A Talk Over Autographs

FOURTH PAPER.

To many people the word u 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 through 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 unkindly 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 cogltat.” 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 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 excite. 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 indifference, 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 panorama 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 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 office one day, to talk over the publication of Horace Walpole’s letters. 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 anecdote on anecdote, and criticism on criticism. We are none of us Macaulays ; nevertheless, a collector of autographs who has something of a literary turn — without such a turn, to collect them is ridiculous — can clothe these scraps of handwriting with some semblance of life by illustrations 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 allusions, which I would set the members of my class, each in the best way he could, to edit. Such a 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 collected, 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 interesting 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 pleasure 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 Constituent 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. “ Ils le tenaient par ses petites jambes an - dessus de leurs tetes ; je le vis qui faisait de vains efforts pour leur échapper, il se repliait et se tordait de tons les côtés sans pouvoir glisser d’entre leurs mains, tout en parlant d’une voix étranglée et stridente ; il me faisait l’effet d’un serpent auquel on pince la queue. On le posa enfin sur un banc au-dessous du mien. Je l’entendis qui criait: ‘ Mes amis, le droit que vous venez de conquérir . . . ’ 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 imprinted 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 Luxembourg, where many of the insurgents were imprisoned. Day after day he had heard the volleys with which his comrades were swept out of the world. Every hour he feared his turn would come. He had been saved by an Englishman, who brought him a suit of English-made clothes, a large umbrella such as every Englishman is supposed to carry, a Bradshaw’s Continental Guide, and a pair of dark spectacles. Fortunately, he spoke our language with perfect ease. Thus equipped, furnished with his friend’s passport 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 chattered 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 Mousquetaire had been able to retain in his memory: “ D’Artagnan dit an patron, Come.

C’était, 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 unwillingness with which he left the House of Commons, the scene of his triumphs and his strength. 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 Review, Brougham and Macaulay are brought together in comical contrast. Brougham, as every one knows, was one of the founders of the Review; 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.” “ Macaulay,” wrote Brougham, “ is absolutely renowned in society as the greatest bore that ever yet appeared. I have seen people come in from Holland House breathless and knocked up, and able to say nothing but. ‘ Oh dear ! oh mercy ! ’

‘ What’s the matter? ’ being asked. "Oh, Macaulay! ’ Then every one said, ‘ That accounts for it,—you’re lucky to be alive.’ ” Sydney Smith, that other founder and pillar of the great Review, 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 Sydney 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 memory, 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 Ticknor, who met him and two bishops at Lord Fitzwilliam’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 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 shortest time.”

Between Macaulay’s somewhat slovenly signature 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 Trevelyan, “ 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 Crimean 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 Palmerston and to the Palmerstonian policy at home and abroad was one of the most rooted sentiments in his heart.”

To the man and his policy Cobden was as much opposed as Bright. On March 23, 1858, he wrote : “ During my experience, the higher classes never stood so high in relative social and political rank, as compared with other classes, as at present. 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 Chancellor 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 extraordinary ability, all nearly of the same age, all belonging 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 Cæsar and Cicero are still one of the cockpits of history, when he finds that our 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 Englishmen 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 letter 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 coöperative 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 his thoughts towards postal reform, was eager to found a coöperative 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 hallucinations 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 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 eminently happy also; they live in an atmosphere of their own, which must be more like that of the third heaven than of this everyday 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 qualities — 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, l’expression de ma haute estime et de toute mon amitié. ISMAIL.

La Favorite was, I think, one of the Khedive’s palaces.

A far worthier ruler than this Khedive was Benito Juarez, President of the Mexican republic, Indian or half-caste though he was. His signature was given me many years ago by the son of a wealthy merchant of Mexico, who, in the frequent revolutions, had escaped plunder by the supplies which he always furnished to the needs of all parties alike when their side was down. He found it far cheaper, he told me, to support the needy than to bribe the powerful. So uncertain was the tenure of office, so great and sudden were the blows of fortune, that, even if gratitude were silent, prudence protected him from being plundered by men who at the next turn of the wheel might be reduced from splendor to beggary. In those days there was not a single bank in Mexico ; checks and bank-notes were unknown, payments being always made in specie. For the requirements of foreign trade there was a constant transmission of silver dollars between the capital and the port. The safe conveyance of this treasure was secured by a guard of soldiers. My friend the merchant once lamented to me the loss of a large sum. It was no corporal or sergeant who proved faithless, nor even a lieutenant or a captain ; a general turned brigand and decamped with the dollars.

