, straight into English harbors." From a Bourbon king by an easy transition we arrive at Charles I. ; for both stubbornly moved along the same narrow groove of dull bigotry and tyranny. In this case I have no autograph, but something perhaps as interesting as an autograph, — a handbill announcing the public sale of the property of the Crown. It runs as follows : — " The Contractors for sale of the Lands and Possessions of the late King, Queen, and Prince have resolved to begin their sittings for Sales upon Monday the Fourth of March, 1649, ^^ to all such of the said Lands (onely) before that time Surveyed and Certified to the Register, wherof there shall be immediate Tenancies ; from which day the respective preemptions of the immediate Tenants are to begin : And for all such of the Lands, wherof there are such immediate Tenan- cies, and wherof the Surveys shall be returned after that day, the said respective preemptions to commence according to a late Additional Act of the 1 8th of February, 1648. William Tayleure, Clerk attending the Contractors." 90 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS How great is the transition when we pass from the old radical major and the contractors for the sale of the king's lands to the poet laureate Southey, a man who, with all his noble quali- ties, had broken, like the Lost Leader, from the van and the freemen, and sunk to the rear and the slave ! A few months after the date of the following letter, young George Ticknor met him at an evening party. " There was little company present," writes Ticknor, " and soon after I went in I found myself in a corner with Southey, from which neither of us moved until nearly midnight. He immediately began to talk about America. Of Roger Williams and John Eliot I was ashamed to find that he knew more than I did. Roger Williams, he thought, deserved the repu- tation which Penn has obtained, and Eliot he pronounced one of the most extraordinary men of any country. As he was once traveling in a post- chaise to London, he bought at a stall in Notting- ham Mather's ' Magnalia,' which he read all the way to town, and found it one of the most amus- ing books he had ever seen. He had read most of our American poetry, and estimated it more highly than we are accustomed to." Two years later, Ticknor, who visited Southey at Keswick, recorded: " He considers himself an author by profession, and therefore, as he told me, never writes anything which will not sell, in the hours TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 9I he regularly devotes to labor. For this reason his poetry has been strictly his amusement. His light reading after supper is now in the fifty-three folios of the ' Acta Sanctorum.' " Macaulay wrote of him : " A good father, husband, brother, friend, but prone to hate people whom he did not know, solely on account of differences of opinion, and in his hatred singularly bitter and rancorous. Then he was arrogant beyond any man in literary his- tory. To do him justice, he had a fine, manly spirit where money was concerned." Like John- son, whom he resembled in his generosity, Southey had known the meaning of the word hnpransus. " When 'Joan of Arc ' was in the press," he wrote, " I often walked the streets at dinner time for want of a dinner, when I had not eighteen pence for the ordinary, nor bread and cheese at my lodgings. But do not suppose that I thought of my dinner when I was walking ; my head was full of what I was composing." It may well be doubted whether he was more bitter in his hatred towards any one than Macaulay was towards Brougham and Cro- ker ; Brougham, of whom he wrote, " His powers gone. His spite immortal. A dead nettle ; " and Croker, whom " he detested more than cold boiled veal," and whose " varlet's jacket " he promised " to dust in the next number of the Blue and Yellow [the 'Edinburgh Review']." Southey 's 92 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS arrogance had been fostered by Lander, who, in the beautiful lines beginning, " It was a dream (ah ! what is not a dream ?)," comparing him with Virgil, had described the English poet laureate as " Higher in intellect, more conversant With earth and heaven, and whatso hes between." Landor's monstrous laudation had perhaps been won by Southey's admiration of his brother bard. Writing of him, he said, " He is the only man living of whose praise I was ambitious, or whose censure would have humbled me." The lady to whom Southey's letter was ad- dressed was a correspondent of Pascal Paoli, the Corsican patriot, and of Mrs. Hemans ; I have letters addressed to her by both of them. J. Rick- man, who franked it, was the secretary of the Speaker of the House of Commons. " His out- side," wrote Southey, " has so Httle polish about it that once, having gone from Christ Church to Pool in his own boat, he was taken by the press gang ; his robust figure, hard-working hands, and strong voice all tending to deceive them." Keswick, 23 Dec. 1816. Dear Madam, — I am very much obliged to you for the manuscript music. The ears which nature has given me are of no use when music is vc^t\ J /Zc/^ lo^ ^c (tcrf- /~-/^ /ff^ ^ti ^ ^^^^ _cc^ ^a^ . ^ M^ TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 93 the case, — but my eldest daughter has some allotment of a sense in which I am deficient, — and the tune seems to give pleasure to all who hear it. M? Bonamy informed me that Ml: M. Coates was, at that time, hopelessly ill. I have not seen 'him since I had the pleasure of meeting you at his table, — and probably he is no longer an inhabitant of this world ! Of my other Bristol friends so few are now remaining, that I do not think I shall ever have heart to set foot within my native city again. — Should you ever visit this part of England (the most beautiful part of it) it will give both Mr= Southey and myself great pleasure to show you the environs of Keswick. Believe me my dear Madam Your obliged Robert Southey. London, Twenty Sixth December, 1816 Miss Maynard, 6 Portland Place, Clifton, Bristol. Free. J. Rickman. His indifference to music Southey shared with many men of genius. " Sir Isaac Newton, hearing Handel play on the harpsichord, could find no- thing worthy to remark but the elasticity of his fingers." That great man, by the way, cared as little for poetry as for music : " once being asked 94 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS his opinion of it, he quoted a sentiment of Barrow that it was ingenious nonsense." Pope, who had so exquisite an ear for the melody of verse, had no more music in his soul than Newton. One day, at a concert, he asked Dr. Arbuthnot whether the rapture of the company over Handel and his band did not proceed solely from affectation. Johnson, in the Hebrides, used often to stand for some time with his ear close to the great drone of the bagpipe ; nevertheless, much as he must have endeared himself to his Highland host by this devotion, he owned that it was not till he was past seventy that he was ever affected by musical sounds. What first moved him were the French horns at a Freemason's funeral procession. Wordsworth's ear was almost as deficient as his brother poet's, and so was Coleridge's. Southey, twenty years after the date of his letter, had the heart once more to set foot in his native city. If he was saddened by the loss of the friends of his youth, he had a father's quiet pleasure in showing his son the home of his early years. " We visited together all his old haunts," the young man wrote, — " the house where he was born, the schools he had been sent to. He had forgotten nothing, — no short cut, no by-way ; and he would surprise me often by darting down some alley, or threading some narrow lane, — the same which in his schoolboy days he had traversed." TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 95 From Southey I pass to De Quincey. What a curious account has Carlyle given us of the poet laureate's outburst of anger against the opium- eater! " I asked mildly, with no appearance of special interest, but with more than I really felt, 'Do you know De Quincey?' 'Yes, sir,' said Southey, with extraordinary animosity, ' and if you have opportunity, I '11 thank you to tell him he is one of the greatest scoundrels living ! ' I laughed lightly, said I had myself little acquaint- ance with the man, and could not wish to recom- mend myself by that message. Southey's face, as I looked at it, was become of slate color, the eyes glancing, the attitude rigid, the figure altogether a picture of Rhadaman thine rage, — that is, rage conscious to itself of being just. He doubtless felt I would expect some explanation from him. ' I have told Hartley Coleridge,' said he, ' that he ought to take a strong cudgel, proceed straight to Edinburgh, and give De Quincey, publicly in the streets there, a sound beating as a calum- niator, cowardly spy, traitor, base betrayer of the hospitable social hearth for one thing ! ' " The thrashing would have been well deserved, though one of the Wordsworths should have had a hand in it; for both the poet and his sister, quite as much as Coleridge, had found him " a base betrayer of the hospitable social hearth." The hospitality and kindness which he had for 96 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS years received from them he repaid by laying bare, in magazine articles, the privacy of their quiet home, and by strokes of envy all the more malignant because they were covert. It was, it seems probable, the recollection of De Quincey's treachery which led Mr. Lowell to describe him as " a kind of inspired cad!' " Though my inter- course with Southey," De Quincey writes, " was at no time very strict, I was yet on such terms that I might in a qualified sense call myself his friend." If Southey 's advice had been followed, and if the cudgel had been brought down on the opium-eater's back, De Quincey might have cried out to this "friend in a qualified sense" in the words of the old epigram : — " When late I attempted your pity to move, Why seemed you so deaf to my prayers ? Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, But why did you kick me down stairs ? " There would have been no need for Hartley Coleridge to take a strong cudgel ; it was not a case for " an oak-plant of a tremendous size," such as old Johnson kept by him when he received " the menaces of the ruffian " Macpherson. For De Quincey a cane would have sufficed. " He was," writes Carlyle,. " one of the smallest man figures I ever saw ; shaped like a pair of tongs, and hardly above five feet in all." " What would one give to have him in a box, and take him out z > c o H c o o -A n > Z D W >« r n o r PI 2 5 o M TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 97 to talk ! " said Mrs. Carlyle. Hartley Coleridge was scarcely the man to send to cudgel any one, even a dwarf. With his constant drinking, it was as much as he could have done to keep himself upright ; that he should be expected to knock a man down was surely unreasonable. In those summer holidays of my boyhood which I spent at Ambleside I often heard stories of his intemper- ance. He was living at that time in a cottage on the road to Rydal, supporting himself mainly by giving lessons. No prudent person, I was told, in offering him refreshments, ever had more than a single glass of wine brought in. If the whole bottle was set before him, he was sure to finish it. One summer, on my returning to Ambleside, I learnt that he was dead. He had been overcome with drink at some friend's house or at an inn. Staggering homewards, he had crept into a low shed, where he had passed the night on the bare earth. The chill which he caught carried him off" in a few days. Every one spoke of him with kindly pity. His only enemy was himself. The following letter was written to the wife of my uncle the barrister ; in what year I do not know : — Monday Night, October 12. My dear Madam, — I have been obliged to go to bed from mere overpowering want of sleep, and thus — viz. by sleeping too long (having only 98 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS this minute awakened) — I have unavoidably broken up our plan, which was to have come up in a coach, and have left it to your choice either to return with us (viz. our party of last night), or else to retain us as your companions during M'. Hill's absence : — This on the assumption that you had no other engagement. At present, though too late for this choice, yet on the same as- sumption of your being not otherwise engaged, I write to propose that M? De Quincey, myself and my daughter, should come up : — we shall take tea before coming. But we are not quite sure whether we were right in understanding that you did not yourself mean to accompany the gentle- men to the dinner-party. One word of answer will suffice — viz. Yes, meaning that you are at home and disengaged, or not better occupied in reading, writing, etc. No, meaning generally that you are unavoidably engaged. Believe me, my dear Madam, Ever your faithful Servant Thomas De Quincey. On September 23, 1828, my uncle had written to his wife : " I found De Quincey, who has for the tenth time renounced opium, which he said he had not tasted for one hundred and eighty days. He received me with great warmth." In some Reminiscences which my uncle left he says : TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 99 " De Quincey possessed but few books, and those few were generally where he was not. His habits of life to other evils added that of procrastination, and this practice caused him often to revolve the matter of his works for years before he reduced his thoughts to writing." A curious instance of this revolving habit is thus described by Mrs. Carlyle : " A boy of the English opium-eater's told me once he would begin Greek presently ; but his father wished him to learn it through the medium of Latin, and he was not entered in Latin yet because his father wished to teach him from a grammar of his own, which he had not yet begun to write." In the fewness of the books which De Quincey possessed he was like Words- worth and Landor. Wordsworth had never had many books, while Landor gave away his almost as fast as he got them. It was the want of them which led him into those errors as to facts and those inaccuracies in quotation with which his writings are thickly strewn. When I was an undergraduate at Oxford, one of my comrades, the late Professor John Nichol, of Glasgow, son of the author of " The Architecture of the Heavens," told me that his father first met De Quincey at a dinner-party in Edinburgh. The little man came very late, dressed in a rusty suit of black. In the drawing-room, after dinner, he and Dr. Nichol stood together in a corner. 