Autograph Letter Signed Spineto to Henry Colburn, publisher, arguing that his pet subjects are not exhausted.

Two pages, cr. 8vo, bifolium, segment cut from bifoliate leaf, no obvious loss, fair condition, text clear and complete. I called to enquire after the notice & took the liberty of sending you {last phrase insert] about the lectures I am now giving at the London Institution - & was surprised to hear that the Editor of the literary Gazette considers the subject perfectly exhausted - For I have the honour to tell you the view I now take of the origin of polytheism-worship- of animals - Mythology & Idolatry is quite new - for it traces the whole to the original coptic words or names by which the hieroglyphics [were excised] exhibiting the different applications of the power of the Supreme Being were termed - as far as I know no one ever went as far- tho' perhaps from Bacon to our time may authors have surmised that this might [underlined] be the case, but never any one has shown that this was [underlined] the case.-I hope therefore that the Editor will have the goodness to look over my paper once more - & favour me with inserting it in the next number. Note: Spineto's Elements of Hieroglyphics and Egyptian Antiquities in a Course of Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution . . . was published in 1829 by Colburn.~350~HIEROGLYPHICS ANTHROPOLOGY AUTOGRAPH EGYPTOLOGY~ ~0~OL33~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 9874~19/10/2010~False~Mary Mudie [Mudie's Criculating Library]~Autograph Letter Signed to [Amy Cruse, author of books on the reading of people in the 18th and 19th centuries (and beyond), with personal reminiscence about Mudie's.~2 Hornton Court, Kensington, 28 February 1936.~Two pages, cr.8vo, reinforcing strip of sellotape on left margin, mainly good condition, closely-written. She has come across Cruse's The Victorians and their Books and admired her chapter on Mudie's and the picture of the house she used to live in. She thought the publishers would have published a book which would give a fairer view of the Library than magazine articles had and she found also that she read the book with ever increasing pleasure, meeting within its pages so many authors, friends of my dear Father - that I am sending for two copies to send to his descendents. She names some friends that she encounters: George Macdonald, the two Trollopes (home friends), Thackeray, and I vividly remember a glorious walk where we met Dickens & his two boys on Hampstead Heath. She mentions other walks. She then gives a potted biography of her father - son of a Scottish bookseller, came to London in 1806, took a haunted house in Chelsea and its low rent. The shop was a separate building on the waterfront and was not attended by grubby children & nurserymaids but by many of the more literary inhabitants of Chelsea & beyond. Her father could remember Madame D'Arblay. Other home visitors included William Hazlitt. 'Charles Lamb was one day waiting for my Grandfather in the shop when he heard a rustle behind the counter & looking over saw a very small boy on the floor reading from a very bulky volume of Shakespeare. Can you read that? Oh yes- it's fine!- . . . when questioned about other writers the child answered Oh! you see, I can't reach as high as the M's, but Father sometimes lets me have Marryat & Milton'. Lamb and the boy talked books. Grandfather was in fact a bookseller stationer [underlined], and bought for his elder sons in 1815 a house and shop in Coventry Street . . . She names other friends like the Tennysons, Kingsleys and others - lifelong. She concludes by talking about her grandfather's religion.~280~MUDIE'S CIRCULATING LIBRARY BOOKSELLING PUBLISHING HISTORY LITERATURE BOOK TRADE~ ~0~BT MSS 1~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 9876~19/10/2010~False~Rev. A. Nicholson, LL.D.~A Reply Answered. The Hon. Ignatius Donnelly's Reply[Printed Pamphlet] Answered by the Rev. A. Nicholson, LL.D., Incumbent of St. Alban's, Leamington, Warwickshire.~Stratford-on-Avon Edward Fox) and Leamington (Burgis & Colbourne, Athenaeum Library), 1889.~[8]pp., 4to, as issued, some foxing, fair. It concerns the Great Cryptogram, refuting Donnelly's attempt to destroy the title of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE to the creations of his genius.~35~CRYPTOGRAM SHAKESPEARE BACON~ ~0~Eph 7~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 9864~19/10/2010~False~Septimus Tennyson, melancholy brother of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.~Autograph Letter Signed to Purnell (prob. Thomas Purnell, theatre critic and writer, popular in literary society (Oxford DNB)).~19 Grosvenor Place, Cheltenham, 14 March 1866.~Three pages, 8vo, heavily marked (stained?) but text clear and complete. He reproaches Purnell for not replying to a letter, discusses his (mental) illness (perhaps suggested by his punctuation and handwriting) and a need for sympathy. 'To quote your own words I have been daily expecting a note from you in reply to my last of Jan[uar]y last w[hic]h reply I have never received. I wrote to Hallett about the same time, & you in kind - a very kind tho' somewhat tardy & injudicious reply from him. From you, nil! Whatever you may have heard in January last, there is no foundation for whatever: best assured of that.- I (myself) haven't the slightest conception to which you allude. {From?] news, I have some to send to you.- [para]I have been too ill to move much in society: - far worse than either you or Hallett have apparently any conception of.- [para] Nevertheless, I am right glad to hear that Knight is better than when I had the pleasure of seeing him last.- & I wish the four of you whom I have seen & and in whose company I have been, all the enjoyment imaginable:- Swinburne & Rosetti [sic] as well- [para] The news of poor Palmer's loss in the London was a shock to me. tho' I had only seen him once - viz: at Ben Williams, when we called there one night.- I hadn't [previously deleted] seen- tho' I see the Times almost daily - any memoir of him therein.- [para] All success to Marston's new play the Favourite of Fortune at the Haymarket on Easter Monday [para] Best regards to your sister | Yours ever | Septs. Tennyson | P.S. I am aware, my last note to you was a most lugubrious one; but still I sh[oul]d have thought it worthy of some sort of recognition. I didn't write it to distress you - but for the sake of sympathy.' Note: He spent time with John Clare in a private lunatic asylum (see Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze).~2500~ALFRED LORD TENNYSON POET BROTHER MADNESS JOHN CLARE ASYLUM~ ~0~Olympia autos~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 9865~15/10/2010~False~William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister~Autograph Note, third person, to Mr Hutton.~[Headed notepaper] 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, 15 Jan. 1874.~One page, 12mo, bifolium (three blank pages), top edgesoiled and chipped, mainly good. Mr Gladstone begs to thank Mr Hutton for the statistics with reference to exports to the West Coast of Africa which he has been kind enough to send.~100~UTOGRAPH DOWNING STREET PRIME MINISTER AFRICA~ ~0~OL33~ ~ ~ ~ ~