Autograph Letter Signed ('Arthur Helps') from the Dean of the Privy Council Sir Arthur Helps to Sir Theodore Martin, praising an article by him on Baron Stockmar.

6pp., 12mo. In very good condition, adhering to leaves removed from an album. Helps begins: 'My dear Martin, | This is one of the things you excel in - the giving, in a comparatively short memoir, the real aim and end of a life: so that after reading your "In memoriam", one does not care to hear any more details.' Helps 'really cannot find any fault' in Martin's piece. 'H[er]. M[ajesty] [i.e. Queen Victoria] must, I think, be exceedingly pleased with the book - I mean your work. Then the whole subject of the relation of Stockmar to the occupants of the English throne is most judiciously handled; and there is great skill shown in what is omitted to be said.' He gives 'One single criticism', before complaining that he is 'troubled with cattle plague affairs', and so cannot write at more length. Martin best-known work, his biography of Prince Albert (1874-1880), would be similarly praised for its tact and skill (see his entry in the Oxford DNB). Helps had edited a volume of the Prince's speeches in 1862.