friends in albums, _alba
amicorum_, little oblong pocket volumes of which a considerable number have
survived, a very fair collection being in the British Museum. The earliest
album in the latter series is the Egerton MS. 1178, beginning with an entry
of the year 1554. Once the taste was established, the collecting of
autographs of living persons was naturally extended to those of former
times; and many collections, famous in their day, have been formed, but in
most instances only to be dispersed again as the owners tired of their
fancy or as their heirs failed to inherit their tastes along with their
[v.03 p.0047] possessions. The most celebrated collection formed in England
in recent years is that of the late Mr Alfred Morrison, which still remains
intact, and which is well known by means of the sumptuous catalogue, with
its many facsimiles, compiled by the owner.

The rivalry of collectors and the high prices which rare or favourite
autographs realize have naturally given encouragement to the forger. False
letters of popular heroes and of popular authors, of Nelson, of Burns, of
Thackeray, and of others, appear from time to time in the market: in some
instances clever imitations, but more generally too palpably spurious to
deceive any one with experience. Like the Shakespearean forgeries of
Ireland, referred to above, the forgeries of Chatterton were literary
inventions; and both were poor performances. One of the cleverest frauds of
this nature in modern times was the fabrication, in the middle of the 19th
century, of a series of letters of Byron and Shelley, with postmarks and
seals complete, which were even published as _bona fide_ documents (Brit.
Mus., Add. MS. 19,377).

There are many published collections of facsimiles of autographs of
different nations. Among those published in England the following may be
named:--_British Autography_, by J. Thane (1788-1793, with supplement by
Daniell, 1854); _Autographs of Royal, Noble, Learned and Remarkable
Personages in English History_, by J. G. Nichols (1829); _Facsimiles of
Original Documents of Eminent Literary Characters_, by C. J. Smith (1852);
_Autographs of the Kings and Queens and Eminent Men of Great Britain_, by
J. Netherclift (1835); _One Hundred Characteristic Autograph Letters_, by
J. Netherclift and Son (1849); _The Autograph Miscellany_, by F.
Netherclift (1855); _The Autograph Souvenir_, by F. G. Netherclift and R.
Sims (1865); _The Autographic Mirror_ (