t class of consideration when we leave behind us
the more or less factitious and artificial attractions of early
bindings and autograph memoranda, and pass to books which owe their
extrinsic interest to a mere signature, as in the case of the copy of
Florio's _Montaigne_, 1603, which belonged to Shakespeare, and
possesses his autograph on the fly-leaf, and of which the
_provenance_, as stated by Madden in his pamphlet, 1838, favours the
authenticity; and again, in that of Mr. Collier's copy of Drayton's
_Shepheard's Garland_, 1593, which bears on the title-page the
signature of Robert, Earl of Essex.

There quite casually fell into our own hands a copy of one of
Archbishop Usher's books, a stray from Manchester, with "Humfrey
Chetham's Booke, 1644," on fly-leaf, and with it came a MS. on vellum,
also formerly Chetham's, of the _Stimulus Conscientiae_ in English
verse. They long lay in a garret at Pennington Hall, Leigh,
Lancashire, the seat of the Hiltons, with whom Chetham was intimate,
if not connected.

We meet with a surprise now and then, as when such a work as the
English _Reynard the Fox_ of 1681-84 carries on its face a proof of
the prior ownership of Beau Nash: "Rich. Nash Arm. Bathoniae, 1761,"
but it is quite natural to find the autograph of Sir Joshua Reynolds
accompanying a series of French plates illustrative of the _Odyssey_,
1639.

In old books, and in new ones too, there are inscriptions and
inscriptions. We are all familiar with the scrawl of the clown, who
has handed down to us his unconsecrated name on the title-page or
fly-leaf of some volume of ours otherwise irreproachable. Just a step
above him is your fellow who writes some objurgatory _caveat_ against
the malappropriator, and brings the Almighty without scruple into the
witness-box, in case any varlet should make free with his property:--

"Hic liber est meus,
Testis est Deus;
Si quis me quaerit,
Hic nomen erit."

"Will. Morsse, 1678."

Of the whimsical entries in old English books the diversity is
endless. On the fly-leaf of a copy of Roger Edgworth's _Sermons_, 4to,
1557, occurs: "Bryen O'rourke his hand and writting by fore God and
man." A singular application of the Holy Scriptures presents itself in
a couple of _IOU_'s written by James Haig of Prettisides in Longwood,
co. Wilts, on the back of the title to a New Testament of 1584. There
is a curious, almost pathetic form of this habit of writing in books,