100 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS engaged in talk, when, in a slow, measured tone, De Quincey said to his new acquaintance, " Dr. Nichol, can you lend me twopence ? " He bor- rowed money, my friend added, to lay out on opium, and always asked for very small sums, knowing that they would not be refused. Dr. Nichol was so much charmed with his talk that he asked him to visit him, and had him for his guest for some weeks. In 1880 General Gordon's brother. Sir Henry W. Gordon, intrusted me with the interesting duty of editing the letters which that great man had written to his sister during the six years of his government of the Soudan. Sir Henry had at first hoped that the work would be undertaken by my brother-in-law, Sir John Scott, at that time vice-president of the international court at Alex- andria, now judicial adviser to the Egyptian gov- ernment. He, fortunately for me, felt that his official position would not allow him to write with the necessary freedom. On his recommendation I was intrusted with the task.-' During these six years of command, vast as was the region over which Gordon exercised almost absolute power, he held no higher rank than colonel. On him was conferred no promotion and no reward. Decorations and honors, year after year, on New 1 I published my book under the title, Colonel Gordon in Central Africa. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS lOI Year's Day and the Queen's birthday, fell in showers ; none fell on him. Though he had given his consent to the publi- cation of his letters, he refused to take any direct part in the work. Whatever information I needed I had to get from him through his brother. At first his answers to my questions were copied by Sir Henry. Before long, one came to me in Gordon's own hand, with the addition of a few words advising his brother henceforth to spare himself the trouble of making copies. I noticed how anxious he was to avoid giving pain. Thus, in a paper which I have had the pleasure of de- positing in the library of Williams College, he says, " In this memo, allusions are made to Baker which must be wrapped up." Baker was Sir Samuel Baker, the African explorer. Gordon had asked that a few words should be added to the final chapter, in acknowledgment of the kindness shown him on a certain occasion by the Duke of Cambridge and General Sir Lintorn Simmons. All my proofs were read by his brother, but the proof of the last sheet he saw himself, as I discov- ered when it was returned to me. Against the passage where I said that the duke and Sir Lin- torn doubtless felt that in honoring him they were honoring themselves he had written in the margin, in pencil, " Oh ! oh ! " The following trifling incident shows the kind- I02 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS ness of this great man's heart. I had never met him, for he did not wish to see me till the book was published. After its publication, it so hap- pened that we were never in London at the same time. He chanced to pay a visit to Bournemouth, where, as he had learnt from some common friend, my youngest son was at school. He went to see the little fellow, talked kindly to him, and gave him a half-crown. I do not know whether this anecdote is in print. I had it from my publisher, who in his turn had it from Sir Henry Gordon. The Prince of Wales invited the general to dinner, soon after his return to England from the East. The hero replied that he regretted he could not accept the invitation, as by the hour named for the meal he was always in bed. The prince at once begged him to come to lunch. The following letter was written to my brother- in-law : — U[nited] S[ervice] Club, Pall Mall. 1 6. 2. 80. My dear Mr. Scott, — I am sending out the Deed Box, full of the papers, addressed to Mor- rice Pacha to whom I have written ; you will not mind paying him any expences ; I will pay the Box as far as I can. One paper on Abyssinia will come to you by post in a short time, also some other papers I have, and which have not TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS I03 yet come from Egypt. I send you two books, one as much in praise as the other is in blame of me. I do so because I wish to point my re- mark, that the praise or blame of man does not affect a man's welfare ; many would have been troubled at having a book written about them, such as Lindley wrote. Thank God, it has never done me any harm, though its publication cost ^1000. R W did a noble act, he called on me, so I at once apologized for my rude telegram and am going to call on him. I send you the key of Box and pity you reading those letters. Believe me, with kind regards to M? Scott and your children. Yours sincerely and obliged, C. G. Gordon. I have in my collection the originals of the two foUowine telegrrams sent to Gordon when he was acting as the representative of England on the European Commission of the Danube.^ I repro- duce them exactly as they were written, with all their faults in spelling. 1 To this Commission each of the Great Powers sent a member. Its chief duty was the improvement of the mouth of the Danube. By 1881 the depth of water on the bar had been increased from six feet to twenty-one feet. I04 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS Therapia, I Sept. 1873. Colonel Gordon, Galatz: I have received the following telegram from nubar pasha sir Samuel Baka etant de retour le Kedive disereroit s'assures les services du Colonel Gordon pour organiser pays haut nil, et poursuivre suppression de la traite ne sachant pas si Colonel Gordon est encore au Danube le Kedive m'a charge de recourrir a votre excellence pour s'en- querir s'il accepterait cette mission et ces fonc- tions. H. Elliot. On this telegraph form is written with a red pencil, " exped a M. le Colonel. Tuescha." (Sig- nature undecipherable.) There is an indorsement in Sir Henry Gordon's hand : " Sir Henry Elliott ambassador writing to Gordon, offering to Gordon to go to take Baker's place." Cairo. Colonel Gordon comissaire gouvernement an- glais pour Comission Danube. Son altesse a ete heureuse de votre lettre et acceptation le gouvernement anglais vous ac- cordera lautorisation que son altesse a fait de- mander des que vous le demandez vousmem formelement et directement au ministre de la GENERAL GORDON TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 105 j'ai repondu a votre lettre mais attendu feriez bien de faire votre demande pour autorisation. NUBAR. [Indorsed by Sir Henry Gordon] " Nubar Pacha's telegraph to Gordon deciding his leaving Danube for Equator." I have Gordon's own copy of Beke's " British Captives in Abyssinia." The frontispiece of this work is a picture of a British captive at Magdala, chained hand and foot, and watched by a native armed with a spear and shield. Underneath Gor- don has written in pencil, " I got well out of Johannis power." Johannis was the king of Abyssinia. In 1879 Gordon was sent to him on a mission by the Khedive. The following brief account by Gordon of his lieutenant-general, Romulus Gessi, I inserted in part in my book. Some lines I suppressed, lest they might give that brave soldier offense. He died, however, of the hardships he had undergone before the publica- tion took place. " Note. Romulus Gessi aged 49 short com- pact figure, cool most determined man, born genius for practical ingenuity in mechanics, ought to have been born in 1600 not 1832. Piratical dis- position same as Francis Drake; has been en- gaged in many petty political affairs, was Inter- preter to H. M. Forces in Crimea in 1854-55, I06 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS born at Multcha [?] Italian subject one day with ^looo another with Id. " He is Liva [?] Pacha (General Brigade Pacha), he is 2".'* Class of Osmanli order." How great a curse European discovery and European trade have brought on Africa is shown in the following brief note in Gordon's auto- graph : — " I mentioned that the slave districts were en- tered first by an Englishman ; the trade never was so great before, as it became after the voyages of Petherick related in this book.^ He opened the country, and these Ivory stations he created rapidly became slave centres, such as Baker de- scribes in his Albert Nyanza. C. G. G." In another note, speaking of the end of his first term of command, Gordon says, " I returned with the sad conviction that no good could ever be done in these parts, and that it would have been better had Sir S. Baker's expedition never been sent." The discoverer and the missionary have gener- ally gone before the trader, while the trader has too often been followed by the slave-dealer, who spreads desolation far and wide. Less than forty years ago, along the banks of the Upper Nile, for hundreds of miles, were thriving villages where Gordon found only a waste. Even in those parts of Africa where the kidnapper has not penetrated, 1 Egypt, the Soudan, and Central Africa, by John Petherick. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 107 the white man, following in the steps of the dis- coverer and the missionary, has introduced his poisonous spirits, adding one more horror to the savage life of the tropics. " I do not much wish well to discoveries," wrote Johnson, "for I am always afraid that they will end in conquest and robbery." Horace Walpole tells of a black ser- vant, a remarkably sensible man, who had lived in England many years. His mistress was having read aloud to her the account of the Pelew Islands. " Somebody happened to say we were sending a ship thither ; the black, who was in the room, exclaimed, ' Then there is an end of their happi- ness.' " IV To many people the word " autograph " means nothing more than the signature of a man more or less eminent. A collection of autographs they regard as only a collection of signatures, and for signatures they care nothing at all. Nevertheless, the mere name of a great man, written with that right hand which for many a long year served him so well, may raise thoughts in us such as naturally pass across the mind as we wander through Westminster Abbey. I often think that the last place whither a man should wish his friends to go, when their thoughts dwell not un- kindly on his memory, would be his grave. On it his mind, so long as it is in a healthy state, never meditates : " Homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat." Still less has the man whose soul the truth has made free thought of the place of his burial. Not round his grave, not in a country churchyard or a town cemetery, would a scholar's spirit willingly hover. In his study, among his beloved books, we might indeed fancy it dwelling. In his name, not as it has been carved by the stone-mason, but as it stands written by his own living hand, something of his TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 109 old self is still seen. So strongly does the mere handwriting sometimes bring before me those who have long mouldered in the dust that there are some signatures which I could not bear to keep in my collection, such horror would they ex- cite. I could never look at the name of Philip II., or Mary, — Bloody Mary, I mean, — or Alva, or Torquemada, or Charles IX. without a shudder, as I recalled the awful sufferings to which, by the few letters traced by each of those cruel wretches, so many a noble spirit had been consigned. Their graves I could pass by with cold indiffer- ence, or, if my feelings were at all aroused, with a certain sense of exultation that at last the world had been rid of them forever. To the bare autographs of famous men, when unsupported by anything interesting in what is written, we may apply the old saying, " He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." A showman, it is said, who was exhibiting a pano- rama of Egypt, described the pyramids as having been built by several eminent persons long since deceased. Much the same description would be given by an ignorant fellow who glanced over a collection of signatures of men, however famous they might have been. But let it be set before a man whose mind has been made full by reading : what associations are at once aroused, what chains no TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS of memory are at once woven ! How rich a stream of anecdotes would have flowed forth over it from Macaulay's lips, each one beginning with, " Don't you remember ? " as if he did not for one moment doubt that his listener's memory was as vast as his own. An old publisher told me that Macaulay called at his father's ofifice one day, to talk over the publication of Horace Walpole's let- ters. He came, he said, merely to express his regret that he could not himself edit them. The publisher begged him to sit down, but he refused, saying that he had an engagement which would not allow him to stay. In spite of his haste he began to speak of Walpole and his times, and then, leaning on the back of a chair, which his listener in vain kept urging him to put to its proper use, for nearly two hours he heaped anec- dote on anecdote, and criticism on criticism. We are none of us Macaulays ; nevertheless, a col- lector of autographs who has something of a lit- erary turn — without such a turn, to collect them is ridiculous — can clothe these scraps of hand- writing with some semblance of life by illustra- tions drawn from a wide range of reading. If I were a professor of English literature in a university, from time to time I would select a scholarly letter full of names, quotations, and allu- sions, which