Chapter C: K. S. M (8)

But this is not to say that we should wish that such speech, at the cost of such experience, should be more than intermittent. Sun, sheep, and children may take a sober colouring from the eye that has been much busied with such watchings, but they were not put there solely for that purpose; even if we profess ignorance of the reasons for their existence, we shall employ ourselves better if we act on the assumption that they were not. The last word, after so prolonged a meditation on the incomprehensible, may lie with Stevenson who, not unaccustomed to the thought of death and not incapable of poetry, wrote an essay on the subject which might not supply passages "distilled" enough for this book, but contains many so sensible that they might well be reprinted in others. "The changes wrought by death," he said, "are in themselves so sharp and final, and so terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in man's experience, and has no parallel upon earth." That opening might have led to a piece of great orchestral prose; but he turned on himself and wrote instead some pages of cheerful colloquial prose, sprinkled with fine sentences. In all views and situations "there is but one conclusion possible: that a man should stop his ears against paralysing terror, and run the race that is set before him with a single mind"; and "as a matter of fact, although few things are spoken of with more fearful whisperings than this prospect of death, few have less influence on conduct under healthy circumstances." But notice, even in this essay, the old lift, the old attitude, the old accents, when momentarily he looks out over the other wall: "Into what great waters, not to be crossed by any swimmer, God's pale Prætorian throws us over in the end!"

A COLLECTION OF AUTOGRAPHS

By CANON N. EGERTON LEIGH

My collection of autographs was begun by Lady Sitwell, of Rempstone, who married, 1798, Sir Sitwell Sitwell, Bt., M.P., who died in 1811. She married secondly, as his second wife, my grandfather in 1821, and died in 1860. Lady Sitwell knew everybody, and entertained a good deal. She was a blue-stocking in the days of their power, and most of the letters were written to her by the eminent men and women of the day. But her friends supplied her with other autographs--for instance, Longfellow sends her George Washington and Benjamin Franklyn. The following remarks by Washington are interesting at the present time: "At the beginning of the late war with Great Britain, when we thought ourselves justifiable in resisting to blood, it was known to those best acquainted with the different conditions of the combatants and the probable cost of the prize in dispute that the expense in comparison with our circumstances as Colonists must be enormous, the struggle protracted, dubious, and severe. It was known that the resources of Britain were, in a manner, inexhaustible, that her fleet covered the Ocean, and that her troops had harvested laurels in every quarter of the globe. Not then organised as a nation, or known as a people upon the earth, we had no preparation. Money, the nerve of war, was wanting. The sword was to be forged on the anvil of necessity: the treasury to be created from nothing. If we had a secret resource unknown to our enemy, it was in the unconquerable resolution of our citizens, the conscious rectitude of our cause, and a confident trust that we should not be forsaken by Heaven. The people willingly offered themselves to the battle, but the means of arming, clothing, and subsisting them, as well as of procuring the implements of hostility, were only to be found in anticipations of our future wealth. Paper bills of credit were emitted, monies borrowed for the most pressing emergencies, and our brave troops in the field unpaid for their services. In this manner, Peace, attended with every circumstance that could gratify our reasonable desires, or even inflate us with ideas of national importance, was at length obtained. But a load of debt was left upon us. The fluctuations of, and speculations in, our paper currency had, but in too many instances, occasioned vague ideas of property, generated licentious appetites, and corrupted the morals of men. To these immediate consequences of a fluctuating medium of commerce may be joined a tide of circumstances that flowed together from sources mostly opened during and after the war. The ravage of farms, the conflagrations of towns, the diminution----" Here the MSS. abruptly stops, but we can imagine what would follow.

