ITEMS FROM THE BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES
Messrs. Maggs's catalogue (No. 386) of autograph letters and MSS. contains a number of items which will be of interest to musicians. In a letter to Birchall, the English music publisher, dated October, 1831, Beethoven writes the following sentence: "I have duly received the 5 £s, and thought previously you would not encrease the number of englishmen neglecting their word and honor, as I had the misfortune of meeting with two of this sort." He goes on to offer Birchall a Grand Sonata for the Pianoforte for £40, and a Trio for piano, violin, and cello for £50. The letter is priced at £21. There are also four letters of Wagner, a note in the handwriting of Sir Arthur Sullivan (12s. 6d.), a signed autograph piece by Gounod (£3 10s.), letters of Berger, Spontini, Balfe, Hiller and Heller, Verdi, Thalberg, Paganini, Brahms, and Liszt; there is an autograph musical MS. of Mendelssohn dated 1844 (£10 10s.), and another of a Scena composed by Haydn for Signora Banti (£85).
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Other pieces of the greatest interest are advertised in the same catalogue. A beautifully written letter in the hand of Benvenuto Cellini is priced £105. Another letter of slightly earlier date than Cellini's is the almost illegible scrawl of Götz von Berlichingen, the Knight of the Iron Hand (£32). The collection also includes several very important letters of Byron: one to John Murray (October 29th, 1819), in which he speaks of his Memoirs, entrusted to Moore, and afterwards solemnly burnt at Murray's house in Albemarle Street (£105): one to Kinnaird (1822) on the morality of Don Juan.
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Mr. Francis Edwards has also issued a catalogue of autograph letters which contains many items of remarkable interest. Hrothgar, a seventy-eight verse ballad (unpublished), by George Borrow, is a curious by-product of Beowulf scholarship, which ought to be worth the thirty pounds at which it is priced. Among the five autograph letters of Thomas Carlyle we find one addressed to the Bishop of Chester (August 23rd, 1840), in which Carlyle writes: "May I apply to you for a charitable service on behalf of a certain Mr. Mazzini, an Italian neighbour and friend of mine?" Two holograph manuscripts of John Evelyn are offered for £15 and £25 respectively. Ten pounds is the price of a letter from Sir William Hamilton (Naples, 1792) to Horace Walpole, in which Hamilton remarks of his famous wife: "She is ... most grateful to me for having saved her from the precipice into which she had good sense enough to see she must, without me, have inevitably fallen, and she sees that nothing but a constant good conduct can maintain the respect that is now shown her by everybody. It has often been remarked that a reformed rake makes a good husband, why not vice versa?" Why not? The answer is to be found in a letter from Nelson to Lady Hamilton (Yarmouth, 1801; £21). Other Nelson and Hamilton autographs, the Morrison collection, are on sale at Messrs. Suckling's, of Garrick Street.
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Other interesting letters and manuscripts offered by Messrs. Edwards are by Dr. Johnson, Samuel Richardson, Swinburne, Meredith, Landor, Pepys, Lamb, Southey, Thackeray.
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We are glad to notice that a manuscript by a young contemporary can command as big a price as ten guineas. This is the sum asked by Messrs. Davis and Orioli for the autograph MS. of Mr. Robert Nichols's The Faun's Holiday, published in his volume of Ardours and Endurances. To buy it would certainly be a speculation; but we believe there is a good chance of the speculation turning out profitably.
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Early Editions of Fielding: Messrs. Bowes and Bowes, of Cambridge, are asking £25 for the first edition (two volumes in contemporary calf) of The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend, Mr. Abraham Adams. A copy of the second edition, published in the same year as the first, is offered for 31s. 6d. by the Ex-Officers' Book Union, 16 Rathgar Avenue, West Ealing.
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Messrs. Pickering and Chatto are offering a copy of Endymion (Taylor and Hessey, 1818), in the original boards, for £78. Another interesting Keats relic is the original autograph MS. of a portion of Otho the Great, which is offered by Messrs. Maggs Bros. for £60. The MS., entirely in Keats's own writing, is a fragment of the first scene of the play.
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We note that a fine copy of Fulke Greville's Poems (1633), of which we recently had occasion to speak, is for sale at Messrs. Dobell's, the price being six guineas.
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Messrs. Maggs Bros.' new catalogue, Bibliotheca Aeronautica, price 5s., is a fascinating book. It contains the account of some fifteen hundred volumes dealing with the problem of flight from the earliest times to the present day. The first section contains books published prior to the invention of the Montgolfier Balloon in 1783. A fine copy of Francesco de Lana's Prodromo Overo Saggio di Alcune Inventioni appears in this section (£16 16s.). Paltock's famous flying novel, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, London, 1751, is offered at £15 15s., and the work which Restif de la Bretonne founded on it, La Découverte Australe par un Homme Volant, ou le Dédale Français, at £18 18s. Fine engravings are reproduced from these books.
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In the second section we find a number of Blanchard's narratives, including the account of the first aerial crossing of the Channel; we find Lunardi's Account of the First Aerial Voyage in England, London, 1784 (£7 10s.); several books on the Montgolfier brothers, as well as the works of the great Baron Munchausen, so famed for his aeronautical exploits.
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The third section of the catalogue deals with the evolution of aircraft from 1851 to 1899. An interesting item is the first edition of Rémy de Gourmont's En Ballon, Paris, 1883. A large number of works by Tissandier, author of the Bibliographie Aéronautique, Paris, 1887, naturally appear. We may here note the remarkable fact that by far the greater number of the volumes on flight are in French. British interest in the problem was not aroused till a good deal later, after the first practical difficulties had been solved. A first edition of Jules Verne's Robur le Conquérant, Paris, 1886, is included (15s.). His Six Weeks in a Balloon also deserves a place.
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In the fourth section we come to "Aeroplanes and Dirigibles in the Twentieth Century." The period opens with the intrepid Santos-Dumont and his flights and falls over Paris. His My Airships, London, 1904, is priced at 10s. The handsomest aeronautical work published during this period is perhaps La Conquête de l'Air, by Grand-Carteret and Delteil, a finely illustrated folio, offered at £3 3s.
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A fifth section contains pictures of famous balloon ascents, portraits of aeronauts, caricatures, and the like.
A. L. H.