I would set the members of my class, each in the best way he could, to edit. Such a TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS III task continued term after term would do much towards making the real student acquainted with books. While his indolent companions would have turned to biographical dictionaries, and would have gathered only what was already col- lected, he would have gone to original sources. Many a time he would have gone in vain ; but in those cases he would have got his reward, like the old man's sons who dug up the field in the hope of finding the hidden treasure. Even a mere set of signatures might be made the centre of an in- teresting study. Round the names, for instance, of the worthies of Boston, what anecdotes, what varied judgments passed on them by friend and foe alike, might be made to cluster ! I take pleas- ure sometimes in bringing together names in odd contrast. Thus I have the signature of Alexis de Tocqueville. This I set by a letter of Louis Blanc, and I recall the passage in which De Tocqueville describes the wild scene in the Constit- uent Assembly, when, on May 15, 1848, the mob broke in upon the sitting, and swarmed over the floor of the House. From his bench he watched Louis Blanc carried up and down in triumph on the shoulders of some of the rioters. " lis le tenaient par ses petites jambes au-dessus de leurs tetes ; je le vis qui faisait de vains efforts pour leur echapper, il se repliait et se tordait de tous les cotes sans pouvoir glisser d'entre leurs mains, 112 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS tout en parlant d'une voix etranglee et stridente ; il me faisait I'effet d'un serpent auquel on pince la queue. On le posa enfin sur un banc au-des- sous du mien. Je I'entendis qui criait : ' Mas amis, le droit que vous venez de conquerir ..." Le reste de ses paroles se perdit dans le bruit." Louis Blanc's letter, of no interest in itself, is dated " Le 6 Mars, 1870," and ends, "Je vous serre la main." Late in May or early in June of the following year, the young man whose hand the old Socialist had thus grasped in the spirit came to my house. He found me sitting by an open window. How well I recall the quiet, sunny look of the meadows and the deep shadow of the trees, that fine summer afternoon! It all im- printed itself on my memory through the strong contrast into which it was suddenly brought, when my unexpected visitor began to describe the scenes of violence through which he had just passed. He had been rash enough to take part in the mad rising of the Commune. When the troops forced their way into Paris, he had found a hiding-place in a house close to the Luxem- bourg, where many of the insurgents were im- prisoned. Day after day he had heard the vol- leys with which his comrades were swept out of the world. Every hour he feared his turn would come. He had been saved by an English- man, who brought him a suit of English-made (Mc^iX^ "^t^ Zo ooj UA/{Mtl^C> TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 1 13 clothes, a large umbrella such as every English- man is supposed to carry, a Bradshaw's Continen- tal Guide, and a pair of dark spectacles. Fortu- nately, he spoke our language with perfect ease. Thus equipped, furnished with his friend's pass- port and accompanied by a genuine John Bull, the night before he came to see me he had passed undiscovered, first at the railway station at Paris, and next on the quay at Boulogne, through a long double line of watchful detectives. He chat- tered away in English as carelessly as he could, and was not unsparing of that ejaculation which was one of the two words that Dumas 's Mousque- taire had been able to retain in his memory: " D'Artagnan dit au patron. Come. C'etait, avec Goddam,'tout ce qu'il avait pu retenir de la langue anglaise." Brougham and Macaulay meet quietly enough in my collection, who in life never met with friendly feeling. Of Macaulay I have nothing but the fragment of a letter with the signature. Of Brougham I have two letters, neither of any interest, — one unsigned, the other signed H. B. When, on being made Lord Chancellor, he was raised to the peerage, 'he did not, according to the invariable custom, drop his Christian name in his signature. He wished, perhaps, to show the un- willingness with which he left the House of Com- mons, the scene of his triumphs and his strength. 114 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS I once had in my hands a letter written by him, in which he furnished one more instance, where instances are so common, that the extremes of skepticism and credulity are often found in the same mind. The extent of his skepticism I learnt from an old man to whom he said, " You Unitarians swallow the whole bull, and stick at the two horns." His credulity he showed by asking a friend to make some inquiries about a quack who advertised the discovery of a secret by which life could be prolonged to a hundred years. " I do not suppose," Brougham wrote, " there is anything in it, but it might be worth while to inquire." Perhaps his credulity was a sign that dotage was setting in, for it was in his old age that he wrote. In the Correspondence of Macvey Napier, the second editor of the " Edinburgh Re- view," Brougham and Macaulay are brought to- gether in comical contrast. Brougham, as every one knows, was one of the founders of the " Re- view ; " Macaulay raised it to the full height of its splendid fame. Each man, without the slightest reserve, confided to his friend the editor his hatred and his contempt of his brother contributor. " As for Brougham," wrote Macaulay, " he has reached that happy point at which it is equally impossible for him to gain character or to lose it." " Ma- caulay," wrote Brougham, "is absolutely renowned in society as the greatest bore that ever yet ap- TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS II5 peared. I have seen people come in from Hol- land House breathless and knocked up, and able to say nothing but, ' Oh dear ! oh mercy ! ' ' What 's the matter ? ' being asked. ' Oh, Ma- caulay ! ' Then every one said, ' That accounts for it, — you 're lucky to be alive.' " Sydney Smith, that other founder and pillar of the great " Re- view," in the character he drew of Mackintosh has, no doubt, a sly hit at Macaulay. " Mackintosh's memory," he wrote, " vast and prodigious as it was, he so managed as to make it a source of pleasure and instruction, rather than that dreadful engine of colloquial oppression into which it is sometimes erected." Emerson, who, unlike Syd- ney Smith, was a good listener, discovered none of this oppression when he met Macaulay. " He is," he wrote, " the king of diners-out. I do not know when I have seen such wonderful vivacity. He has the strength of ten men, immense mem- ory, fun, fire, learning, politics, manners, and pride, and talks all the time in a steady torrent. You would say he is the best type of England." Brougham's manners are thus described by Tick- nor, who met him and two bishops at Lord Fitz- william's dinner-table : " I never saw anybody so rude in respectable society in my life. Some laughed, some looked sober about it, but all thought it was outrageous." Miss Martineau had also met him at dinner. " He talked excessively n6 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS fast," she wrote, " and ate fast and prodigiously, stretching out his long arm for any dish he had a mind to, and getting hold of the largest spoons which would dispatch the most work in the short- est time." Between Macaulay's somewhat slovenly signa- ture and a fragment of a letter which contains no more words than, " Farewell, dear children. From your loving father, John Bright," I like to place Palmerston's name, in that strong, bold handwriting so characteristic of the man. " Of all English statesmen," writes Sir George Trevel- yan, " Macaulay liked him the best." In the House of Commons Palmerston once made an insolent attack on John Bright, who was striving to keep England out of the madness of the Cri- mean war. He sneered at him as " the honorable and reverend gentleman." " For the first and last time in his life Macaulay had nothing to say for his hero." A correspondent of the " Daily News," who had known Bright well, wrote on his death : " There was one great Englishman of whom I never heard Mr. Bright say a good word, — Lord Palmerston. Antagonism to Lord Pal- merston and to the Palmerstonian policy at home and abroad was one of the most rooted senti- ments in his heart." To the man and his policy Cobden was as much opposed as Bright. On March 23, 1858, he TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS I17 wrote : " During my experience, the higher classes never stood so high in relative social and political rank, as compared with other classes, as at pres- ent. The middle classes have been content with the very crumbs from their table. The more contempt a man like Palmerston (as intense an aristocrat at heart as any of them) heaped on them, the louder they cheered him." Mr. John Morley, writing of Mr. Gladstone, who was Chan- cellor of the Exchequer in Palmerston's ministry, says : " It is true that to one powerful member of the Cabinet its military policy, now and after, was as abhorrent as it was to Cobden himself, who wrestled with his conscience by day and by night as to the morality of his position, and who only escaped from his own reprobation by the hope that in a balance of evils he had chosen the course which led to the less of them." Here then we have four statesmen, all men of high character, strong judgment, and extraordi- nary ability, all nearly of the same age, all belong- ing to the Liberal party, passing judgment on a contemporary whose career they had the fullest opportunity of studying. Who can wonder that Plutarch's and Shakespeare's Brutus, " the noblest Roman of them all," is placed by Dante with Judas Iscariot in the lowest pit of hell, and that the characters of Caesar and Cicero are still one of the cockpits of history, when he finds that our Il8 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS great historian's hero among the statesmen of his own time was a man whom Bright and Cobden abhorred, and under whom Gladstone served with a troubled conscience ? The judgment of English- men has slowly swung round, and Macaulay's hero is a hero no longer. When we reflect on this fallen idol, we may well be excused if at times a fear steals over us lest the foundations of the noble monuments which the historian has raised to William of Orange and the Earl of Chatham are laid, not on rock, but on sand. In striking contrast with this group of men, all gifted, in addition to their other qualities, with strong common sense, is the Socialist and enthusiast, Robert Owen. In his autograph let- ter there is nothing worth quoting. In the year 1828, Charles Knight, the publisher and author, thus wrote about him to one of my uncles : " Owen has been in town with a grand new scheme for the Mexican government giving him a Sovereignty — the province of Texas — for a small cooperative experiment ! He wants Cuba and Canada for the same object. He has been drawing up a memorial about the Texas affair, and swears he shall do the job." His Brook Farm he did indeed plan on a most glorious scale. Daniel Webster's vast, wild, illimitable Texas was too small for this earthly paradise. About this time, Rowland Hill, who had not yet turned TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS II9 his thoughts towards postal reform, was eager to found a cooperative community. Owen urged him to take part with him in establishing one in America. I do not know whether the whole of Texas was dangled before his eyes ; enough was shown him to make him look upon the scheme as visionary. A small English parish would have been to him what Texas, Canada, and Cuba were to Owen. He almost succeeded in getting hold of one where he would have founded his " social community." Unfortunately, in the middle of the village stood a public house which was not for sale. There cannot be a public house among the many mansions even of an earthly paradise, and so this English forerunner of Brook Farm came to nothing. Owen had tried to win over Miss Martineau to his views. " Having," she writes, " still strong hopes of Prince Metternich for a convert, he might well have hopes of me. His certainty that we might make life a heaven, and his hallucina- tions that we are going to do so immediately, under his guidance, have caused his wisdom to be overlooked in his absurdity." He once told my father of a scheme he had for remodeling all the towns of the world. Henceforth all mankind was to live in parallelograms. So convinced was he of the vast merits of his plan that he assured my father that within three years of its publication I20 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS London would be a desert, the whole population having migrated, east, west, south, and north, to suburban parallelograms. Southey coupled him with Clarkson, the Garrison of West Indian emancipation, and Bell, the advocate of a new system of popular education. " Such men," he says, " are not only eminently useful, but emi- nently happy also; they live in an atmosphere of their own, which must be more like that of the third heaven than of this every-day earth in which we toil and moil." It is a long stride from Robert Owen, with his wild scheme for Texas, Canada, and Cuba, to Ismail Pacha, who for a brief space managed to add to his dominions a vast district of Central Africa. General Gordon, to whom the autograph note in my collection was written by the Khedive, had all Owen's simplicity and benevolence, and much of his enthusiasm, with the addition — the strange addition to such an assemblage of quali- ties — of the strongest common sense. The Khedive's note, written on thick paper, adorned with his monogram in gilt surmounted by a gilt crown, is brief. It was, no doubt, a New Year's greeting sent from Cairo to the Soudan. He wrote : — La favorite, le 4 Janvier, 1880. recevez, mon cher Gordon Pacha, I'expression de ma haute estime et de toute mon