Mr. Herrick, of Beaumanor Park, gave Lady Sitwell the earliest autograph in the collection, a letter of Robert Herrick from St. John's, Cambridge, which I lent to the late Professor Moorman for his life of Robert Herrick. A curious entry in his uncle's account books discloses the fact that while the impecunious student was finding infinite difficulty in obtaining his quarterly allowance of £10, the wealthy uncle was borrowing hundreds of pounds from the nephew. I pass on to a letter of Lord Byron's accepting an invitation to dinner with Lady Sitwell. In it he says, "The song you have been good enough to send had escaped my observation or my memory when in Greece. I will endeavour to comply with your request. The copy has a few errors which I will try to expunge, though I have nearly forgotten my Romaic. I believe the words should be thus arranged." He arranges them, and then sends her, doubtless knowing her penchant for autographs, the following lines:

1

I wander near that fount of waters
Where throng my country's virgin daughters,
And yet that haunt I might forego
Will she--my Love be there? Ah! No!

2

All, all are there save her alone,
Yet once along that fountain shone
Her imaged eyes within the stream
That glittered with the borrowed beam.

3

Yet--yet that fount is calm and clear,
Nor less to Hellas' daughters dear,
But there Reflection ne'er shall grace
Those waters with so fair a face.

4

She comes not there, yet linger still
My steps around that sacred rill,
Nor know I wherefore there I stray--
But cannot tear myself away.

_Albany, April 15th, 1814._

Another manuscript, to which an especial interest attaches at this time, is the following letter from George Eliot:

16 Blandford Square, London, N.W.

My dear Friend--I was delighted to have your letter this morning
bringing me good news not only of a literary but of a personal kind.
It is pleasant to know that your labours on _Adam_ have been so far
appreciated; but I think it is pleasanter still to know that Maman
has had the comfort of seeing her son Charles this Christmas, and
that your prospects concerning him are hopeful. I begin, you know,
to consider myself an experienced matron, knowing a great deal about
parental joys and anxieties. Indeed I have rather too ready a talent
for entering into anxieties of all sorts.

Mr. Lewes is very much obliged to you for sending him the prospectus
and additional information, which he has already dispatched to Mr.
Trollope. It will be a valuable widening of his opportunities for
choosing a foreign school. I was not aware till I gathered the fact
from your letter that Emile Forgues had "analysed" the _Mill_ for
the _Revue des deux Mondes_, for Mr. Lewes, knowing that it would
vex me, had carefully concealed it. It is an impudent way of getting
money--this cool appropriation of other people's property without
leave asked--which seems to have become a regular practice with
him. Pray consider me responsible for nothing but what you find
in the Tauchnitz edition. I _never_ alter my books after they are
printed--never alter anything of importance even in the course of
printing, and _ce n'est point mon histoire que j'écris_, or whatever
else you may find in M. Forgues' edition that is not in the English
is due to the gratuitous exercise of his own talents in improving
my book. I can well imagine that you find the _Mill_ more difficult
to render than _Adam_, but would it be inadmissible to represent
in French, at least in some degree, those _intermédiaires entre le
style commun et le style élégant_ to which you refer? It seems to
me that I have discerned such shades very strikingly rendered in
Balzac, and occasionally in George Sand. Balzac, I think, dares to
be thoroughly congenial, in spite of French strait-lacing. Even in
English this daring is far from being general: inferior writers are
hardly ever capable of it, and in the great mass of English fiction,
from Bulwer down to the latest young lady scribbler, you find
scarcely anything but impossible dialogue--the character speaking
as no man or woman ever spoke, except on the stage. The writers who
dare to be thoroughly familiar are Shakespeare, Fielding, Scott (when
he is representing the popular life with which he is familiar), and
indeed every other writer of fiction of the first class. Even in
his loftiest tragedies, in _Hamlet_, for example, Shakespeare is
intensely colloquial. One hears the very accent of living men. I am
not vindicating the practice, I know that is not necessary to _you_
who have so quick a sensibility for the real and the humorous, but I
want to draw your attention to what you may not have observed--the
timid elegance (_alias_ unnaturalness) of inferior English writers.
You may not have observed it, because naturally you don't read our
poorer literature. You, of course, have knowledge as to what is or
can be done in French literature beyond any that my reading can have
furnished me with. I am glad that you think there are any readers who
will prefer the _Mill_ to _Adam_. To my feeling there is more thought
and a profounder veracity in the _Mill_ than in _Adam_: but _Adam_ is
more complete and better balanced. My love of the childhood scenes
made me linger over them in epic fashion, so that I could not develop
as fully as I wished the concluding "Book" in which the tragedy
occurs, and which I had looked forward to with much intention and
preparation from the beginning. My books don't seem to belong to me
after I have once written them, so I find myself delivering opinions
about them as if I had nothing to do with them. I am not afraid that
you will be unable to distinguish that frankness from conceit. I
cannot write very boastfully about our health; both Mr. Lewes and
I are very middling, easily upset, easily put out of order. But in
all other respects our happiness grows daily. Our dear boy Charles
is more and more precious to us, and seems to delight in pouring all
his young affection out in tenderness to me. Thornton, the second, is
going on well and happily with his studies at Edinburgh, and seems
to have profited morally and physically by the change. I don't know
how to describe our locality otherwise than by saying that it lies
very near Regent's Park, _westward_. It is a quiet situation for
London--alas, not quiet for me, who dream of still fields! London is
hateful to me, and I sometimes think we shall hardly have come to
stay in it three years. Mr. Lewes and I constantly recall Geneva--and
for us Geneva means all that is associated with you and Maman. It was
a vivid pleasure to me that he felt his liking and admiration go out
to you both quite apart from the fact that you were _my_ friends. He
desires to share in all assurances of affection that I send you. But
I send you few assurances. Are they necessary?

