AUTOGRAPHS.* THE love of collecting autographs, if it has sometimes
been pur- sued without much taste or meaning, has never sunk to the rank of a mere mania, like the tulip mania of the seventeenth and she postage-stamp mania of the nineteenth century. There is always a pleasure in contemplating the handwriting of persons whom you respect or admire, and the mind is led on insensibly to associate certain characteristics with handwriting from reading those same characteristics in lives or faces. We do not speak of the art of cheiromancy, which, though practised with apparent success by individuals, seems to us rather random and uncertain. Like phren- ology, it presents some good facts and some basis to go upon, but it is too much exploits by people who are ignorant of its first rules, and only care to make it agreeable to their customers. But leav- ing this out of the question, and treating a man's handwriting as something belonging to him, and therefore some index to his character, it is impossible not to be struck by its peculiarities.
The most careless reader, in turning over the lithographed leaves of this handsome volume, would see the difference between a hand like Thackeray's and one like the late Duke of Cleveland's. A comparison between the neat hand of Rogers and the scraggy, sprawling hand of Byron, has much the same effect as reading
Lara and Jacqueline together must have had when they were first
published in one volume. That " joint concernsummut like Stern- hold and Hopkins," as it was described by a passenger in the
Brighton coach, would no doubt have looked still more unnatural in autograph. Rogers's hand is as calm, laboured, and regular as his poetry, Byron's as uneven, dashing, and unlovely as his life.
In many cases, however, this sort of parallel does not hold good. There are many kinds of handwriting which do not accord with what we know of their authors. We must allow for so many influences, in some men for so many moods. One man is the slave of his pen, ink, and paper, writing a beautiful hand with his own, an abominable hand with any one else's. There is a handwriting which looks actually artistic, while it is really nothing but the product of ample leisure and the best materials.
And this may be described as a very gentlemanly hand, just as when a man has no character or intellect of his own, not enough to make him either a decided man or a decided gentleman, he is
allowed to pass for a very gentle • nlike man. Again, some scho-
lars and gentlemen are always hurried, and cannot afford time to write legibly.. We see hands going through a gradual change
under increased pressure, and the beautiful copper plate of youth becoming the reckless scribble of manhood. Charles Knight de- scribes the undignified rush of Lord Chancellor Brougham from his robing room to the woolsack, with grave officials puffing scan- dalized after him. The characteristics of Brougham's hand- writing, as we see it here, are just the same; it is a hasty, dashing scrawl ; the words have been thrown at the paper, instead of being written upon it, and have stuck there as they beat could without assistance. Compare with this the ladylike hand of Croker, the Quarterly with the Edinburgh. And yet Croker was hardly ladylike, except in the qualities of spite and pettiness, which are always assigned to woman by her enemies. In cases like these the official hand explains much, as does the business hand in the case of Rogers. Often there is a family hand, and sons write like their fathers, however unlike they may be in char- acter. It is difficult to avoid constructing a theory of character and handwriting from a comparison of the letters of Chatham and William Pitt ; we seem to read at once their likeness and their difference. But when we enlarge the field of comparison, and take in several nationalities, as we must in examining this volume, we find another qualifying influence. There is a distinct nation- ality in handwriting, as distinct as in speech and manners. Of course the Germans, who use a character of their own, write differ- ently from all other European nations, but the French, the Italians, the Spaniards, the English, have their peculiar ways of forming the same character. We do not pretend to any knowledge of the East, but a volume of prayers in twenty-four languages, • The durographre Mirror. Vol. It.- London. 1885.
which we bought at the Armenian Convent at Venice, seemed to convey an instructive comment on the ways of the various Eastern nations. There is the Chinese writing, every word or every letter like a picture, or rather a puzzle, single squares painfully elaborated. The Chaldiean is black and bold, and seems the type of manly vigour, upright and courageous, representing to our (perhaps pre- judiced) minds the perfection of English handwriting. The Hebrew is a more limited character,—more precision, less show of sternness and energy, still order and dignity. The Siriac is small and twisted, and to us represents French handwriting of the lower order. The Arabian, the Turkish, the Persian are very similar in their characteristics, except that each seems more flow- ing, more graceful, more effeminate than the other. Perhaps the Persian is best entitled to this character. There is something more rugged in the Arabian, something blacker in the Turkish ; the Persian flows like a woman's letter, like the poetry of Moore.