amitie. Ismail. -^:v rA-€_ . TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 139 letter, had gained the highest prize open to English diplomatists. He was our ambassador to the French republic. I offered to send him his fa- ther's letter when he was in Paris, thinking that he might care to use it in writing his life. The reply which he sent I subjoin. Sir, — . . . May I further ask — il' supposing a boy enter at the age of nine, with good abilities and an inclination towards study, — able to read, write and construe the easier French writers with some fluency, but ignorant of the rudiments of Latin — what will probably be his progress in the Classics and general attainments at the age of 1 2 .? and secondly at what age would you propose that he should learn to speak the principal modern languages — i. e. French, German, and Italian? I may as well perhaps add in explanation of my own pertinacity on this last head, that I contem- plate for this young pupil the career of Diplomacy — in which to speak French almost as a native is an absolute essential — and an accurate and fluent mastery of the other languages highly desirable. I have the honor to be, Sir, Yr obliged Sert. E. Lytton Bulwer. Post Office, Cheltenham, Nov. 2, 1841. Bulwer, it may be noticed, in writing " honor " 140 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS followed the American, and not the ordinary English spelling of that word. British Embassy, Paris, Octer 4, 1873. Sir, — Pray pardon my delay, occasioned by a heavy pressure of official business, in acknowledg- ing the receipt of yr letter of the 20"' ult. I am much obliged by yr considerate offer to allow me to look at the letter therein referred to as having been written by my father to yours. If you have no objection to forward it to the above address I will return it to you as soon as I have read it. Yrs truly, Lytton. I have a touching memorial of a Polish exile who had escaped from his country after the unsuc- cessful rising of 1830. My father sought by pref- erence his French masters among these unhappy men. One of them made the boys a farewell address at the prize-giving before the Christmas holidays. " And forever remember the banished Pole " were the last words I heard from my teacher. They touched me as a child, and, though it is nearly fifty years since I heard them, they touch me still. To an invitation to a dance he sent the following answer : — " ' Fain would he now have join'd the dance, the song ; But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate ? ' (L. Byron.) TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 141 " Miss and Mr. will have the kind- ness to excuse Bryzinski's absence at the evening party, since his wounds after leaving his home are not yet healed, and the view of enlivened company might cause him, by recalling the past, still greater pain under which he is continually labouring. All destroying time will perhaps calm his mournful heart, and then he will be able to share gayety of others, whereas now his sadness might be un- pleasant and diminish the liveliness of enjoying company." More than thirty years later my father received from him a far happier letter. He was no longer eating the bitter bread of exile. An amnesty had allowed him to return to his home. V By the kindness of a correspondent, who has read the first of my Talks, I am able to give Dr. Johnson's famous letter to Macpherson in the very words in which it was written. It differs somewhat from the copy which the brave old man dictated from memory to Boswell. That Mac- pherson should have preserved the original seems strange, but he was a man little troubled by shame. It was, to be sure, mainly by this letter that he was to gain such immortality as afterward fell to his lot ; but this his vanity would not have led him to suspect. Johnson wrote as follows : — Mr. James Macpherson, — I received your foolish and impudent note. Whatever insult is offered me I will do my best to repel, and what I cannot do for myself the law will do for me. I will not desist from detecting what I think a cheat from any fear of the menaces of a Ruffian. You want me to retract. What shall I retract? I thought your book an imposture from the be- gining [«V], I think it upon yet surer reasons an imposture still. For this opinion I give the pub- lick my reasons which I here dare you to refute. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 143 But however I may despise you, I reverence truth, and if you can prove the genuineness of the work I will confess it. Your rage I defy, your abilities since your Homer are not so formidable and what I have heard of your morals disposes me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but what you can prove. You may print this if you will. Sam Johnson. Jan. 20, 177;. To Mr. James Macpherson. Gray, Hume, even for a short time Horace Walpole, had all believed in Macpherson and his Ossian. Burke, I have little doubt, was the re- viewer, in the " Annual Register," who so finely, but so ignorantly, wrote of him, " The editor has recovered from the obscurity of barbarism, the rust of fifteen hundred years, and the last breath of a dying language, these inestimable relics of the genuine spirit of poetry." Gibbon, more than a full year after Johnson's exposure of the impos- ture, in his " Decline and Fall," paid Macpherson one of his stately compliments. Powerful as was Johnson's frame, age and sick- ness had told on him. He was older than the " ruffian " whom he thus defied by almost thirty years. Macpherson was a strong man, too, " of a large size, with very thick legs, to hide which he generally wore boots, though not then the fash- 144 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS ion." His temper was not good. " I have scarce ever known," wrote Hume, " a man more perverse and unamiable." Against his threatened assault Johnson armed himself with an oaken cudgel, more than six feet long, but he never had to use it. The two men lie close together in Westmin- ster Abbey. It was not on any public demand, but merely in compliance with a direction in his own will, that Macpherson found his grave there. So long as the fees for interment were paid, there was, it seems, no one to whom the dean and chap- ter, in those days, would have refused admittance. In Colonel Chester's Westminster Abbey Regis- ters, in the long list of interments, next to John- son's, separated from it by only two days, comes that of " Mrs. Elizabeth Broughton, wife of John Broughton, the celebrated pugilist." She, it is true, was not buried in Poets' Corner, but in the west cloisters. Her famous husband received in due course the same honor. Thirty years before this prize-fighter's death, when Robertson's His- tory of Scotland and the second part of Hume's History of England were on the point of appear- ing, Hume wrote to his brother historian : " Next week I am published, and then I expect a con- stant comparison will be made between Dr. Rob- ertson and Mr. Hume. I shall tell you in a few weeks which of these Heroes is likely to prevail. Meanwhile I can inform both of them, for their TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 145 comforts, that their combat is not Hkely to make half as much noise as that between Broughton and the one-eyed coachman." On prize-fighting the great lexicographer and moralist looked with favor. One of his uncles had kept the ring in Smithfield for a whole year. He was himself " very conversant in the art of boxing, and would descant upon it much to the admiration of those who had no expectation of his skill in such mat- ters." Under less happy circumstances, he might himself have practiced the noble art. John Bright, so the story runs, coming out of the House of Commons after a hot debate on the game-laws, met in the lobby a great sportsman, Grantley Berkeley by name, who that night had been the champion of the country squires. " Mr. Berkeley," said Bright, " if you had not been born a gentleman, you would have been a poacher." " Mr. Bright," replied Berkeley, " if you had not been born a Quaker, you would have been a prize-fighter." So, in like manner, if Dr. John- son had not been born, or at least bred, a scholar, there was that within him that might possibly have " exuberated " into a second Broughton. The original of his famous letter to Macpher- son once formed part of Mr. Lewis Pocock's great Johnsonian collection, which was scattered to the four quarters of heaven twenty years ago. I have heard an old dealer in autographs say that 146 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS a few days before the sale, it might have been bought as a whole for five or six hundred pounds, though, as it turned out, it fetched nearly thrice as much at the auction. Unbroken, it would have conferred distinction even on the noblest library ; but dispersed, it diffuses more pride and pleasure. I never look at the sale catalogue with- out sighing over an editor's wasted opportunity. With what annotations might all these treasures have been set forth ! How the circumstances in which each letter was written might have been ex- plained, the allusions traced, and every difficulty cleared up ! Many unpublished letters of John- son have passed singly through my hands ; for I have let the dealers know that, if they would allow me to see them, I would in each case, as a return, furnish elucidations. But what are letters which come dribbling in one by one compared with this noble collection ? In these days, when autographs obtain such high, such extravagant prices, the preparation of the auctioneer's cata- logue should surely be intrusted to a scholar, and not be left to the ignorant industry of a clerk. The poor man, no doubt, makes the best use he can of his Biographical Dictionary and his Lowndes's Bibliographical Manual, but far too often he confounds the persons and confuses the substance. In a catalogue that lies open before me I see entered a letter of Sir Arthur Welles- TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 147 ley's. His name, I suppose, could not be found in the auctioneer's Biographical Dictionary; at all events, it is clear that the good man did not discover that he was selling an autograph of the Duke of Wellington. I remember my father tell- ing me that at the beginning of the Peninsular War he heard a great deal of Sir Arthur Welles- ley, but that after a little while that commander's name was no longer mentioned, while everybody began to speak of Lord Wellington. Troubled at this sudden disappearance of his hero, he asked a schoolfellow what had become of the famous general. The lad, who was equally ignorant, replied that he believed he had gone to America, and that Lord Wellington had taken his place. It sometimes happens that the ignorance of the auctioneer tells against the buyer. A letter de- scribed, in the catalogue just referred to, as writ- ten by James Boswell to his daughter Euphemia, was sold, a few years ago, for five guineas. The date, January, 1808, by which time poor Bozzy had been nearly thirteen years in his grave, shows that it was written by James Boswell, Junior, to his sister. It is interesting to observe that so late as 1884, in the eyes of one of the leading literary auctioneers of London, Tupper, with his likeness thrown in, held a higher place than Browning. The two poets are thus brought together in one lot : " Tupper (Martin). Autograph letter signed. 148 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS portrait; and others of Lord Houghton, Bernard Barton, R. Browning, &c." In the same cata- logue, Blackstone is described, no doubt correctly so far as it goes, as " Blackstone (Sir William), distinguished Lawyer," while " our good Prince Eugene " of Southey's poem appears in two con- secutive lots as " Eugene de Savoy, distinguished General," and as " Eugene (Prince de Savoie), distinguished Military Commander." In my first Talk I mentioned the forged Byron letters which are in extensive circulation. My friend Mr. R. B. Adam, of Buffalo, informs me that, some years ago, one of these was sold to him. In this case the forger had not been so careful as usual ; probably he had exhausted his stock of old paper. At all events, it was by the water-mark that the imposture was, before long, detected. The letter was returned to the dealer from whom it came, who, if he had been an hon- est man, would have nailed it to his counter, like a false piece of money. It was a second time put into circulation, and later on came once more to Mr. Adam through a different channel. The date, to be sure, was no longer at variance with the water-mark, but it was at a considerable sacri- fice that this congruity had been obtained. As it now stood, the letter had been written a year or two after the writer's death. " An odd thought strikes me," said the dying Johnson : " we shall TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 149 receive no letters in the grave." Most certainly, if none are received, none are written there. It is not down below that the Dead Letter Office is to be found. In these days of psychical research, it may, for all I know, be maintained that it would be rash to conclude hastily, without serious and careful investigation, that a letter is a forgery, merely from the trifling circumstance that at the time it was written its alleged author had been for some while dead. Collectors of autographs, however, as a general rule, prefer that in every case the date should fall within the period of the writer's life. In my second Talk, in quoting one of Matthew Arnold's letters, I said that " 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." This passage, which was quoted in the London " Daily News," elicited the following pleasant anecdote : " For more than twenty years Matthew Arnold spent a week, each December, in the examination of the students. It was his custom to occupy the same examina- tion room ; he would on no account change the old lecture hall for the newer and more commo- dious structure. His first request, after starting the examination, was invariably the loan of a ISO TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS Bible and a candle. During the dark days of December he would write continuously, only now and then leaving his stool (he would not use the comfortable armchair occupied by other inspec- tors) to walk round the room, surveying the ceil- ing rather than the students. On one occasion, whilst busily engaged in writing, and whilst half turned from view of his charge, a visit was made to him by the chief of the Education Department. Playfully remarking that he was placing great trust in the students, Arnold replied, ' These stu- dents are Wesleyans ; they never copy.' This reply of the inspector is a choice treasure of both students and tutors at Westminster. How tena- ciously he clung to old associations is shown by the fact that, after he had retired from the inspec- torate, he came as usual to the college the same week in December, just to renew, as he said, the old feeling, and see the old faces." The following letter was written by Leigh Hunt to my uncle, the barrister, whom I have mentioned in a previous Talk : — Kensington, 12 min. to 5, Sunday [April 9, 1848]. My dear Hill, — With great vexation I sit down nearly at the time at which I ought to have been with you, to say that I am unable to come after all. I have done all I could to do otherwise ; but perhaps the very steps I have taken went LEIGH HUNT TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS IS I counter to it. Perhaps, in the present state of my health, the mere irregularity of my having been forced to go to town yesterday on business, and walking somewhat after dinner, have disor- dered me, but so it is. It is no ordinary case of inability, believe me ; much less of delay, etc. I finished dressing on purpose upwards of two hours ago. I ought not, you see, to have promised to come, for fear of subjecting myself to this chance of disconcerting you ; but I did all I could to do as well as hope the best, and I could not resist such a combination of gentle invitations, — ladies and all conspiring. Therefore you must do your best for me in turn, and think the very sincerest (for they deserve it) of the intentions and regrets of Yours most faithfully, Leigh Hunt. P. S. I have had a carriage waiting for me at the door this hour, and could have found it in my heart to send this letter by it ; — but — I shall think of you all half the evening, and hope you are not devoting me to the infernal Gods. Perhaps at this very dinner-party the knives were used with which my uncle, who was a man of great humor, had had his table furnished by a stratagem. For some while, so the story runs, he 152 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS had tried to convince his wife that their old set was well-nigh worn out. She, however, a " care- ful soul," like Mrs. Gilpin, thought they might serve a little longer. He gave up the contention, and planned a large picnic party on the Thames. After lunch, when the baskets were being re- packed, not a single knife could be found. He had dropped them over the side of the boat into the river. It was for this end, and this end alone, that the picnic had been planned. Leigh Hunt was not a guest who could be easily spared at a dinner-party. He was for some years Carlyle's near neighbor in Chelsea. " He was here [in my house]," Carlyle writes, " almost nightly, three or four times a week, I should reckon ; he came always neatly dressed, was thoroughly courteous, friendly of spirit, and talked like a singing-bird. Good insight, plenty of a kind of humor too ; I remember little warbles in the tones of his fine manly voice which were full of fun and charm. . . . He had a fine, chivalrous, gentlemanly carriage, polite, affectionate, respect- ful (especially to her [Mrs. Carlyle]), and yet so free and natural." Nevertheless, with that mis- erable habit of depreciation which led Carlyle to pass the harshest judgments on the weaknesses of the men he met, however lenient he was to- wards the vices of those long dead, he wrote : " It is next to an impossibility that a London-born TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 153 man should not be a stunted one. Most of them, as Hunt, are dwarfed and dislocated into the merest imbecilities." Charles Sumner saw Hunt in his home, " a humble house in Chelsea, with uncarpeted entry and stairs. He lives more simply, I think, than any person I have visited in England ; but he possesses a palace of a mind. He is truly bril- liant in conversation." George Ticknor also vis- ited him on an evening when the Saturday Night Club met at his house. The young American scholar describes how " Lamb's gentle humor. Hunt's passion, and Curran's volubility, Hazlitt's sharpness and point, and Godwin's great head full of cold brains, all coming into contact and con- flict, and agreeing in nothing but their common hatred of everything that has been more success- ful than their own works, made one of the most curious and amusing olla-podrida I ever met with." Leigh Hunt, if he was the Harold Skimpole of Dickens's story, nevertheless, in his neediness, had the simplicity of a child. From the borrower's artifices he seems to have been entirely free. How pleasantly does this guilelessness appear in the following extract from a letter written by Macaulay soon after the publication of the " Lays of Ancient Rome : " " As to poor Leigh Hunt, I wish that I could say, with you, that I heard 154 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS nothing from him. I have a letter from him on my table asking me to lend him money, and la- menting that my verses want the true poetical aroma which breathes from Spenser's ' Faery Queen.' I am much pleased with him for having the spirit to tell me, in a begging letter, how little he likes my poetry. If he had praised me, know- ing his poetical creed as I do, I should have felt certain that his praises were insincere." It was on April 9, 1848, that the dinner took place at which Leigh Hunt should have been one of the guests. Not many parties, I think, were given in London on that night. Half the town went to bed full of alarm for the morrow. On the Continent, that spring, " thrones had been bowled down like ninepins." On April 10, the Chartists in a great host were to march to West- minster, bearing a huge petition to the House of Commons. No one knew what would happen. There was a dread among the more timid that London might rise, as Paris and Berlin had risen, and overturn government and constitution. The public buildings were fortified. How great was the alarm is shown by the following entries in Sir Rowland Hill's journal : — " April 6. Went to the Mansion House to be sworn in a special constable with all the other officials. Serious apprehensions are en- tertained of an attack from the Chartists on TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS ISS Monday next. Arms are being provided for the Post Office. " April 8. Iron bars are being put to the lower windows. The buildings which command the entrances to the Post Office will be occupied with our people. " April ID. The lower windows and doors of the office are defended by bars of iron and planks. Upwards of thirteen hundred of our people, a large portion of whom are well-armed, are divided into small parties, each with its officer." Special constables were sworn in by tens of thousands. That day, as I well remember, we had a holiday at school ; for most of the masters had been enrolled, and had gone off each armed with a stout staff. Among the properties of our school-theatre there were a few blunt cutlasses, such as the two young Crummleses used in the terrific fight in the inn-parlor witnessed by Nicho- las Nickleby. These were sharpened on the grindstone. Part of the morning I spent in a workshop talking to an old carpenter and a black- smith. We should not have been surprised had we heard the sound of firing from London, some few miles away. Our great trust was in " the old Duke," who, to the last day of his long life, was thought to be a match, and more than a match, for all the mobs, kings, and emperors in the world. How absurd the alarm seemed on the morrow, 156 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS when we learnt that, so far from a throne coming tumbhng down, nothing more serious had hap- pened than a scuffle on one of the bridges, in which a policeman had been wounded ! He belonged to the village in which I lived. We all felt proud that it was our policeman, and not, this time, the old Duke, who was the hero of the day. From the London loth of April, with its one champion of order wounded, and its tens of thou- sands of staves in the hands of citizens by which scarcely a single head was broken, it is a wide step to Paris and the rising of the Commune. In a previous Talk I have spoken of one of the Communards. I have now before me two letters written by another of that wild crew. I have rarely met a man who interested me more. When I came to know his full story, I used to look on him with an aversion which sometimes amounted to a feeling of horror, that was tempered at the same time by a certain respect. He threw a light on the Reign of Terror. At last I was wiUing to believe that even in a Robespierre and a St. Just some virtue might have existed. This young Frenchman had lately passed through the Ecole Normale Superieure with high distinction, and was fairly on the road to advancement in the career of a university professor, when he joined in the mad uprising of the Commune. What part TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS IS7 he plaj'ed in it I do not know ; certainly it was not equal to his ambition, for he did not succeed in becoming notorious. He escaped the pitiless massacre by the troops, a massacre in which the innocent and the guilty were alike shot down, and by the help of a friend found shelter, far from Paris, as tutor in the family of a colonel in the French army. Had the part he had so lately played been discovered by his employer, he would at once have been sent before a court-martial. He lived with this officer for several months, bearing in silence the exultation of the whole family over the punishment and the miseries of his friends, renewed each day when the news- paper came in. When the storm had blown over he made his way to England, where he supported himself by teaching. A more conscientious teacher could not easily have been found. He did his duty with the utmost strictness. He had brought over with him his aged mother, a widow, and towards her he was always the tenderest and most devoted of sons. In startling contrast with this tenderness there would sometimes blaze up in him the wildest ferocity. One day he was talking to me of the success of his principles and his party, which could not, he felt sure, be long delayed. " What do you mean to do," I asked, " when you have the upper hand ? " With the fiercest glare in his eyes, clenching his right hand, IS8 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS he replied, " II faut egorger toute la bourgeoisie ! " " Comment ! toute ! " I cried out with horror. " Oui, toute, toute, toute ! " he answered, stamp- ing on the ground. It was then I felt that at last I knew how such men as Robespierre and St. Just had looked. From England he went to America, where he spent some years. It was shortly after his return to Europe that I received from him the following letters. In 1881, as a newspaper correspondent, he accompanied the French expedition to Tunis. He had scarcely set foot on the coast of Africa when a wild Ma- hometan fanatic rushed upon him and struck him to the ground with a dagger, in the belief that he was killing a Christian. To be killed as a Chris- tian would have been the greatest of all humil- iations in the eyes of this poor Communard. Whether he learnt of the fatal blunder I do not know. I was told that he endured the sufferings of the few hours of life which were left to him with the greatest fortitude. 8 Juillet, 1879 [LoNDREs]. Monsieur, — J'esperais vous voir, en retournant a Paris. Je savais que vous aviez quitte , mais i'ignorais votre adresse. C'est pourquoi je ne vous ai point ecrit pour vous faire part du malheur qui m'a frappe I'annee derniere : ma mere est morte le 16 Aout, 1878. EUe dort maintenant sur la terre w s o o u w o TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 1 59 d'exil et je suis seul, tout seul au monde. Apres tout cela vaut peut-etre mieux, car toute affection est la source de plus de douleurs que de joies. Rien n'est plus dur que de voir souffrir ceux qu'on aime. Nil amare est encore meilleur que nil admirari. Je partirai la semaine prochaine pour la France, La Republique y est solidement etablie, toutes les places sont a prendre, tout est a la portee des hommes de cceur et d'intelligence. Pour peu que la chance me favorise, vous entendrez parler de moi dans quelques annees. En Amerique j'ai appris une bonne chose, c'est : go ahead. Believe me, sir, yours truly, 'July S, 1879 [London]. Sir, — I had hoped to see you on my way back to Paris. I was aware you had left , but I did not know your address ; or else I should have written to inform you of the heavy blow which struck me last year: my mother died on August 16, 1S78. She sleeps in the land of exile, and I am alone, all alone, in the world. After all, perhaps it is better thus, for from our affections spring more sorrows than joys. To see the sufferings of those we love is the hardest lot of all. Nil amare is even better than nil adutii-ari. I shall leave next week for France. The Republic is firmly established ; every post is open to him who can seize it ; everything is within the grasp of men of courage and understanding. If for- tune gives me but a small share of her favors, before many years have passed my name shall be known. One good thing I learnt in America — to go ahead. Believe me, sir, yours truly, l6o TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 59 Rue des Feuillantines [Paris], 4_7bre, 1879. Dear Sir, — Me voila installe. Des mon ar- rivee j'ai appris que j'etais amnistie. Je I'ignorais, et j'etais parti a tout hasard, j'en avais assez de