Lord Houghton once said that "the Personal is always the interesting." This gives one of the great interests to a collection of autographs, it illustrates the Personal. Take Tennyson's. There is not one word in a long letter to show that he was Poet Laureate. He begins with "Trouble not yourself about the half-crown. I am very glad to pay my debts, however small, tho' Milnes asserts that nothing under five shillings should ever be refunded.... It is not all ladies who would have tolerated my fumigation so mildly; forgive my seeming roughness at parting; there is something in the farewell shake of hands that often breaks me down and makes me seem other than I am." My letter from Rudyard Kipling has in it the sentence, "_I_ was a chorister once, but somehow they managed to agree to get on without me after a while." Samuel Smiles, of _Self-Help_, etc., writes, 1891, "I think nothing the less of you because you are a Dominie. You have a great mission for training the intellects and hearts of the coming generation. I hope you are kind to the children. My Dominie, he was a hard man, though he had favourites; told me I was only fit 'to sweep the streets of my native borough,' and threatened to 'dash my brains against the wall.' This was his ordinary way of speaking of those who were not his favourites. But I understand that he became better as he grew older. Still he left a very bad taste in my mouth." Leigh Hunt writes a kind letter to a budding poet with the postscript, "Send your sonnets by all means to periodicals, but have no mercy in them on superfluous words." With equal kindness Southey writes to Mr. Ragg in 1835, "I do not remember to have seen a more beautiful little piece than 'Why Does the Sun Go Down?' It ought to find its way into all popular selections." Southey wrote out for Lady Sitwell, in 1813, "The March to Moscow." From these kindly letters let us turn to Robert Lowe: "I am a candidate for the Greek Professorship of Glasgow ... a most excellent appointment, and one which above all I should be anxious to obtain.... My chance is not a bad one, as there is no candidate with whom they are content, and to me there is no objection except my politics, and they are, you know, not very furious or indeed in any way practical principles to me.... This is the fairest chance that has ever offered to me of making myself independent and affluent for the rest of my life. It is one of the few appointments I am able to fill." This was written in 1838. In 1851 he writes to the same person, "I am a candidate for the Chair of Political Economy at Oxford. I have every hope of success as my reception in Oxford has been very flattering.... The contest seems to lie between me and Neate of Oriel, a very good man, I believe, but not very popular." Another politician, John Bright, wrote in 1865, "I fear it would not suit your object for any Englishman to interfere in the course that may be taken in reference to Jeff Davis. I have privately said all I can or ought to say, and from what I hear I incline to think that he will escape the punishment which so many men have suffered for crimes of infinitely less guilt. I am opposed to capital punishment for political or social crimes." Autographs from Prime Ministers include the Duke of Portland, "Your Parishioner named Bradley tried to usurp one of my houses. I do not consider that an amiable weakness," and Lord Salisbury, _La Donna e Mobile_, given to a lady during an important conversation, when she asked for his autograph. Lord Rosebery heads his letter "Waterloo Day." Mr. Gladstone shows his kindly feeling for Sir Stafford Northcote, but from Melbourne onwards the Prime Ministers content themselves with few words. So does Thackeray, "Dear Sir or Madam--Where does Mr. Ritchie live with whom I dine in 2 hours. Please tell." John Hay says "our visit to Eton will be for Helen and me one of our pleasantest memories of England." Eton is again mentioned by Mr. Justice Coleridge writing to his relation there, one of the masters, "I should like very much to know whether there is any prospect of the College making any movement towards changes." Eton does not like changes; to parody Lord Curzon's motto, "Let Eton hold what Eton held," is as true now as in the past. I will conclude with a pathetic letter from Matthew Arnold, "I lead such a bothered and hard-driven life that I forget what I wrote in better days." I wonder if he remembered writing in an autograph book:

