“Queen Anne wrote a fair round hand;” that is the writing she had been taught by her master, probably without any alteration of manner naturally suggested by herself; the copying hand of a common character.[108]
The subject of autographs associates itself with what has been dignified by its professors as caligraphy, or the art of beautiful writing. As I have something curious to communicate on that subject considered professionally, it shall form our following article.
[105] A small volume which I met with at Paris, entitled “L’Art de juger du Caractère des Hommes sur leurs Ecritures,” is curious for its illustrations, consisting of twenty-four plates, exhibiting fac-similes of the writing of eminent and other persons, correctly taken from the original autographs. Since this period both France and Germany have produced many books devoted to the use of the curious in autographs. In our own country J.T. Smith published a curious collection of fac-similes of letters, chiefly from literary characters.
[106] It will be of interest to the reader to note the names of these poets in the consecutive order they are alluded to. They are Scott, Byron, Rogers, Moore, and Campbell.
[107] He was also the tutor of Lady Jane Grey, and the author of one of our earliest and best works on education.
[108] Since this article was written, Nichols has published a cleverly-executed series of autographs of royal, noble, and illustrious persons of Great Britain, in which the reader may study the accuracy of the criticism above given.
THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS.
There is a very apt letter from James the First to Prince Henry when very young, on the neatness and fairness of his handwriting. The royal father suspecting that the prince’s tutor, Mr., afterwards Sir Adam, Newton, had helped out the young prince in the composition, and that in this specimen of caligraphy he had relied also on the pains of Mr. Peter Bales, the great writing-master, for touching up his letters, his majesty shows a laudable anxiety that the prince should be impressed with the higher importance of the one over the other. James shall himself speak. “I confess I long to receive a letter from you that may be wholly yours, as well matter as form; as well formed by your mind as drawn by your fingers; for ye may remember, that in my book to you I warn you to beware with (of) that kind of wit that may fly out at the end of your fingers; not that I commend not a fair handwriting; sed hoc facito, illud non omittito: and the other is multo magis præcipuum.” Prince Henry, indeed, wrote with that elegance which he borrowed from his own mind; and in an age when such minute elegance was not universal among the crowned heads of Europe. Henry IV., on receiving a letter from Prince Henry, immediately opened it, a custom not usual with him, and comparing the writing with the signature, to decide whether it were of one hand, Sir George Carew, observing the French King’s hesitation, called Mr. Douglas to testify to the fact; on which Henry the Great, admiring an art in which he had little skill, and looking on the neat elegance of the writing before him, politely observed, “I see that in writing fair, as in other things, the elder must yield to the younger.”