From the Mexican President I turn to the first President of the United States. In my earliest childhood my father instilled into me such a veneration of that great man that, when I was a schoolboy of the age of eight or nine, I once angered my little comrades by crying out,

“ I wish I was an American, for then I should be a countryman of George Washington ! ” It has long been enough for me to be an Englishman. This autograph is nothing more than an order for payment, but it is all in Washington’s hand, and is the more interesting as it was written in the last year of his life. It runs as follows: —

MOUNT VERNON, May 16th’ 1799

The Cashier of the Office of Discount & Deposit, Baltimore, Will please pay E’m Greetham Esqr or bearer the sum of Three Hundred & Seventy one dollars Nineteen cents and chg the same to My Acct.

GE¹ WASHINGTON.

37119/100 Dolls.

In my collection, by the side of this autograph, I always keep one of the stamps which George III. and his worthless ministers, supported by a Parliament which far more represented the king than the people, attempted to force on the American colonies. On the top of the face of the stamp is printed "America,” with the legend “ Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense ” round a crown, and “ ii S. vi P.” below. In the middle is a small metal plate. On the reverse, which is covered with gum, are the letters “ G. R.” on each side of a crown, and the numbers 3 and 178. This stamp, with a few others, was found either in the London post-office or in the stampoffice (I forget which), and was given by Sir Rowland Hill to my father. The Stamp Act was carried after “ the most languid debate ” Edmund Burke had ever heard. Hume wrote to a friend, soon after Parliament met, "I think there is all the probability that this will prove a quiet session, and there is a general tranquillity established in Europe, so that we have nothing to do but cultivate letters.” Nothing at this time disturbed the mind of the philosopher but “ the mad and wicked rage of the English against the Scots,” which was likely, he feared, to lessen the reputation of his history. “ There has been nothing of note in Parliament,” said Horace Walpole the same year, “ but one slight day on the American taxes.” Six weeks later, he wrote: “ I don’t remember the day when I was reduced to complain, in winter and Parliament-tide, of having nothing to say. There has not been an event, from a debate to a wedding, capable of making a paragraph. Such calms,” he added, with what now looks like prophetic insight, "often forerun storms.” The silly young king was so little aware of the mischief he was doing that, in the speech with which he prorogued Parliament, he described the session as “ this season of tranquillity.” The House of Lords, however, had not been careless of the tranquillity of America. On March 6 of the year when the Stamp Act was passed the keeper of the Sun Tavern in the Strand was summoned to their bar, and examined about an exhibition in his house of two Indian warriors. He assured their lordships “ that they had had their meals regularly, and drank nothing stronger than small beer.”

The House resolved “that the bringing from America any of the Indians who are under his Majesty’s protection, without proper authority for so doing, may tend to give great dissatisfaction to the Indian nations, and be of dangerous consequence to his Majesty’s subjects residing in the colonies.”When, eight or nine years later, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters were published, the following passage was suppressed : “ The repeal of the Stamp Act was carried in both Houses by the ministers, against the king’s declared inclinations, which is a case that has seldom happened, and I believe seldom will happen.” It is a curious fact that the editor had not the courage to print these words.

If George III. did his best to crush patriots in America, he pensioned one in Europe. I have a long letter written by the Corsican hero, Pascal Paoli, who lived in England for nearly forty years on a noble pension from the crown. In the king’s eyes he had atoned for the guilt of fighting for liberty by fighting against the French. The French, in their turn, who crushed the rising liberties of the Corsicans, on the other side of the Atlantic supported the young American commonwealth. Rousseau, in his anger at their invasion of Corsica, wrote of the French, “ S’ils savaient un homme libre à l’ autre bout du monde, je crois qu’ils y iraient pour le seul plaisir de l’exterminer.”It was not as friends of freedom, but as enemies of England, that they supported the United States. Individual Frenchmen, such as La Fayette, were inspired, no doubt, by a love of liberty, just as, a few years earlier, individual Englishmen had been inspired by the same love to send a supply of arms to Paoli. When I was in Corsica I was shown Paoli’s house, with its window shutters lined with thick layers of cork to keep out the bullets of assassins. He never mastered our tongue, as his letter shows. That he did not speak it much more correctly than he wrote it we can see by the following record, by Miss Burney, of the account he gave her of Boswell’s visit to him in Corsica : “ He came to my country, and he fetched me some letter of recommending him ; but I was of the belief that he might be an impostor, and I supposed in my minte be was an espy ; for I look away from him, and in a moment I look to him again, and I behold his tablets. Oh ! he was to the work of writing down all I say. Indeed I was angry. But soon I discover he was no impostor and no espy ; and I only find I was myself the monster he had come to discern. Oh ! he is a very good man : I love him indeed : so cheerful, so gay, so pleasant! but at the first, oh ! I was indeed angry.”