I'exil. J'en ai assez aussi de I'instruction, et je veux vivre de ma plume. Deja quelques articles ont ete acceptes et vont paraitre incessamment. Je me suis arrange avec I'editeur d'un journal, qui m'a demande de lui traduire quelques petites nouvelles de I'Anglais. . . . Mais ce que j'aime- rais surtout a traduire ce serait un grand et bel ouvrage scientifique ou historique. . . . Et vous, quand viendrez-vous a Paris ? J'ai trouve la grande ville bien belle. C'est la que la vie est, je ne dis pas bonne — elle ne Test nulle part — mais supportable. Elle passe si vite qu'on a presque pas le temps de souffrir. Mais vous etes, vous, un optimiste qui, j'en suis sur, ne goutez pas les charmes de I'aneantisse- ment final. Et puis vous avez a faire sur la terre, tant d'affections vous y rattachent. J'ai vu Miss L et N , j'ai retrouve une jeune fille et un jeune homme ou j'avais laisse des enfants. C'est a cela qu'on voit que Ton a vieilli. Miss M doit etre une femme et E deja un gaillard. Tout ce petit monde en grandissant TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS l6l semble nous pousser vers la tombe. La place est restreinte h. I'airee de la vie. Croyez moi Yours truly My gloomy correspondent made one or two ad- ditions to my collection of autographs. The fol- lowing letter was written to him in English by 1 59 Rue des Feuillantines [Paris], September 4, 1879. Dear Sir, — Here I am settled down. On my arrival I learnt that I had been included in the amnesty. In ignorance of this I had set out ready to run every risk, for I had had enough of exile. I have had enough of teaching, too, and I mean to live by my pen. Some of my articles have already been accepted, and are to appear at once. I have come to an understanding with the pub- lisher of a journal, who has asked me to translate for him some short stories from the English. But what I should like above all to translate is some important work on science or history. But when are you coming to Paris ? I have found the great city beautiful indeed. There, if anywhere, life is — I will not say good, for it is good nowhere, but endurable. It passes by so swiftly that time is scarcely left for suffering. But as for you, you are an optimist, with not the least taste, I am sure, for the charms of that annihilation which ends everything. And then you have your work to do on this earth ; you are bound to it by so many ties of affection. I have seen Miss L and N ; I have found on my return a young girl and a young man where I had left children. It is changes such as these which show us that we have ourselves grown old. Miss M is, no doubt, a woman, and E must be by this time a fine young fellow. All this little world, in growing big, seems to thrust us towards the grave. On this threshing-floor of the world there is only room for the sheaves of a single harvest. Believe me. Yours truly l62 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS one of his comrades, who had, he told me, held the post of " intendant " during the Commune. It shows how these exiles had their purses in common. Monday morning. Dear : When you come at London next Wednesday bring me please 2 or 3 pounds, be- cause I have no more money. Your in Friendship Another letter which he gave me is a strange piece of patchwork, for no two words in it — and there are more than twenty — are in the same language. It was written by Napoleon La Cecilia, a man who spoke eight languages fluently, and read twenty-five easily. Through how many more he could have groped his way with the help of a dictionary and grammar I do not know. It was not only languages that he knew ; for some years he had taught mathematics at Jena. Frenchman though he was by birth and education, neverthe- less he joined the army with which Garibaldi invaded Sicily, and rapidly rose to the rank of colonel. For his skill and gallantry he was pub- licly thanked by Victor Emmanuel. He would not, however, serve under a king, and resigned his commission. He was in Paris when the war with Germany broke out, and he at once offered TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 163 his services to the imperial government. So sturdy a republican was as much distrusted as a German by Napoleon's ministers, and his offer was declined. He enlisted in the Franc-tireurs, and once more was made a colonel. When the republic was established, he was transferred, with the same rank, to the regular army, in which he distinguished himself by his defense of Cha- teaudun-on-the-Loire. Unhappily, he was swept away by the mad frenzy of the Commune. By the insurgents he was promoted to the rank of gen- eral. How he escaped to England I do not know. To disguise himself would have been almost im- possible, so peculiar were his large goggle eyes. For five years he taught French in the Royal Naval School at New Cross. His health, which had suffered greatly from exposure in the Franco- German War, began to fail, and he left England for the milder climate of Egypt. " Here," as I learn from one who knew him well, " he never spoke of the Commune, never uttered a single Communistic opinion. Though his convictions remained the same, he effaced the past in his talk, and seemed to find content in earning a meagre livelihood by teaching French and Italian in a few English families. His erudition and keen intellect were, however, much valued by a small circle of friends ; and it is pleasant to think that almost his last words were, ' France is at last in l64 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS the right way. I go content' " The following brief note, written by him to a brother exile, gives some insight into the straightforward character of the man : — 22 Juillet, '72. MoN CHER : Dispensez-vous, je vous en prie, de m'amener le jeune F , et avant de recommander les gens connaissez-les mieux. Je vous serre la main. Votre devoue N. La Cecilia.^ I have some interesting letters written at the time of the Franco-German War. The first five are from two young Frenchmen, whose father, a brave and honest patriot, had fled to England in 185 1. When the war broke out, my corre- spondents were living near Paris. July 13, 1870. Dear Mr. Hill, — I think that we are on the eve of a terrible war with Prussia. The papers of this evening affirm that if Bismarck does not give satisfactory explanations to the French Cabi- net before to-morrow evening, hostilities will be- gin immediately. What a horrible thing, to be 1 July 22, 1872. My dear : I must beg you not to bring young F with you ; before giving a recommendation know your man better. With every friendly feeling, Yours sincerely, N. La Cecilia. ^ t. ^^^»***!^*^ ^J '^y^'>^ ^- V'^^a^-tftS^^^tMy— y^ ^^ TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 165 sure ! To see two nations murder each other to satisfy the personal ambition of those monsters who call themselves Kings and Emperors. I as- sure you that the majority of the French are far from desiring to fight the Prussians, and if an appeal were made to the nation the peace of Eu- rope would not be troubled. No, this war has been plotted since a long time by Napoleon and his ministers ; they made the Plebiscite to give new life to the faltering dynasty of the Bona- partes, so as to engage in this war with more safety. An excellent proof of this is that the navy had been fitted out before the news of the Hohenzollern affair were supposed to have reached the ears of the imperial cabinet. The offer of the crown of Spain to the German prince is therefore a mere pretext to come to hands. Very truly yours. Paris, le 10 Aout, 1870. My dear Mr. Hill, — I was at when your letter came. Albert the eldest is probably on his way to the frontier. The younger was called yesterday. My brother and myself expect to be called in a couple of days, but we refuse to march unless the great murderer be put out of the way. We have my brother C in the south, although being only eighteen he cannot be called. l66 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS They won't give us arms to defend our homes ; they want to send us to be butchered on the frontier under the orders of their rascally and stupid Generals. We have had treason ; the money for the troops has been stolen by N.'s crea- tures, who have divided the spoil. All these men must be arrested and tried. Our only safety is in the republic ; if it be not proclaimed in two days France is lost. We have nought but ruin and sorrow before us. Thank God that my poor father is not here to witness it. We expect to be charged by the cavalry this afternoon at the Corps legislatif, where we are going to ask for arms. If they won't give them we must take them. Believe me, dear Sir, Yours faithfully, . August 19, 1870. Dear Sir, — ... All the democratic journals have been suppressed, and the language of most of the government papers is so atrociously fero- cious that it touches on idiotcy. Here they only busy themselves in looking for spies and tearing them to pieces. The papers invent wonderful do- ings of spies disguised as admirals, nuns, shepherds. The next canard will be that Bismarck having grown an imperial has tried to pass himself off as Napoleon. However, there is a kind of terror, TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 167 and one scarcely dares to express an opinion as regards the war. I maintain that the French nation is composed of Republicans, idiots and rogues, the two last classes making together a happy mixture. You think his [Napoleon's] downfall is near. I hope so, but fear it is not so, and that he will die at the Tuileries (if we are victorious) blessed by a happy people ! ! I expect everything now from the French, brutified by 20 years corruption and despotism, and if this comes to pass I shall make myself an English or Ameri- can citizen. A splendid opportunity of proclaiming the Republic has been lost. It might have been done on the opening of the French Chambers after the great defeat of Wissemburg. loooo men were ready if only one depute made a sign. Had this been done not one Prussian soldier would be this side the Rhine by this time. I am more than ever certain they will come to Paris, which town they cannot take, however. Well ! let us hope for the best. Faithfully yours, . P. S. The unfortunate men who attempting to take arms in a barracks killed a policeman are left to the tender mercies of a court martial. Their fate is certain. The government try to make believe these men are paid by Bismarck. They are simply victims of the coup d'etat and l68 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS of 1849 who have neither forgotten nor forgiven their wrongs. The next letter I received on December 9. It is written on a small sheet of thin paper, on the outside of which is printed " Par Ballon Monte." It had been dispatched from Paris in a balloon. Where it first touched ground there is no post- mark to show. The two stamps it bears are both of the republic. It runs as follows : — ist December, 1870. Dear Mr. Hill, — To-morrow morning at three we start with 1 00000 men to take part in the great battle. Perhaps the anniversary of the coup d'etat will see the Republic victorious. All are resolved to fight to the last and all are confident of success, but how many brave men will not return ! Yours faithfully. i'^ Compagnie Eclaireurs volontaires 13"° Ba- taillon. If by chance you should communicate with my brother who is with my mother near Bordeaux, pray do not mention this letter, as I have left him in utter ignorance of my brother a^id myself being in the army. ■ ft- '*■■ / #■ x:j TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 169 Both the brothers came off unwounded from the battle. One of them told me that at the be- ginning of the fight he was almost overcome by a feeling of horror at the thought of killing his fel- low-creatures. Every time he raised his rifle to his shoulder he hoped that he should miss his mark; He had not been many minutes under fire when one of his friends, who stood next to him, fell dead. Then there came upon him a longing for vengeance, and now he hoped that every shot would strike down a man. It was not till towards the end of the following February that I had any further news from my correspondent. On the surrender of Paris, when the posts once more began to run, I received the following letter : — Paris, 23 F6v. 1871. Cher Monsieur Hill, — Des avantpostes ou je me trouvais avec mon frere je vous ai adresse quelques mots la veille d'une sortie ; je doute que vous ayez re9u ma lettre. Sommes-nous tombes assez bas ? Et cependant chacun a fait son devoir a Paris, I'imperitie de nos chefs a seule pu nous livrer. Nous avons souvent eu la victoire entre nos mains; le 19 Janvier nous avons pris d'assaut des murs imprenables, et nous avons refoule I'ennemi si loin de Paris que je m'attendais a aller coucher le soir meme dans ma maison. I/O TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS Si la guerre continue nous irons sans doute dans quelque forteresse prussienne, mais si la ma- jorite rurale arrive a bucher quelque chose qu'on sera convenu d'appeler la paix, 11 faut que nous essayions de batir sur les ruines. La situation est difficile, mais apres les obus, les balles, le froid et la faim rien ne peut m'effrayer. Je Grains bien que I'Angleterre n'ait a se repen- tir bientot de son systeme de non intervention. Ce ne sont certes pas les sympathies du peuple qui nous ont manque, nous en avons la preuve aujourd'hui. [This refers, no doubt, to the food sent from England to Paris as soon as the gates were opened.] La Prusse, dans son arrogance ne va-t-elle pas se jeter sur le Luxembourg, la Bel- gique et la Hollande ? Avant 8 ans la France attaquera la Prusse, j'en suis convaincu, a moins que les peuples ne s'unis- sent contre les rois pour former entre eux une seule et meme famille. Mais que Bismarck et son roi nous arrachent les griffes, qu'ils nous rognent les ongles, pendant qu'ils le peuvent, car ils ont allume dans le coeur de tout bon fran9ais une bien terrible haine. Votre tout devoue } 1 Paris, February 23, 1871. Dear Mr. Hill, — From the outposts where I was stationed with my brother I sent you a few lines on the eve of a sally. I have my doubts whether the letter reached you. TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS I/I The French are indeed a strange people. They had fallen on Germany with cries of " A Berlin ! " in the hopes of robbing it of all the country on the western side of the Rhine ; and then, when the Germans proved the stronger, they bitterly reproached England for not coming to their rescue. A robber who had tried to run off with his neighbor's spoons, and had been seized by the owner, might just as well reproach the constable for not coming to his aid. As Mr. Lowell says, Are we fallen low enough ? Nevertheless, in Paris every one has done his duty ; nothing but the unskillfulness of our leaders could have delivered us up to the enemy. We have often had victory in our hands; on January 19 we carried impregnable walls by storm, and we thrust back the enemy to such a distance from Paris that I looked to sleep that very night in my own house. If the war lasts we shall doubtless be sent to some Prussian fortress ; but if the country people wlao form the majority succeed in hewing out something which by common agreement shall be called peace, we must do our best to build on the ruins. The state of affairs is hard indeed ; but after bombshells and bullets, cold and hunger, nothing can scare me. England, I fear, will soon have reason to repent of her system of non-intervention. Most certainly it was not the sympathy of the people which failed us ; of that we have proof this very day. Will not Prussia in her arrogance fall on Luxemburg, Belgium, and Holland? Eight years, I feel certain, will not have gone by before France attacks Prussia, unless the peoples league themselves against the kings and form one single family. But let Bismarck and his king clip our claws and pare our nails whilst they can, for in the heart of every good Frenchman they have kindled the flame of dreadful hatred. Yours very sincerely. 