Of little threads our life is spun,
And he spins ill who misses one.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND NEWS

_Correspondence from readers on all subjects of bibliographical interest is invited. The Editor will, to the best of his ability, answer all queries addressed to him._

GENERAL NOTES

The Christie-Miller sale at Messrs. Sotheby's, postponed from November 28th to December 16th, realised the enormous total of £110,356, thus more than doubling the previous "record" for a single day's book-sale achieved at the Yates-Thompson sale last summer, the total of which was £52,000. The great majority of the items were acquired by Mr. G. D. Smith, the American buyer, who seemed to have learnt to think so imperially about book prices that very few English dealers or collectors were able to compete with him. For the most part the bidding resolved itself into a duel between Mr. Smith and Mr. Quaritch, Mr. Smith being almost invariably the victor.

* * * * *

The highest price for a single lot--the highest price ever given for a single book or manuscript--was £15,100, which was paid for the minute vellum-bound volume containing _Venus and Adonis_, _The Passionate Pilgrim_, and _Epigrammes and Elegies_, by J. D. (Sir John Davies) and C. M. (Christopher Marlowe). The _Venus and Adonis_ is the only copy known of the fourth edition of the poem; six copies of the first three editions exist, all of which are in public libraries. _The Passionate Pilgrim_ is one of the three known copies of the first edition (1599), while only two or three copies are known to exist of the _Epigrammes and Elegies_, published at Middleborough (? 1598).

* * * * *

Other Elizabethan books fetched very large prices. Greene's _Arbasto_ (1584), a unique copy, went for £820; _Gwydonius_ (1584) for £770; _Morando_ (1584) for £680; _Planetomachia_ (1585) for £900; and the unique copy of _A Quip for an Upstart Courtier_ (1592) for £1200. A copy of Tottel's _Miscellany_, second edition, fetched £2400; Nash's _Unfortunate Traveller_ (1594), £680; and the first edition of _The Paradyse of Dainty Devises_, £1700. Copies of the _Arcadia_ (1590) and of _Astrophel and Stella_ (_circa_ 1595) were sold for £1000 and £2700 respectively.