The date of the letter is not given, but it must have been written soon after the battle of the Nile : —

MY DEAR MISS MAINARD, — Much indebted, indeed, to Miss Jones for having made an apology with you for my seemingly neglect to answer the letters you honored me with since a long time.

The pain I feel to write, or read since that time I got the contagious disease which our victory in egypt brought over to england, a melancholy truth it is that every time the europeans go to any of the three quarters of the Globe with an hostile force, by sad merited penance they come back with some malady which continues incurable for along period of time. I consulted many Physicians — oculists in vain, the obstinacy of my complaint has baffled all their skill and ointments. I cannot read two pages of a book or write a letter without feeling such a pressure in my Eyes which obliges me to stop for a quarter of an hour. I hope it wont be so now, as I hope this answer to your last letters may dissipate the injurious doubt you seem to have entertained that I would have forgot the many obligations I owe to kindness and friendship you had for me in so many occasions when I was at Clifton, where without your kind assistance I never would have been acquainted with the beaties of the country about, or with the persons of the best sort and caracters. Among those I shall always be proud of the acquaintance of the worthy Colonnel [illegible] to whom I pray you to make agreable my best compliments. My dear you have a write to call yourself my niece with our commons friends, as with them speaking of you I have always used the very same appellation. Very seldom I ride on the Coach upon the Pavement nor can I walk at such a distance as St. James Street; but after what you hint me of the Pictures of Mrs. Right, I will go there though I am unacquainted, but your name shall be my passport. If I get admittance I shall feel sadly the imperfection of my sight. I am not a judge of Pictures, but I could have said something about those which form a great deal of the merit of Mr. Wright. In my country the mountains are very conspicuous and very little inferiors to [illegible] or if you please to call it with his ancient name [illegible], or the highest of the Alps —

Mrs. Rich was but a child when I frequented the house of her worthy mother, nevertheless I am vastly proud for the remembrance she entertains of me, and hope you will be so good by to make her agreable my respectful returns of compliments. I don’t doubt She and Daughters have inherited the talents of mind and the charming of the conversation of Mrs. Draper, and dont wonder that they are the first rate Constellations among the Beaty of Clifton. Our acquaintance if he succeed to emancipate his country will have a singular place in the temple of fame, if unsuccessful will hav a [illegible] of the sincere Lovers of Liberty [illegible] of the scriblers of the Day. Adieu my dear Neice read if [illegible] thy servant.

DE P.

I have in my collection two or three poems and letters of Mrs. Hemans, addressed to Paoli’s niece by adoption, Miss Maynard, of Clifton. On one occasion she sends her friend her inscription for the Waterloo Column. With a feeling of modesty rarely found in a poet, she does not think it right to inflict both poetry and postage on her correspondent. Above the address of her letter she has written, "Three sheets. Post paid.” Below there is marked in red ink, no doubt by the postmaster, “ Pd 2 s. 9. d.”Two shillings and ninepence would certainly have been a heavy price to pay for such lines as the following, even though they are in the poet’s autograph : —

Our grandmothers greatly admired Mrs. Hemans, almost adored her. To our grandfathers she was not quite so dear. There were not a few among them who would have agreed with Sir Walter Scott when he wrote, “ Mrs. Hemans is somewhat too poetical for my taste, — too many flowers, I mean, and too little fruit,— but that may be the cynical criticism of an elderly gentleman.”

In one of her letters, dated “Daventry, 5th March,” she says : “ I am constantly wishing that some fortunate occurrence would transport us into your part of the world ; the people here (with the exception I have just mentioned) are remarkably inhospitable, and from what I have seen of them, however earnestly I may wish for society, I certainly cannot consider it as any deprivation not to be welcomed into theirs. You know that the society at St. Asaph is by no means distinguished for its intelligence, but I can assure you it is in every respect far superior to that of Daventry.”

Falstaff’s red-nosed innkeeper of Daventry seems to invest this little country town with something of an hospitable air; but perhaps his red nose and hospitality were strictly personal and professional. Of the bishop’s palace at St. Asaph, Johnson, who had visited it many years earlier, wrote, “They have a library, and design a room.” It would seem that the bishop, though he had books, had no place in which to keep them. It is not, therefore, surprising that in Mrs, Hemans’s time “ St. Asaph was by no means distinguished for its intelligence.” It had once boasted of a great deal of intelligence in William Lloyd, one of the seven bishops who were sent to the Tower by James II. Of him a brother bishop said that “he had the most learning in ready cash of any he ever knew.” But “ times and seasons they must change,” and red - nosed innkeepers and quickwitted and learned bishops alike must “ pass away.”