172 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS " they are fearfully and wonderfully made in some respects." They are, perhaps, the most logical people in the world ; they are certainly the most unreasonable. I have lately read the last letter to one of my friends, a Prussian colonel, who was at the siege of Paris. There was, he said, some fierce fighting on this 19th of January, though near St. Cloud, where his regiment was posted, the French were soon beaten back. Nowhere for a single moment were they within reach of victory. The German outposts were driven in, as outposts always are driven in, by the sudden attack of a large force. The murs imprenables were garden-walls which had been loopholed. These were carried at the first onset, but as soon as the reserves were brought up, and a battery of more than forty guns opened fire, the French were driven back with great loss. Close to where my friend was posted, ten or twelve of their officers, who with a strong body of men had occupied a large house, were cut off from retreat by this hasty flight. An officer of the German staff summoned them to surrender, as resistance and escape were alike hopeless. They had no help for it, and laid down their arms. The next two letters are from an Alsatian, one of those brave and eager spirits who in times of danger always hurry to the front. He was about five-and-thirty years old when the war broke out, TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 1/3 but as soon as the news reached him of disasters to his beloved France, at a moment's warning he threw up a good post which he had in England, and went to serve as a private soldier. He came to see me on his release from a Prussian fortress, full of bitterness towards his countrymen. By his fellow-soldiers, on his first arrival in France, he had been received, he said, with scorn. " Why had he been such a fool as to thrust himself into this mess, when he was safe and well off in Eng- land.? " Had there been, he said, his face light- ing up with fire as he spoke, one hundred thou- sand men like himself, the Germans would have been driven out of France. In his foreign prison he had done what little he could for his country by secretly making a plan of the fortress. Boulogne sur-Mer, August nth 1870. Dear Sir, — As soon as we heard of the bad news that the Prussians had invaded France, my friends and I we hastened to go to our Embassa- dor to get our passeport, and went directly to Boulogne, amidst a tremendous enthusiasm. If we succeed in our enterprise, I shall come back to London ; but should we experience some other defeats, we are determined to be killed. Four of my friends are enlisted among the Cuirassiers, and I and an other we are enlisted among the sharpshooters, or Chasseurs a Pied. 174 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS My address is : Mr. , 8""= Compagnie du 20°"' Bataillon des Chasseurs a Pied. I remain, Dear Sir, Yours most devotedly, . Graudenz, January 17th 1871. My DEAR Sir, — I don't know if you have re- ceived the letter I sent to you from Sedan. You know that I was incorporated in the Chasseurs a pied, 20* Bataillon, directed from Boulogne to the Camp of Chalons, and from there to Sedan, where I was made prisoner of war. When I shall come back to London, I shall tell you all the particulars I have been able to witness during my short and fruitless campaign. I have been brought to Graudenz, the most formidable fortress that is in Prussia. That town is situated on the Vistule. The citadelle domi- nates all the country; you may perceive from there the enemy, if he was at a distance of ten miles. It is very cold here, the thermometer shows 10° Fahr. below o° in the middle of the winter. Amidst the miseries of my captivity I find a great relief in recalling to my memory the happy time I have spent in the company of my dear pupils. I have all their names in my pocket- book, and I fancy sometimes to live with them. But that sweet dream fades away, I am awaked TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 175 by the noise made by the Prussian patrollers, when they are going out of their guard-room. You are better able than I to know what they are doing now in France ; however I should like to know it also, I prefer you to be silent about it, if you favour me with a letter. I pray only the heaven to grant an honourable peace to my country, in order that I may come back to London and pay you a visit. My friendly salutations to my pupils. If one of them would procure me a great pleasure, he ought to give some news about what is passing with them. I remain yours most respectfully, Chasseur a pied au 20""* bataillon, prisonnier de guerre i'^ Compagnie a Graudenz, Prusse. The letter which this brave man sent to me from Sedan, unfortunately, never reached me. The following brief note I received from a young Frenchman who had been studying in England under my charge. I have never heard from him since, and I fear that he fell in the war. 15th Aug. '70. Dear Sir, — I am obliged to go back to France, to serve my country. I am sure I would rather stay at home than go and be killed, but I am not free to act as I would. 1/6 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS Assuredly we have been misled by our minis- ters ; it is shameful to see such a state of things. But we can only say with Fenelon, " Avant que de se jetter [szc'] dans le peril, il faut le pre voir ; mais quand on y est il ne reste plus qua le mepriser." I beg now to thank you once more for your kindness towards me and remain your's friend and obliered . 'fc>^ From another former pupil of mine I received the following card, bearing the postmarks of Paris, October 17, 1870, and of London, October 20. It had been sent, no doubt, by the balloon-post. It bears two stamps, one marked " Empire Fran- 9ais," and the other " Repub. Franc." Dear Sir, — I am in good health. Expecting the Prussians every day. I did not fight yet. I am in the artillerie. My father and mother are in Normandie. I have no news from them. My brother is in the 99^ de ligne at Aix in Provence — near Marseilles. I do not know what is become of him. My kindest remembrances to you and your family. . On the surrender of Paris he sent me the fol- lowing letter, dated February 20, 187 1 : — TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 177 Dear Sir, — You will very likely believe that I am death ! Thanks to God I am yet alive ! For the two first months I was a soldier, the batterie in which I was stopped in the Mont Valerien. It was very dull indeed to be confined there for two whole months without going out but now and then. On the 15th of September we came in Paris where we are still now. Since that time untill the armistice we were not happy at all, I can assure you. We had to sleep on the ground, weit [wet] most of the time ; the feeding was so miserable than very often we could not eat it. I caught rheu- matism, and was sent to the ambulance. For two months I kept the bed for the whole time ; now I feel better and better, and I hope to go to a village near Perigueux, where my father is. What do you think of our poor France ; how unhappy we were without stupid war! What will become of Alsace and Lorraine? I read in the papers with a great pleasure that English people were quite simpathic to us. My brother who is in the 99'= de ligne is in good health ; he did not leave Aix in Provence, what I am glad of. I must tell you something rather curious. I am in the ambulance of Mr. De ; that gentleman, about forty-eight years old, was brought up under the cares of your father. He does not remin [remember] neither you nor your 178 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS brothers. I am afraid you will not be able to make out my poor English. It is so long since I could speak a single word, having no opportunity of practising. I am, Sir, yours very respect'?' The last of these letters of the great war is from a young Spaniard who had sought shelter in Eng- land when the Germans threatened Paris, and who had returned to his old quarters in that town. Under date of March 3, 1871, he writes: "We started from Calais at seven in the morning, and after a very tiresome journey of twelve hours we got into Paris. . . . Paris was very gloomy last Tuesday evening, for there was no gas in the streets, but to-day the weather is most beautiful, and everything is almost as gay as before the siege ; the Parisians feel the Prussians are gone, and the streets are animated with a motley throng, great many soldiers of all sorts, but most of them unarmed. It is a funny thing to look at the people here, you can see les gargons de cafe with their white apron, but wearing under it some mili- tary ornament ; the butchers, bakers, booksellers, etc., are half civilians and half soldiers. " I have found all my books and things I left care of "my portiere on leaving Paris. I have from my window a good view of the Colonne de la Bastille, which is completely ornamented with TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 179 flowers and flags. Just as I am writing to you some battalions of Gardes nationaux with bugles and beating drums are passing before, or rather under my window (I am in the 4* story) ; every one is decorated with yellow flowers, and one of them bears a huge everlasting crown, which will increase the number of those ornamenting already the Colonne. ' Greatest order prevails.' They seem delighted with these innocent demonstra- tions, the good Parisians." In the summer of this same year I happened to be dining with a citizen of Versailles, when he was called from the table by his servant. On his return he handed me the following document : — Mairie de Versailles. Rue d'Angiviller, no. — Au NoM DE la Loi. M. rent, ou la personne qui occupe le local, logera, pendant un jour. Deux Militaires. Pour M. Le Maire, le Chef du Bureau militaire. Bon pour lit. Versailles, ce 22 Juillet, 1871.^ 1 Town Hall of Versailles. In the Name of the Law. Mr. , gentleman, or the person in actual occupation of the premises, is required to lodge two soldiers for one day. For the Mayor, the Superintendent of the War OfiSce. Valid for beds. Versailles, July 22, 1871. l8o TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS My friend had at once to provide lodging for the two soldiers who themselves brought him this order. France was, I thought, in point of liberty, two centuries and a half behind England ; for, by the Petition of Right, it was enacted in the reign of Charles I. " that no soldier shall be quartered on the subject without his own consent." Never- theless, if my memory does not play me false, more than one of George III.'s governors attempted to quarter soldiers on the citizens of New England. That Frenchmen should so often have proved restive under the law causes little surprise to those who know how meddling their central government has at all times been. I have a curious document which shows that, less than sixty years ago, in France, no one might take a pailful of water from the sea without first obtaining permission at the custom house. The tax on salt, which was heavy, was not to be evaded by the use of sea-water. A license was granted, on my father's application, to the landlady of the house in which he had taken lodgings : — Boulogne-sur-Mer, 22 Juin, 1837. Administration des Douanes, i«re Division. II est permis a Mad^ Talavera demeurant a Boulogne, de faire prendre a la mer tous les jours, pendant un mois, six seaux d'eau pour de baines.^ 1 In the original it is either " de baines " or " de bainer." It is not " des bains." _ ^ 2 ~- 2 » S S. a H ■^ ^ s **• __. & a o g -^ ^ «• ?" ff Cft • «-* o I «-. TO e » a a S to a ^. <-»■ « y' ^. TO *2 '^ « Co S: TO ~.s» a •J9 -T* ns 2 'ts 2 TO S K ^ a a -i 3 2 e _ TO» ;? •^ «"> Cft T c»a ^ g. "^ §• s § a. * S S. A gq Oq Co c« c O o c bo a w o O 03 r r R ■< g PI S3 v.