* * * * *

The other Shakespeare lots were sold at less astonishing figures. A copy of the First Folio, slightly defective, sold for £2300; £2400 was given for a fine copy of the Third Folio, _Much Ado About Nothing_, the Quarto of 1600, sold for £2200; and _The True Tragedie of Richard the Third_, the anonymous play used by Shakespeare in producing his own _Richard III._, for £2000.

* * * * *

The Heber Collection of broadsheets and ballads was purchased by Mr. Smith for £6400. This collection, comprising eighty-eight pieces, is a portion of the great collection, a larger collection, half of which passed, under the terms of Mr. Huth's will, to the British Museum. It contains many pieces of remarkable beauty and interest.

* * * * *

Other interesting items in the sale were three minor works of the "Laureate," John Skelton, printed by Pynson, the three bound together in a single volume, which was bought for £1780; the _Amoretti and Epithalamium_ of Spenser (1595), £1200; _The Shepheardes Calendar_ (1579), £1280; _Reynard the Fox_ (Caxton, 1481), £5900; _The Cordyale, or the Four Last Things_ (Caxton, 1479), £1900; _Tullye of Old Age_ (Caxton, 1481), £1800; Gray's _Elegy_ (1751), £750; _Paradise Lost_ (1667), £460.

* * * * *

This sale marks the triumph and the reduction to the absurd of book-collecting. The absurdity of picture-dealing is already manifest; prices have long ceased to have the least relation to the merit of the work purchased. It is out of mere _snobisme_ and not from any love of art that people will give fifty thousand pounds for a picture by a second-rate eighteenth-century artist. The same spirit has invaded the book-collecting world. The amateur who collects books out of a genuine love of literature had better retire as gracefully as he may. There is no place for him in the topsy-turvy universe where fifteen thousand pounds is paid for a little volume of poems. One left the sale with a curious feeling of bewilderment and indignation, almost vowing that one would never look at an old book again.

* * * * *

The centenary of George Eliot was celebrated at Messrs. Hodgsons' by the sale of a first edition of _Scenes of Clerical Life_, a fine uncut copy. It went for £17. The library of the late James Nicol Dunn was disposed of at the same rooms. Mr. Dunn was a journalist whose career included the editorship of the _Morning Post_ and that of the _Johannesburg Star_. In earlier years--he always retained some flavour of that association--he was Henley's assistant on the _National Observer_. He was thus in a position to obtain books, manuscripts, and autograph letters which have since become valuable. His Edinburgh set of Stevenson (accompanied by a note from Charles Baxter, "Louis will have nett complete about £5200 over this") went for £65, and a set of the _Scots Observer_ and _National Observer_ for £47. An inscribed copy of Whistler's _Gentle Art of Making Enemies_ sold for ten guineas, and three first editions, with letters, of John Davidson £5--which suggests that Davidson is at last getting a little notice from collectors.

* * * * *

Among the autographs were several corrected proofs and typescripts of Mr. Kipling's. A freely corrected typescript of _Tomlinson_ fetched £81, the MS. of _Fuzzy-Wuzzy_ £50. Three manuscript poems of Henley's, with a letter from Mr. Yeats thrown in, brought only £6 10_s._ Still more surprising was the sale of Mr. Yeats's MS. of _The Lake Isle of Innisfree_, with another, for £5 15_s._ In a sale on the following day a first edition of _The Shropshire Lad_ turned up: it was sold for £4.