The following letter I received from Mr. John Forster in acknowledgment of some notes I had sent him on his Life of Oliver Goldsmith. The engravings were two portraits of that great patriot Sir John Eliot, who died a lingering death in the Tower, a victim of the cruelty of Charles I One of the pictures, taken on the eve of his imprisonment, represents him in full health ; the other, painted a few days before his death, shows a body wasted with disease and suffering. In midwinter he had written to John Hampden, "My lodgings are removed, and I am now where candle-light may be suffered, but scarce fire.” “To the end that a likeness might be preserved of him in the condition to which he had been brought by his imprisonment, he sent for a painter to the Tower. He was to paint him exactly as he was; his friends, so long denied access to him, were to see again the familiar face as the last few months had changed it; and his family were to keep the picture on the walls at Port Eliot ’as a perpetual memorial of his hatred of tyranny.' So the tradition has been preserved from generation to generation of his descendants.” His son petitioned the king for leave to lay his father to rest among his dead ancestors. “ Whereto was answered, at the foot of the petition, ‘ Lett Sir John Eliot’s body be buried in the Churche of that parish where he dyed.' And so he was buried in the Tower.” When I remember Eliot’s sufferings and death, I rejoice in the thought that not many years were to pass by before it was seen that it was no lying vision which had passed before the eyes of the great Puritan poet when he uttered the stern threat, —

PALACE GATE HOUSE, KENSINGTON W.

8th? April, 1874.

MY DEAR SIR, — Thank you for the list, which contains what will be useful to me.

As to Boswell I do not think that any one has done him greater justice than myself. Certainly no one has more honestly endeavoured to do it—but I hardly think I shall agree in the kind of estimate of him which you hint at.

The Saturday Review was good enough to discover lately that I was not a Boswell — and I somehow felt it to be a compliment even from that quarter.

Yet I would rather have his book than any other single work published in these last two centuries.

The engravings are gone to-day to Messrs. Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly, and perhaps you will kindly send for them as soon as you convly can.

Very truly yours,

JOHN FORSTER.

B. HILL, ESQ.

I wonder what has become of the million and more copies of Tupper’s Proverbial Philosophy which were scattered over England and America? Of one copy, finely bound in best morocco, I can tell the fate. It had been given to my wife, on leaving school, by one of her companions ; for in those days of the world’s innocence young ladies adored the mild Tupper. One idle morning, discovering this handsome volume on a bookshelf, I held a secret court of justice, and condemned it to much the same end as befell Don Quixote’s books of chivalry. I had constituted myself sheriff and executioner as well as judge and jury ; so I heated the poker red-hot, and bored the pages through. The covers I left uninjured. I then restored the book to its proper place, where it slumbered peacefully for some months, or perhaps years. A day came at last when our first-born, having taken it down to use it as a brick in building a house, brought it, with awestricken eyes, to her mother. In my undergraduate days I once heard Mr. Swinburne mock his brother bard by playfully maintaining that he had seen a book advertised with the title The Poet, the Proverbialist, and the Philosopher, or Selections from the Writings of Solomon, Shakespeare, and Martin F. Tupper. Of such a selection and such a title Tupper would have been quite capable. In a free rendering of “ Non omnis moriar" he joins himself with Horace and Shakespeare, as all three destined to immortality. A slight but amusing instance of his vanity was told me by a friend of mine, who was taking part in the election of the representatives to Parliament of the University of Oxford. Tupper, who had come up to vote, with an air of importance had given in his name. The official, not catching it, asked him to repeat it. With great dignity, but yet with a certain plaintive tone, as if such a question should not have had to be put to so famous a man, he deliberately said, "Martin Farquhar Tupper, the poet.” Of the vanity shown in the following letter his was not a solitary instance : a poetess, who had not mastered enough of her art to count on her fingers the number of feet in her verses, was convinced, like him, that Gordon, beset as he was in Khartoum, would be cheered by her poetry, if only I could manage to break through the blockade and transmit it to him. Tupper wrote as follows : —

UNDERHILL, CINTRA PARK,

UPPER NORWOOD,

Sep. 9, 1884.

DEAR SIR, — I am deep in your most interesting "autotype ” of the great and good Gordon, and commend you heartily for your wise and true book. In proof that I am fully of your mind as to the hero I send you enclosed my latest stave in his honour (having written several, published in the Globe, Morning Post, etc.), and if by possibility you can get one of these to reach him at Khartoum it might help to cheer him.

