There is a very apt letter from James the First to Prince Henry when
very young, on the neatness and fairness of his handwriting. The royal
father suspecting that the prince's tutor, Mr., afterwards Sir Adam,
Newton, had helped out the young prince in the composition, and that in
this specimen of caligraphy he had relied also on the pains of Mr. Peter
Bales, the great writing-master, for touching up his letters, his
majesty shows a laudable anxiety that the prince should be impressed
with the higher importance of the one over the other. James shall
himself speak. "I confess I long to receive a letter from you that may
be wholly yours, as well matter as form; as well formed by your mind as
drawn by your fingers; for ye may remember, that in my book to you I
warn you to beware with (of) that kind of wit that may fly out at the
end of your fingers; not that I commend not a fair handwriting; _sed hoc
facito, illud non omittito_: and the other is _multo magis praecipuum_."
Prince Henry, indeed, wrote with that elegance which he borrowed from
his own mind; and in an age when such minute elegance was not universal
among the crowned heads of Europe. Henry IV., on receiving a letter from
Prince Henry, immediately opened it, a custom not usual with him, and
comparing the writing with the signature, to decide whether it were of
one hand, Sir George Carew, observing the French King's hesitation,
called Mr. Douglas to testify to the fact; on which Henry the Great,
admiring an art in which he had little skill, and looking on the neat
elegance of the writing before him, politely observed, "I see that in
writing fair, as in other things, the elder must yield to the younger."
Had this anecdote of neat writing reached the professors of caligraphy,
who in this country have put forth such painful panegyrics on the art,
these royal names had unquestionably blazoned their pages. Not indeed
that these penmen require any fresh inflation; for never has there been
a race of professors in any art who have exceeded in solemnity and
pretensions the practitioners in this simple and mechanical craft. I
must leave to more ingenious investigators of human nature to reveal the
occult cause which has operated such powerful delusions on these "Vive
la Plume!" men, who have been generally observed to possess least
intellectual ability in proportion to the excellence they have obtained
in their own art. I suspect this maniacal vanity is peculiar to the
writing-masters of England; and I can only attribute the immense
importance which they have conceived of their art to the perfection to
which they have carried the art of short-hand writing; an art which was
always better understood, and more skilfully practised, in England than
in any other country. It will surprise some when they learn that the
artists in verse and colours, poets and painters, have not raised
loftier pretensions to the admiration of mankind. Writing-masters, or
caligraphers, have had their engraved "effigies," with a Fame in
flourishes, a pen in one hand and a trumpet in the other; and fine
verses inscribed, and their very lives written! They have compared