* * * * *

The Arbury Library, a portion of which is to be sold at Sotheby's on January 22nd, has an interest apart from the high rarity of many of the books which are to be sold; for these found their way to Arbury, not at the fancy of any individual collector of rare volumes--none of the Newdigates have been great book-collectors in this modern sense--but simply as current literature of the period in which they were published. The First Folio Shakespeare, for instance, which is described as "probably the largest available," has been at Arbury since 1660, when it belonged to Serjeant Newdegate, who was Chief Justice under Cromwell and was made a Baronet at the Restoration; and it is likely that it came into his possession or into that of the elder brother whom he succeeded soon after its publication in 1623. Sir Richard Newdegate's mother was Anne Fitton, sister to Mary Fitton, Queen Elizabeth's frolicsome and wayward maid-of-honour, whom a modern edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets has sought to identify with the Dark Lady. Family papers at Arbury give no support to the late Mr. Tyler's theory, and Mary Fitton's portraits there show her to have been fair rather than dark. It is probable that some of the volumes which are to be sold at Sotheby's were at Arbury when Mary Fitton found a home there with her sister, Lady Newdigate, after her disgrace at Court. No one whose interest in old books lies in their character, their history, and their associations rather than in the price which they may fetch under the hammer can fail to regret the fate by which these precious volumes are at length taken from the home in which they have stood side by side for some three centuries.

* * * * *

Sounds unheard are the sweetest, and the books that were never written and the books that once existed and have been lost are by far the world's best books. Those chapters on Chambermaids and Buttonholes would have been the most amusing in _Tristram Shandy_; Milton's epic on King Arthur, great and glorious in itself, would also have nipped _The Idylls of the King_ in the bud, thus earning our gratitude as well as our admiration. The lost books of the _Satyricon_ were the best things Petronius ever wrote, and the vanished poems of Sappho--one dare not think of them.

And now we have news of yet another little work that has joined the great army of the lost. But not, we hope, for ever; for the volume can hardly fail to turn up some time, sooner or later, in some bookseller's shop or some collector's library. The history of this lost volume is not uninteresting, and we propose to quote at some length from an account of it furnished by the owner, Miss E. M. Green, of Modbury, Ivy Bridge, South Devon:

"In 1913 a MS. book fell into my hands, thought first to be a manuscript of Little Gidding, which proved, however, to be the work of the Rev. Richard White, Chaplain to the English nuns of St. Monica in Louvain from 1630 to 1687. This I published with Messrs. Longmans under the title of _Celestial Fire_. This volume contains in the preface an account of these Louvain Manuscripts, which are singularly beautiful specimens of seventeenth-century script. Consequent on this publication, the community of St. Augustine's Priory, Newton Abbot, who fled to England during the French Revolution, sent me a similar manuscript, _Cordial Prayer_, to be published also. It was a leather volume, 4 inches by 2¾ inches, 1 inch in depth, bound in holland with quaint brass clasps, and the top of the pages was a beautiful blue. Taking it from the inspection of the Keeper of MSS., British Museum, and from the MSS. Room home with me, I found on entering an omnibus in Sloane Street that I had lost it. It was tied in white paper with my address on the outside."

All efforts have so far, Miss Green tells us, proved unavailing, and no word can be heard of the lost volume. Perhaps some of our readers may have seen or heard of this interesting little manuscript.

* * * * *

The hand-press and type used by the late Dr. Daniel in the production of the well-known Daniel editions have been presented by Mrs. Daniel to the Bodleian Library. The press has now been set up in the Picture Gallery of the Library with the chase, containing the last pages set up, still in place. A small collection of some of the more interesting books printed on it has been arranged on an adjoining table.

* * * * *

We recently had the fortune to come across a copy of that very interesting edition of Louise Labé's works, published at Lyons in 1824. Printed at the expense of a local literary society, the edition was limited to 600 copies, a number of which were printed on coloured paper. Our copy was one of the four "coquille rose." One copy exists in which the colour of the paper varies at every sheet.

ITEMS FROM THE BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES

Collectors interested in the Restoration Drama will find much in Messrs. Pickering and Chatto's catalogue to engage their attention. Sir William Davenant is represented by First Editions of _The Siege of Rhodes_ (1656), _The Cruell Brother_ (1630), _The Unfortunate Lovers_ (1643). A copy of the first collected edition of Davenant's Works (1673) is offered for sale by Mr. Francis Edwards. _Aureng-Zebe_ (1676), the opera _King Arthur_ (1691), and _The Duke of Guise_ (1683) are all first editions of Dryden. Pordage's _Siege of Babylon_ (first edition, 1678) is priced at £4 4_s._; Sir Charles Sedley's _Antony and Cleopatra_ (1677) at £8 8_s._ Shadwell is well represented by his _Virtuoso_ (first edition, 1676), a comedy that was regrettably not included in the "Mermaid" series reprint of the dramatist's works, _The Lancashire Witches_ (1682), and _Bury Fair_ (1689).

