" IMPOSSIBLE " PENMEN

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16154, 7 March 1918, Page 4

" IMPOSSIBLE " PENMEN

'I'here may be diversity of opinion as to some of the literary judgments of Professor Saintsbuiy, but none, apparently (says the London "Daily Chronicle") as to the quality of his handwriting. Mr Frederick Harrison recently received a letter from him which he could not read, and the professor ad- | mits that '"no man or woman alive" ! can make out his writing. The palm for illegibility is generally awarded to the late Horace Ureeley, but iii our own land probably Lecky was king of impossible penmen. There are veteran compositors alive who remember setting up his ''History of Morals." Those who could decipher the manuscript were more prized than their rivals who took Arabic and Hindustani in their stride. To master Lecky the men were allowed to take home dubious folios and ponder tliem in privacy.

The story of a compositor's worries with Thomas: Carlyle's MS. recalled to the,writer the somewhat kindred experience that befell a type-setter in the office of a Dundee newspaper to whose columns George GilfiJlan frequently contributed. • Being a member of Gilfillan's congregation, this compositor was "favoured'' -with a large amount of his minister's wretchedly-written copy. One day, when the . MS. was even more undecipherable than usual, the man banged it down on his frame with the remark, "As a Christian I honour and admire Mr Gilfillan, but as a compositor I'll never be happy till his body gets three claps of the spade."