- > H- 1 W«4 c^. a V. o s o ft. ^^ S TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS l8l Le chef du poste de la jetee de Test mention- nera les quantites d'eau enlevees, et renverra la presente permission au bureau de la Direction. Pour le Directeur des Douanes, Le Premier Commis de la Direction, Rouget/ When I was staying at Vichy, some years ago, I saw an extraordinary instance of that centraliza- tion of the government which, next to the corrup- tion of Louis Napoleon and of his generals, laid France low at the feet of Germany. In the bath- room was placarded the number of towels allowed to each bather. This regulation was issued by the mayor of the town, was countersigned at Mou- lins by the prefect of the department, and was approved at Paris by the Minister of the Interior. Neither Frenchman nor foreigner, though he took his bath at a distance of more than two hundred miles from Paris, was overlooked by the paternal eye of the government. Of his lawful number of towels no hireling should deprive him. 1 Boulogne-sur-Mer, June 22, 1837. Custom House, First Department. Permission is hereby given to Mme Talavera, an inhabitant of Boulogne, to have six pails of sea-water fetched from the sea for baths every day for a month. The head of the guard stationed on the eastern jetty will report the quantity of water taken each day, and will return this license to the chief office. For the Collector of Customs, RouGET, Chief Clerk. l82 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS From France I shall take my readers across the Pyrenees to Spain, which in its turn was shaken by revolution. My correspondent was a young officer of the army. He wrote to me as fol- lows: — Madrid, nth March, 1873. Dear Sir, — The letters from the special corre- spondents of the London newspapers will have already informed you of the state of my unhappy country. You will, no doubt, by association of ideas, now and then thought of me while you were reading of them. If you saw my room at present you would think of the assortment of fire arms and small arms that Robinson Crusoe kept in his dwelling, when he was expecting an attack from the canibals. As unfortunately the army is now become so demoral- ized through Republican preachings, socialism, infidelity, and as the city is full of return convicts, french comunists, unemployed worksmen and all scum of society, we are in continual aprehension of having our houses sacked by the mob. After two or three days of desagreable panic the middle classes, stimulated by the example of the higher orders, are arming themselves. There is scarcely a fire arm that has not been bought up, so that every house is become a mili- tary arsenal. In my house we mustered about thirty men, what with coachmen, servants, aides TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 183 de camp of my father and orderlies, and as most of us have served in the regular army, I don't think that any of the new Comunists will find it healthy to make our acquaintance, but if they think it healthy they shall be well received, for we are well prepared, that is to say my brothers and servants, for myself I shall be probably in the street with the troops. Many officers have arrived in Madrid from the provinces, having escaped fortunately from the troops, who are now become in many places a dangerous and mischievous mob. Here they are better, but still we are always exposed to be mur- dered or to be insulted by the people, and we have very little authority with our soldiers. It is very annoying indeed to be an officer in these circum- stances. I avail myself of this occasion to declare myself your most obedient servant, In my collection there are but two American autographs. I would there were more. If nature abhors a vacuum, so do I. I hasten to say that it is not by dealers that this unseemly void will be filled, if filled it ever is. The excess postage which I have just had to pay on one of their circulars (it comes from Baltimore) leads me to give this warning. I never buy autographs. My 1 84 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS American treasures, few as they are in number, are of a fine quality. One of them, as my readers have seen, is in the handwriting of George Wash- ington; the other is a letter of William Lloyd Garrison. Not as yet has Garrison's greatness been fully recognized by the world. Even his own country- men too often do not seem to know that in him they had one of the great ones of the earth. In the noblest of all causes, the cause of freedom, he was " as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice." It was not smooth things that he came to speak, for it is not by smooth things that the slumbering conscience of a mighty nation is awak- ened. It takes long years before the full greatness of the stern teachers of mankind like him is ac- knowledged. The time will come, I believe, when the historian will rank Garrison among the men — few they are in number — who by strength of character, and by strength of character alone, have worked the mightiest changes in the history of the world. John Bright saw his greatness. I was present at the public breakfast given to Garrison in London nearly thirty years ago, when that noble orator described him as a man " On Fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be filed." Garrison's letter is in answer to the following strange communication : — TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 185 III. Mar. 2, 1874. Hon. W'^ Loyd Garrison : Dr Sir, — A little over thirteen years ago John Brown's famous attack on Harper's Ferry occurred. At that time the writer was a resident of Martins- burg, Va. As soon as the news of the attack reached me I, in company of quite a number of others, citizens of Martinsburg, went to assist in fighting the insurgents. Of course you are well acquainted with the whole history of the events that followed the attack, that we did nothing more than drive Brown and his associates into the Arsenal, where they stood on the defensive, until the arrival of Col. Lee and the squad of Marines, when the door was battered down, and all either captured and [.fzV] killed. I entered the arsenal with, or immediately after the Marines, and on the floor of the building I picked up a Sharp's Rifle, and carried it off as a trophy. I have kept that rifle ever since, carrying it with me when I left Virginia, during the Civil War. You are, or rather were the leading Abolition [^zV] of the country, and of course sympathized [.yzV] Brown, and per- haps would value the rifle as a relic. I also obtained one of the famous Pikes on Maryland heights the next day, but it was stolen from my house by a squad of rebel soldiers, who searched it for arms. If you wish to have the rifle and I can satisfy you in any way that it is what I repre- l86 TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS sent it to be, I will send it to you by express, you agreeing to send me ^25 for it. Yours truly . Garrison replied : — Boston, March 7, 1874. Dear Sir, — In answer to your letter I would state that I must decline the proposition con- tained in it, in regard to purchasing the rifle in your possession, as, for forty years, I have been avowedly a radical peace man, and am still for beating all swords into ploughshares, and all spears into pruning-hooks, so that every man may sit under his own vine and fig-tree, with none to molest or make afraid. I gave no sanction to John Brown's method of emancipating the slaves, though conceding to him the purest and noblest motives. According to the theory of our govern- ment and the example of our revolutionary sires, he was a hero and a martyr, and so the civilized world regards him. That you should have had a hand in his capture and death, however true to your sense of duty at that time, is now, I trust, a matter of deep regret on your part, seeing that while he remembered those in bonds as bound with them, you took sides with their cruel op- pressors. Yours for the reign of universal freedom and peace. W'^ Lloyd Garrison. ^ ■-- -, ^ — > I. O-w^cL^ C*^ V — xj-i-'^-'^i^cA. 4A.^>^t4L' M^'^^'^^ -i^cFF^ 4^olji^ c^^ttr /iMX^r^ C^y-t^^-tJi^ TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS 187 I trust that I have not wearied my audience with my talk about autographs. Collectors are apt to be garrulous over their treasures, and gar- rulity does not lessen as the years creep over a man. I warned my readers in the beginning that I should treat them as I treat my friends when they enter my study. I should be sorry to think that I have taken an ungenerous advantage of their kindness. If they are not weary of me, per- haps, by the help of a friendly publisher, we may meet again before very long, and once more con- verse about men and books. Whether that hope is granted or not, may some of my readers, as they now take leave of me, be able honestly to say with Dr. Johnson, " Sir, we had good talk." INDEX Adam, Robert B., 53, 148. Ainger, Canon, 25. Airy, Sir G. B., 37-39. Arnold, Matthew, 40-43, 75, 149. Atkinson, , 23. Austen, Jane, 16, 18. Austen-Leigh, P. E., i8. Baker, Sir Samuel, loi, 104, lOO. Bentham, Jeremy, 17. Berkeley, Grantley, 145. Bismarck, Prince, 164, 166, 170. Blackstone, Sir William, 11, 43, 48, 148. Blanc, Louis, iii. Boswell, James, g, 10, 12, 44, 48, 50-54, 125, 132, 147. BosweU, James, Jun., 147. Bowen, Lord Justice, 75. Bright, John, 64, 116, 145, 1S4. Brougham, Lord, 63, 91, 113-115. Broughton, John, 144. Brown, John, 185. Browne, Sir Thomas, 43-46. Browning, Robert, 147. Bryzinski, 141. Bull (Carissimus Tauroruni), 60, 62. Bulwer. See Lytton. Burdon, Alderman, 29, 35. Burke, Edmund, 55, 123, 143. Burne- Jones, Sir Edward, 28, 135, 137- Burney, Frances, 35, 125. Byron, Lord, 6. Cairnes, Professor, 21. Cambridge, Duke of, loi. Campbell, Rev. Dr. Thomas, 51. Carey and Lea, Messrs., 15. Carlyle, Thomas, 23, 37, 50, 59, 63, 75. 95. 152- Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 97, 99, 152. Carnot, President, 49. Cartwright, Major John, 85. Cave, Edward, 10. Charles I., 89, 130, 180. Chartists, 154. Chesterfield, Earl of, 124, 138. Clarendon, Earl of, 48. Clarendon Press, 48, 49. Clarkson, Thomas, 120. Cobden, Richard, 64, n6. Coleridge, Hartley, 95, 97. Coleridge, S. T., 94, 95. Communards, 156. Cowper, William, 13, 59-62. Crofton, Rev. H., 17. Croker, J. W., 91. Darwin, Charles Robert, 58. Darwin, Erasmus, 58. De Quincey, Thomas, 44, 95-100. Dickens, Charles, 153. Dillon, John, 63. Drake, Sir Francis, 105. Dugdale, Sir WilUam, 43, 46. Dumont, 17. Edgeworth, R. L., 17. Edgeworth, Maria, 14-18. Eldon, Earl of, 29-34, 74. Eliot, Sir John, 130. Eliot, John, 90. Elliot, Sir Henry, 104. Emerson, R. W., 115. Eugene, Prince, 148. Fenelon, 176. Fields, James T., 14, 64. Findlater, Dr. Andrew, 53. Fitzwilliam, Earl, 115. Forster, John, 130. Franco-German War, 163-180. Freeman, E. A., 75- Froude, J. A., 13, 75. 190 INDEX Garrison, W. L., 120, 184. George III., 34, 122, 125, 180. Gessi, Romulus, 105. Gibbon, Edward, 143. Gladstone, W. E., 39, 117. Godwin, William, 153. Goldsmith, Oliver, 9, 77. Gordon, General, 100-107, 120, 134. Gordon, Sir H. W., 100, I02. Gray, Thomas, 143. Green, J. R., 75. Hampden, John, 131. Handel, 93. Hawkins, Sir John, 51, 54. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 22. Haydon, B. R., 46. Hazlitt, William, 153. Hemans, Felicia, 92, 128. Hill, M. D., 87, 98, 150. Hill, Sir Rowland, 37-40, 118, 123, 154. Hill, Rev. Rowland, 37. Hope, Beresford, 72. Hughes, Arthur, 135. Hume, David, 123, 143, 144. Hunt, Leigh, 150-154. Hunter (a publisher), 14. Irving, Rev. Edward, 37. Irving, Sir Henry, 69. Ismail Pacha, 120. Jewett, Miss, 81. Johannis, King, 105. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 5, 8, 9, 19, 43, 5c^55, 69-71, 75, 91, 94, 96, 142- 146, 148, 187. Jones, David, 72. Jowett, Rev. Benjamin, 48-54. Juarez, Benito, I2i. Kenyon, Lord, 33. Kingsley, Rev. Charles, 68. Knight, Charles, 118. La Cecilia. N.. 162. Lee, Colonel, 185. Lloyd, Bishop, 130. Lockhart, J. G., 25. Longfellow, H. W., i. LoweU, J. R., 2, 96, 171. Lytton, first Lord, 138-140. Lytton, second Lord, 138, 140. Macaulay, T. B., 23, 37, 46, 50, ; 58, 91, no, 113-118, 153. Macintosh, Sir James, 115. Mackay, Charles, 20. Macpherson, James, 8, 96, 142. Maine, Sir Henry, 75. Martineau, Harriet, 19-23, 39, J 115, 119. Mather, Cotton, 90. Maule, Judge, 29. Maynard, Miss, 126, 128. Metternich, 119. Mill, J. S., 78. Mirabeau, 17. Mitford, Miss, 64-67. Morley, John, 117. Morris, William, 135. Murray, John, 6. Napier, Macvey, 114. Napoleon Bonaparte, 32. Napoleon III., 163, 165-167, 181. Nelson, Lord, 25. Newman, Cardinal, 67. Newton, Sir Isaac, 93. Newton, Rev. John, 60. Nichol, Dr., 99. Nichol, Professor, 99. Nubar, Pacha, 105. O'Connell, Daniel, 62. Oliphant, Mrs., 38. Osborne, Thomas, 70. Owen, Robert, 118. Owen, Professor, 75. Palmerston, Viscount, 116. Paoli, Pascal, 92, 125. Parr. Mrs.. 80. INDEX 191 Pocock, Lewis, 145. Pope, Alexander, 61, 63, 94. Price, Rev. Professor, 49. Prinsep, Valentine, 135. Ralstone, , 15. Renan, 67. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 55. Rickman, J., 92. Robertston, Rev. Dr. William, 144. Robinson, H. C, 24, 63, 66. Romilly, Sir Samuel, 32. Rossetti, D. G., 135, 137. Rousseau, 125. Ruskin, John, 26-28. Salt-tax, I So. Saturday Review, 72. Scott, Sir John, 100, 102. Scott, John (of Amwell), 25. Scott, John (an editor), 24. Scott, Sir Walter, 15, 16, 82, 129. Scott, Lady, 16. Shenstone, William, 43, 55-58. Simmons, Sir Lintorn, loi. Smith, Rev. Sydney, 115. Smith, Dr. William, 77. Southey, Robert, 43, 90-96, 120. Spain, Revolution in, 182. Sparks, Mrs., 64. Stael, Madame de, 17. Stamp Act, 123. Stephen, Sir James, 75. Stephen, Leslie, 75. Stowell, Lord, 32-35. Sumner, Charles, 153. Swift, Dean, 61. Swinburne, C. A., 133. Talfourd, Judge, 25. Tayleure, William, 89. Temple, Rev. W. J., 12, 50, 52. Tennyson, Lord, 137. Theobald, Lewis, 69. Ticknor, George, 17, 66, 90, 115, 153- Tilt, Charles, 47. _ Tocqueville, Alexis de, iii. Trevelyan, Sir George, 116. lupper, M. F., 132, 147. Vergier, Colonel de, 87. Vichy, 181. Wales, Prince of, 102. Walford, Mrs., 80. Walpole, Horace, 13, 107, no, 12 , 143- Walton, Izaak, 3. Washington, George, 122, 184. Webster, Daniel, 1 18. Wellington, Duke of, 2, 33, 147, 155. Whitefield, Rev. George, 43. Wilkes, John, 54 WilUiams, Roger, 90. Wordsworth, Wilhara, 94, 95, 99.