When we come to examine more deeply into national hand- writing, we find of course that it is much qualified by individual character. Take the French autographs we have in this volume. The best of the purely French is perhaps that of Murat, a fine,manly hand, without any ostentation. Persigny's hand is also of the pure type, neat and tripping. Napoleon III.'s is a lower sample of the same type, has a mean look, and is entirely devoid of elevation. Thiers is quite illegible, though some kind slave who has devoted himself to the work of unravelling the web of black strokes says that it contains the following allusion to Guizot's reception of Lacordaire at the Academy :—" A monk received by a Protestant is a spectacle which is turning the brain of Paris." Louis Blanc writes a splendid hand, extremely clear and orderly, with just a tinge of French formation to stamp its nationality. Of past generations, Madame Recamier's letter to Miss Edgeworth bears witness to a hand of anything but "incomparable beauty." There is nothing remarkable in Voltaire's handwriting. Rousseau's is small and perfectly legible, as if it was engraved on a copper plate. Corneille's hand is good, and bears a certain resemblance to Mil- ton's, if we allow for the difference of nation. But just as there is a national hand, so there is a contemporary hand. People of the same, or nearly the same, period write more alike than people of the same character. The resemblance between the hands of Milton and Charles I. is the most striking instance that we can adduce, but the Duchess of Marlborough is not altogether unlike Milton. There is a certain affinity between Shelley and Byron, yet what two men could be less like? A good proof of the way handwritings run in generations is furnished in this volume by the juxtaposition of Lady Jane Grey and the late Duchess of Glou- cester. Look at the close blackness of the first, the compression of every kind, the Hues so near together, and the words scarcely separate, and yet such labour expended on every letter, and then tarn to the lady's hand of the last generation, differing at once from the ladies of Mary and those of Victoria—a hand that runs yet cannot be read, so fluent and so illegible. If we glance dis- tantly at the late Duke of Cleveland's letter, we take it for the pro- duction of a Cavalier during the interregnum. But by degrees we miss the old incision and deliberateness, we see how the lines crowd each other, and we know that it is the "schoolboy hand" of Thackeray, a hand which is to be seen grown up on so many sheets of club paper. One of the best hands we have in this volume is Southey's, and this curiously enough preserves the old characteris- tics. It is not modern English writing, but a modernization of old English writing. Several of these contemporaries are placed near each other, but there is little to be gained by comparing them. Moore, who comes next to Rogers, is not much inferior in neatness, but he seems to write with the point of a fine pen, and sometimes falls into the fault of thinness. Scott's handwriting has a cramped look, which seems unnatural from the pen of such a ready writer. Another sort of comparison may be made between Mrs. Hemans and Miss Mitford ; no one would take the first for a woman of talent, the second for a woman at all. Equally strange is the contrast between Bright and Cobden. Mr. Bright writes a small, neat, and orderly hand. Cobden's hand is that of the Northern man of business, on which is based the genuine American hand, as we see it here in Stonewall Jackson. Neither Washington nor Franklin possess it.
We frankly confess that to us the German hand is an abomina- tion. There is a long letter in it here from Heine to Dr. Sim- rock, and an epigram on Schleswig-Holstein in 1847 and 1865 by Arnold Riige, which ought to call a blush to the face of Dr. Simrock. But viewing these writings from the orthographic, and not the autographic, point of view, we find little to remark in them. Niebuhr's hand is perhaps the best of German hands. Wickert seems to write with a pin, and a German pin into the bargain. Best of all is Wilhelm Grimm, who has the grace to write in Roman characters, and whose elegant precision, void as it is of all affectation of caligraphy, is not to be surpassed. The finest Italian hand is that of Ariosto, which may be compared to the Chaldman. It is difficult to say under what nationality we are to class the writing of Napoleon.' France has certainly no claim to it. But there is a very curious letter of his from Egypt to his brother Jerome, the more curious that it fell into the hands of Nelson, and is endorsed by him " Found on the person of the courier." Nelson's endorsement is in his left-hand writing ; Napoleon's letter is scratchy and impetuous, with uneven lines and black patches, and most careless in spelling. " Tu vaira dans les papiers publics," he begins, and adds in a later place, " je suis annuie de la nature humaine." He commissions Joseph to buy him " une campagne, soit press de Paris, on en Bourgogne ; je campte y passer l'hiver, et m'y enterrer. J'ai basois de solitude et d'isolement ; Is grandeur m'annuie; le sentiment est desseche ; la gloire est fade, it 29 ans rid tout epuissec il ne me rests plus caul devenir Bien vraiment Egoists." But he soon found that this laudable object could be accomplished in a better way than by becoming a hermit.
As a rule there are not very many characteristic passages or bits to quote in this volume. Some of the longer letters, take them for all in all, confirm our old impressions of their writers, without. giving us any sudden insight into their characters. Among curiosities, independent of handwriting, we may place the repro- duction of a manuscript page of Armadale, which must, we think, have given trouble to the printers. Erasures are numerous, and are effected with a jealous completeness, as if Mr. Wilkie Collins was loth to let others see what his first thought had been. Another curiosity is Douglas Jerrold's receipt for 101. for the perpetual copyright of the Rent Day. The handwriting of this differs materially from the later specimens of the same author, which have what we may call a " twang" in them. Another is the original MS. of Thackeray's Little Billy, showing many departures from the text at present received. As we hear it sung now, and as we believe Thackeray sang it himself at the horseshoe dinner given him when he left for America in 1855, the ship is not loaded, but " wittled," "Little Billy " has just got to the end of thetwelfth com- mandment when he catches sight of land, and the commander of the British fleet is " Admiral Lord Nelson, 13..C.B.," whom we have seen quated in that guise in the leading articles of the D.tily Telegraph. The future literary historian will have to compare this first version with the later one, and trace the successive additions inspired by various convivialities. We hope that he will not find the same difficulties as the German in search of the one English irregular verb. The story is that an American was teaching English to a German, and on being asked if there were no irregular verbs in English, replied by giving one solitary example. It was, " I go, thou wentest, he departed, we made tracks, you cut sticks, they skedaddled." But on asking for a repetition of it the Germane found that it varied every time, and he had at last to give it up iu despair as a grammatical Proteus.
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