Chats on Autographs

by Alexander Meyrick Broadley

To his Excellency George Washington Esq^re General & Commander in chief of the American Armies, Philadelphia.

THE LAST PAGE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON'S SPLENDID A.L.S., NOW PUBLISHED THROUGH THE KINDNESS OF MR. T. C. S. CUYLER.

A.L.S. OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TO GEORGE WASHINGTON MARCH 2, 1778.

The names of Lyman Draper, G. W. Childs Kennedy, Proctor, Fogg, Dreer, C. C. Jones, jun., W. J. De Renne, and Elliot Danforth, are, like those of Emmet, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Joline, familiar to all American autograph collectors. I find in The Archivist (1894) many interesting details of the wonderful collection of Mr. George Washington Childs, publisher and proprietor of the Philadelphia Ledger. Mr. Childs acquired amongst other rariora, the MSS. of Byron's "Bride of Abydos," Thackeray's "Lecture on the Four Georges," and Scott's "Chronicles of Canongate." He possessed a MS. parody by Byron on Wordsworth's "Peter Bell," which began with the somewhat prosaic lines:—

There's something in a flying horse
And something in a huge balloon.

Byron wrote:—