* * * * *

There are moments when one's literary sense gets the better of one's purely bibliophilous instinct--moments when a profound irritation seizes one that people should be so stupid as to collect books because they are rare and not because they are worth reading. One wonders, for instance, if human labour and ingenuity might not be expended in some more profitable undertaking than the compilation of a catalogue of about one hundred-and-fifty editions of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, bibliographically described. Collectors of the works of that second-rate literary man who was the author of this _Dorian Gray_ may be interested to hear that this catalogue is at present being prepared at "The Bungalow," 8 Abercorn Place, London, N.W.8, where they will also find a number of Wilde's books, in every kind and shape of edition, for sale.

* * * * *

A curiosity of 1890 literature, in the shape of _The Blue Calendar: Praises of Twelve Saints_, written by John Gray, may also be seen at "The Bungalow." This little book, by the author of _Silverpoints_, was privately printed at 92 Mount Street in 1896, and may be bought for two guineas.

A. L. H.

CORRESPONDENCE

SURTEES

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--In your admirable columns on _Bibliography_ A. L. H. writes (November issue): "It is interesting to note what high prices the works of Surtees can always command." They certainly do; but is it not Leech rather than Surtees who gives them their value?

_Handley Cross_ is doubtless immortal because of the creation of Jorrocks and James Pigg, the best portrait of the hard-riding, reckless, witty Northumbrian since Shakespeare's _Hotspur_, but _Plain or Ringlets_, _Ask Mamma_, and the rest are surely only valuable on account of Leech's illustrations?

I imagine that the original _Handley Cross_, in three volumes, 1843, London, will not fetch as much as the later and expanded _Handley Cross_, with Leech's illustrations, published London, 1854.

I have recently inherited a set of the five Surtees-cum-Leech issue (usually styled first editions), and I am in doubt as to what to insure them for in view of the present high prices.

Still more so in the case of other still greater treasures: early Aldines, Jensons, first editions Jonson, Spencer, Milton, etc., but above and beyond all in the case of a first folio Shakespeare, a splendid copy and intact.

According to Sir Sidney Lee, out of 140 known copies twenty only are "perfect" (with Shakespeare's portrait _printed_ on title-page), other twenty are intact (with portrait _inlaid_), and the remaining 100 are all deficient in one way or another.

Well, suppose by some dreadful dispensation my library was burned down and this gem consumed, what would it cost to procure another?

My bookseller tells me to insure it for £1500, but would this procure another?

I feel certain it would not. What, then, is the proper insurance?--Yours, etc.,

A PURSUER OF BOOKS AND FOXES.

[We certainly think that figure far too low, but the prices of first folios vary greatly. Perhaps some reader can give insurance information.--EDITOR.]

* * * * *

AMERICAN POETRY

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--The writer of your "Letter from America," in the December number, commits himself to the astonishing statement that "Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay is the one American writer of verse whose work shows signs of genius." Such a statement should not pass unchallenged. It is as if an American writer, visiting England, were to remark that Mr. Rudyard Kipling is the only English writer of verse with signs of genius. The parallel is quite exact. Lindsay has the same free-and-easy facility, the same preference for ragtime rhythms, the same tone of vulgar optimism, the same desire to preach a gospel, as the author of _Mandalay_. The only difference is that Lindsay is rather more limited in his range, if anything. He has never succeeded in doing but one type of poem--the ragtime exhortation. To say that he and he alone in America shows genius is preposterous.

