ereigns, unless it be Frederic the
Great or Napoleon, Mary of Scotland or Marie Antoinette, generals,
politicians, professional men, do not go for much. The competition is
for the poet, the novelist, the newsmonger, or some _enfant terrible_,
whose autograph is rare to excess. To be on thoroughly good posthumous
terms with collectors, one has no need to have been respectable,
sober, benevolent, or pious; these are rather in the nature of
draw-backs; but one must have possessed a strong personality. That is
the secret. Personality. Schedule the illustrious of the past on this
guiding principle, and you cannot err. Men and women without
infirmities, without vices, why, ask any dealer of repute and
experience, and he will tell you that there is no call for their
signatures or for their correspondence. They have too much character
in one sense and too little in another. An autograph of Dick Turpin or
Claud Du Val would be worth a dozen of Archdeacon Paley or even of
Archbishop Tillotson.

The autograph collector certainly forms a separate _genus_. He does
not buy books. He does not affect MSS. where they exceed the limits of
a fly-leaf or title-page entry. We are accustomed to criticise Master
John Bagford unkindly because he stripped the volumes of their titles
and then cast them away. But he lived a long while ago, when the value
and rarity of many of these things were not so generally understood,
and there were not customers all over the Old and New Worlds as many
as one can tell on one's fingers to take an early book, if it was
offered to them. Even now it not seldom happens that an exceedingly
interesting signature or note accompanies an item worth only so much
per lb., and your connoisseur in the autograph surrenders all but his
portion to its destiny. Who can gainsay him? He shrugs his shoulders;
he is no bookworm; he wants autographs alone.

Exceptions to the governing principle arise, however, and sometimes
they are recognised, sometimes not. The most beautiful examples for
internal condition, binding, even intrinsic interest, are occasionally
sacrificed to this Procrustes--this case-hardened Bagford of our own
day. Not so long since we remarked as a treasure beyond our purse a
copy of Donne's _Sermons_, with a brilliant portrait of the author,
and a long inscription by Izaak Walton presenting the volume to his
aunt. It was in the pristine English calf binding, as clean as when it
left Walton's hands _en route_ f