AUTOGRAPHS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXV, Issue 4252, 26 June 1895, Page 5

AUTOGRAPHS.

AN ENTERTAINING TALK.

Amongst the most interesting articles in the April magazines is one by Dr Birkbeck Hill on autographs, Borne selections from which our London correspondent appends. It appeared in the 'Atlantic Monthly.' Apropos of the price of these curios, Dr Hill notes that the rate for an average specimen of Dr Johnson's autograph letters has risen by about £1 in the last nineteen years. In 1875 eighteen were sold by auction in London at an average of £4 5s 8d a letter. Between 1888 and 1891 fifteen were sold at an average of five guineas. By some unexplained chance, one which had fetched six guineas in 1875 went in 1888 for only £2 8s ; on the other hand, the price of another rose from £6 15s to £10. But for the highly characteristic letter in which the sturdy old man wrote to Macpherson, the alleged discoverer of the alleged poems of Ossian — "I will not desist from detecting what I think a cheat from any fear of the menaces of a ruffian " — no less than £50 were given (" and well given, too," says Dr Hill) in 1875. It was in 1888 that, to the great astonishment of collectors, £40 were bidden and paid for a curt note from Johnson to Goldsmith, here quoted. It merely excused the doctor's absence from the club, and begged that he might be considered as proposing "W. Boswel" (sic) as "a candidate of our society." It was knocked down for £40. This was at the rate of over 12s a word ; but even £46 were given at the same sale for the letter from Johnson to Cave, to the signature of which is appended the word "impransus," which Boswell considers a fair confession that the writer had not a dinner, and which certainly indicates that he had not dined. "What," asks Dr Hill, " would have been the amazement of ' the very good company' with whom the young author fresh from Lichfield used to dine at the Apple Tree 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?" The "impransus" letter had been sold only a little earlier for £8, whence it would appear that a skilled and shrewd observer of the autograph market might in\apt with advantage in these somewhat unNrtain literary wares. There seems, however, to be reason to suspect that competition on this occasion was stimulated by an ingenious system of collusion. These particulars undoubtedly suggest that those persevering autograph hunters from whom eminent men of all classes have suffered so meekly and so long may not be the mere misguided enthusiasts which they are generally considered, but may be working on a far-seeing plan for accumulating valuable property. The late Mr Russell Lowell, who endured much in this way, once wrote : "I am thinking seriously of getting a good forger from the State's prison to do my autographs for me ; but I suppose the unconvicted followers of the same callingwould raise the cry of 'convict labor.'" Dr Hill suggests that it is time that the autograph hunter should adopt " honester and gentler means." To this end he sketches a sort of model letter to a distinguished poet as follows : " Dear Sir, — My love for your writings finds no other vent for its expression but in a way which I trust will not offend you by its being less spiritual than I could have wished. Will you accept a barrel of oysters which I am venturing to send you, as a slight proof of my admiration for your genius ? — I am, etc., Autograph Hunter. P.S. — When you acknowledge the receipt of the oysters, I should esteem it a great favor if you would do so in verse." It was not, however, to discourse of the traffic in autographs that the ' Atlantic Monthly's ' contributor took pen in hand, but rather to give some samples of what he calls "my own modest collection," with comments and illustrative anecdotes. The first is a letter dated July 27, 1826, from Miss Edgeworth to her publisher, Mr Hunter, in St. Paul's Churchyard, but it is mainly interesting for the copy that it encloses of a letter from " one of my American intelligences," which shows the position nearly seventy years since of popular BVGLISH ADTHOBS AND AMERICAN REAPERS. Your great and good friend Sir Walter Scott's last work ' Woodstock ' has met with the most brilliant reception among us, and I regret much that the large profits of his American publishers cannot be divided with this inimitable writer. Messrs Carey and Lea purchased the printed sheets from the English publishers fer £150, and they were sent out to them as fast as they were printed and before they were bound ; they were reprinted here, bound, and distributed in most of our principal cities three weeks before a complete English copy arrived in this country. The sheets for the last volume arrived in duplicate on board of three different 3hips, which came to New York on the same day and within a few hours of each other. They were sent to this city by express, and within twenty-three hours and a-half after their receipt 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 ten o'clock on Saturday morning, and in the evening of the same day there were short of 1,000 copies left on hand. The edition consisted of 9,000 copies. Messrs Carey and Lea contemplate publishing another edition of 3,000 or 4,000 copies. There will be editions published in Boston, New York, and other cities in a short time. We have great advantage over you in the cheapness of books hi this country. 'Woodstock,' for example, was published in England in 3 vols., and sold for 31s l7jdol) ; it was republished here in 2 vols., and sold for l^dol, or 6s 9d. Most books are published at the same economical rate, and few persons are so poor as to be unable to purchase as many as they desire to read. Nearly four months earlier the illustrious author of ' Waverley ' had made the entry in his diary :— " I have the extraordinary and gratifying news that 'Woodstock' is sold for £8,2x8, ready money — a matchless sale for less than three months' work." Apropos of Miss Edgeworth, the writer is reminded that in a copy, which he bought second-hand, of her memoirs of her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, he has found the following amusing manuscript note :—: — don't try to keep the truth down. Maria'Edgeworth was plain. Her friend, the Rev. H. Crofton, used to say of her that " her beauty was turned outside in," and to her: "Maria, God has not given you beauty, but He has given you a soul, and 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, and I do tell pretty stories." Then comes a correspondence between the writer and Mr Buskin apropos of objections taken by some captious persons — presumptively not readers of Homer — to the Slade Professor's reference to motionless clouds ; together with a note, written in 1858, in the postscript to which Mr Ruskin says :— • TELL JONES Hlb glass won't quite do. I want to talk to him about it but can't find a day— but lie ought to get a bit of pure 13th century glass done, and I put beside his ; then he would feel what is I wanted I fancy— namely, greater grace in the interlacing forms and more distinctness in the figures as emergent from ground. Jones (observes Dr Hill) is our great painter, Sir Edward Burne-Jones. I should not have given his name had I not received his permission. He has no doubt, he sends me word, the criticism was entirely just, but no one had the hardihood to tell him of it, so he has never heard it till now. One hot June morning, thirty-seven years ago, I watohed him painting

a cluster of orown lilies in the garden of Red Lion Square. It was, I believe, the first time that he worked in oils.