I would give you other staves of mine about Gordon, but I cannot lay hands on them; if you care to see them I could perhaps tell you the newspaper dates when they appeared.

Believe me to be

Truly your well-wisher,

MARTIN F. TUPPER.

G. B. HILL. ESQ.

In my undergraduate days, a friendly band of young pre-Raphaelite painters, as a work of love, covered the walls of the new debating-room of the Oxford Union Society with frescoes, and the ceiling with a graceful pattern. The leaders among these enthusiasts were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur Hughes, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and Valentine Prinsep. Unhappily, they began to paint when the walls were not thoroughly dry ; before many years had gone by the frescoes were almost ruined by the dampness. Rossetti left his work incomplete. Throughout his life it far too frequently happened that he did not finish even the pictures for which he was paid, if he had received the money in advance. That which had been begun in enthusiasm was little likely to bind him fast. The undergraduates were not satisfied with an imperfect panel, and, in their simplicity, hired a man to complete the great painter’s work. In one of the patterns on the ceiling Rossetti had drawn a comical likeness of William Morris. It was so inconspicuous that it was little likely to be discovered by any chance observer. I often pointed it out to my friends, till a summer vacation came when the undergraduates had the whole ceiling repainted, with as much indifference as if the original work had been done by a set of oil-and-color men.

In June, 1858, I rowed down the Thames from Oxford to a village on the outskirts of London, in company with Mr. Morris and another friend. With the improvidence of youth, by the time we reached Henley we had spent all our money. One of the three had a watchchain, on which he raised enough to enable us, with close economy, to continue our voyage. The weather was unusually hot. I have not forgotten the longing glances cast on a large basket of strawberries at Henley, and on many a tavern on the bank as we rowed by, as effectually constrained as ever was Ulysses not to listen to their siren call. It was through no earthly paradise that the young poet and artist and his companions passed on the afternoon of their last day. When we reached the landing-stage where we were to leave our boat, our common stock of money amounted to just one penny. We were still seven or eight miles from our destination ; but by neither train nor omnibus would our empty pockets allow us to travel, so we hired a cab, the fare of which we could pay when we reached our friends. We were, I well remember, in some alarm lest we should have to pass through a toll-gate. Though these gates were common enough in those days, our road, happily, lay clear of them. At last we arrived at one of the old houses in Red Lion Square, where Rossetti and Burne-Jones occupied the first story.² At night five mattresses were spread on the carpetless floor, and there I slept amidst painters and poets.

The following undated letter was written by Rossetti soon after the publication of the illustrated edition of Tennyson’s Poems. “ Ned ” is Sir Edward BurneJones.

Tuesday.

DEAR -: And how goes it with you ? And are you going it still at your picture ?

You know our little Exhibition opens here on Monday, and I want much to send the Blue Closet, as every one so advises. Could you get at it at once for me, and have it sent to London by Frida — to 4 Russell Place, Fitzroy Square ? Will you now ? Do. I am going to send several others but I hardly know which yet.

Would you believe — but you will easily— that The Seven Towers is not done yet ? However perhaps it may be at Russell Place still. I’ve got rid of its black stage I hope, and should have done it long ago, had it not been for interruptions, chiefly about this Exhibition. Nor have I done anything else. Should n’t I like to come to Oxford, — and ain’t I seedy ! but I must touch up drawings now till Monday. Friday is the hanging day — so Blue Closet should be there by then.

You know no doubt of Ned’s ups and downs. I hope he’s getting round — not in the wombat sense however—that seems far off indeed.

Let me hear from you.

Yours affectionately

D. G. ROSSETTI.

Have you seen the Tennyson ? I loathes mine.

“ I loathes ” was, if I remember rightly, a common saying of Rossetti’s. Perhaps he had found it in some novel of the time.

The following letter was written to my father, a schoolmaster, by Lytton Bulwer, who was looking out for a school for his little son, the late Lord Lytton. What answer my father sent I do not know ; at all events, the boy was not put under his care. A century earlier, the Earl of Chesterfield had spared no pains in training his son for the career for which Bulwer destined his boy, but he had worse material to deal with. Young Stanhope rose to no higher post than that of envoy at the court of Dresden, while Lord Lytton, little more than thirty years after the date of his father’s letter, had gained the highest prize open to English diplomatists. He was our ambassador to the French republic. I offered to send him his father’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 — 1st 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 12 ? 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 contemplate 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” 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 acknowledging the receipt of yr letter of the 20th 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 unsuccessful rising of 1830. My father sought by preference 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 : —

(L. BYRON.)

“Miss-and Mr.-will have the kindness 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 unpleasant 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.

George Birkbeck Hill.