• SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessurild preclude sub:equent review.] Autograph Prices Current. Vol. I. By E. H. Courville. (E. H. Courville, 2.3 Rumsey Road, Brixton. 25s, net.)—Mr. Courville is the first to do for autographs what others have done for books and pictures, and his scholarly catalogue will be welcomed by the student, the collector, and the dealer alike. He records the autographs sold between the out- break of the war and July last, for a total amount of £35,000. Lord Kitchener's famous appeal for recruits, for which £8,000 was paid at the Red Cross sale, was of course the most valuable autograph of all. We sole a comical letter from Mr. Fa–piing, protesting that he would " sooner wash an orphan, or give it its bottle, than speak to the orphans' well- withers after a heavy meal." There is also the MS. of the long letter in which Swinburne defended in 1873, against the Spectator, his fierce sonneta on Napoleon III. Mr. Courville in his preface says that it is "a generally accepted supposition that every letter of note in private hands sooner or later finds its way into the sale-room." This is a dreadful supposition, but a glance through this book reveals so many love-letters as wares of the market that wo fear that Mr. Courville is right.
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