What about Robert Frost, whose work and influence were paramount in the development of Edward Thomas?--a fact admitted by a recent biographer. What about Edwin Arlington Robinson, a poet who comes nearer to Hardy than anyone in America? What about Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, Alfred Kreymborg, Maxwell Bodenheim? All of these authors have shown signs of genius, each in an entirely different and quite individual way. They have not repeated themselves into tedious stereotype as the magazine writers of _vers libre_, or as Mr. Lindsay has. Without any desire to belittle Mr. Lindsay's clever but superficial talent, I should respectfully suggest to "R. E. C." that some of his remarks about the conventionality of American writers apply very strongly to Lindsay. They do not apply to the men I have just mentioned.--Yours, etc.,

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER.

37 Crystal Palace Park Road, Sydenham.

* * * * *

TAM HTAB

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--May I point out what seems to me a very curious literary coincidence?

In No. 2 Mr. L. Pearsall Smith, in his delightful collection of "Misadventures," describes "a cabalistic inscription written in letters of large menace on my bath-room floor. TAM HTAB ... Like Belshazzar ... my knees smote one against the other. It was ... BATH MAT, lying there wrong side up."

In the second chapter of Forster's _Life of Dickens_, among some notes on the hardships of Dickens' childhood, the novelist himself thus describes a coffee shop in St. Martin's Lane: "In the door there was an oval glass-plate, with COFFEE ROOM painted on it.... If I ever find myself in a very different kind of coffee-room now, but where there is such an inscription on glass, and read it backward on the wrong side MOOR EEFFOC (as I often used to do then, in a dismal reverie), a shock goes through my blood."--Yours, etc.,

J. J. BIGGS.

70 West Side, Clapham.

[These public inscriptions are responsible for much distress. There was a woman named Jones who had her child christened Nosmo King, having been taken by those names on two glass doors, which stood open. When she passed again the doors were drawn together.--EDITOR.]

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SENSIBLE AT BOTTOM

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--May I point out a small inaccuracy in Mr. Shanks's exceedingly interesting essay on Samuel Butler? Mr. Shanks writes, "It is possible to remark of him (Butler), adapting the remark made of Dr. Johnson, that he may have been very sensible at bottom." The passage in Boswell referred to, I think, is a remark made _by_ Johnson of a "printer's devil" who had married a "very respectable author."--Yours, etc.,

A. H. SCOTT.
Kelstone, Charterhouse, Godalming.
December 15th, 1919.

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SOME CORRECTIONS

(_To the Editor of_ THE LONDON MERCURY)

SIR,--The LONDON MERCURY sets so refreshing a standard of English, by precept, and still more by example, that it is with some temerity that I venture (1) a correction, (2) a criticism, and (3) a query.

1. Major and minor Elizabethan and "Georgian" poets receive full and correct designation. Could not the same be spared for Canon Ottley, of Oxford, who on p. 128 appears as _Attley_? It might be granted in recognition of his Chancellor's Prize for Latin Verse, the award of which demands, I imagine, a certain measure of poetical feeling in addition to the mathematically stressed rhythms of our schooldays.

2. There may be subtle and political humour intended in the word _dignatories_ (p. 236), but with my last breath I would protest the better (and only) spelling to be "dignitaries," take it derivatively or euphonically as you will.

3. Is the sentence _considerable interest has been evinced at the large majority_ (p. 235) English at all? Should it not be either:

"Considerable _interest_ has been evinced _in_ the ..." Or

"Considerable interest has been _evinced by_ the ..."?

But here, like Rosa Dartle, I merely ask for information--not being a competent grammarian--and leave it to fair judgment.

Could you not follow up the article on "Particles" with one on "Split Infinitives"? We were always taught that they were the unforgivable sin. Yet I have just found two unblushing examples in one of Mr. Thomas Hardy's novels. If he may use them, why may not the children in our village school?--Yours, etc.,