HANDWRITING.

Southland Times, Issue 1194, 16 July 1869, Page 3

HANDWRITING.

(' Gentleman's Magazine.) I have heard illegible writing justified as a mark of genius. That of course is a very flattsring theory. I wish I could think it true. But, like most of these nattering theories about disagreable eccen tricities, it has one fatal fault. It is inconsistent with notorious facts. Men of genius do not, I believe, as rule scribble. They write legibly. Thackeray, we all know, was a beautiful penman. He prided himself on his writing. He could write the Lord's Prayer in a legible hand on a bit of paper not hihger than a sixpence. I never heard that Charles Dickens had a contribution returned because it was illegible. " Douglas Jerrald's copy was almost as good as copperplate ;" and my friend, who, in his own graphic style, is sketching the career of " Christopher Kenrick ; in these pages ia a masculine, clear, and flexible hand, tells me that of one Jerrold's friends, " Shirley Brooks, writes plainly, and with very little revision." Lord Ly tton's manuscript is written in a careless scrawl, but it not illegible, though from interlineations and corrections, perhaps now and then puzzling to printers ; and Mr Disraeli writes in a large and angular running hand, legible enough if not particularly elegant. And most of our leading politicians are excellent penmen. Mr Gladstone seems to write as he generally speaks, in a hasfcy, impetuous manner. But with all his haste and impetuosity his writing is perfectly legible. It is an Oxford hand. Lord Derby writes, what I may perhaps call, an aristocratic hand, at once elegant and legible. Lord Russel writes a lady like hand. It is like everything else about the Earl — small, and occasionally puzzling, but not inelegant. Mr Bright's letters are as distinctly and regularly formed as this print. Lord Stanley's despatches are as legible as large pica. You may run and read them. Every character is fully formed ; every "i" is dotted, every "t" crossed. You will find no sign of haste or slovenliness in his M. S. I might go on in this style through a dozen more names. But it is not necessary. I have cited enough cases to prove my point, that illegible handwriting is not a mark of genius, or even of superior intelligence. I know, on the other hand, that there are many men of genius who write and have written execrably. Sir John Bowring is one of these. It is said that Lord Palmerston once sent back an important despatch of Sir John's to China, with a request that it might be copied in a readable handwriting ; and Lord Cowley, our late Ambassador at the Court of France, wrote so hastily and so illegibly that Lord Granville, I believe, once asked his lordship to keep the originals of his despatches for his own information, and send copies to the Foreign Office. " Lord Lyitelton, who moved a clause to the Reform Bill that nobody should have a vote who could not write a legible hand, writes so illegibly that the clerks at the table could not read the resolution which he handed in ;" and Christopher Kenrick adds, that " Tom Taylor writes as if he had wool at the head of his pen." And these men are the types, I fear, of a far larger class than the first set of politicians and authors whom I have enumerated.