RELICS OF GREAT MEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XV, 11 April 1896, Page 404

RELICS OF GREAT MEN.

The most extravagant instance of literary relic worship on record is said to be that of a well-known Englishman, who constantly wears in a small locket attached to a chain around the neck a portion of the charred skull jf Shelley. Of late years a great many persons have visited the former residence of the late Victor Hugo to see a tooth of that celebrity which is kept in a small glass case with this inscription : * Tooth drawn from the jaw of Victor Hugo by the dentist on Wednesday, August nth, 1871, at Vienden, in the gardens attached to the house of Mme. Koch, at three o’clock in the afternoon.’ In the year 1816 a tooth of the famous Sir Isaac Newton was sold at auction by a relic-monger of Eondon, and was purchased by an English nobleman for seven hundred and sixty pounds. The buyer had a costly diamond removed from a favourite ring and the tooth set in its place. The wig that Sterne wore while writing * Tristram Shandy ’ was sold at public auction soon after the great writer's death for the sum of £2,000, and the favourite chair of Alexander Pope brought /'i,ooo at a sale in 1822.