Marvellous Penmanship.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7908, 25 August 1905, Page 4

Marvellous Penmanship.

Mi.vLTi; WIXiRAPIIICAL PORTRAITS. There is in Loudon at the present I time a Mr J. Soler, a French gen- ! tlcman, who has a remarkable talent for minute handwriting—handwriting so minute that the ordinary feat ol putting the Lord's Player upon the space covered i.y a sixpence would appear as nothing to him. Mr Soier has produced portraits of most of the crowned heads oi Kuropc which are entirely made up oi biographs ot the subjects. and yet are excellent drawings. The purpose of his present visit to London is to present to the King a portrait of himself in full field-marshal's uniform which contains a written biography in English, and runs to some 4.1,000 letters. The remarkable thing is thai, although Mr Sour dues utn mIK uc wrius it remarkably well, and, indeed, he can write any of the Euro-

pean languages. Kis portrait of the war i> a wonderful piece pf work, for which the Russian Kniperor predated hir.i with a jewelled cigarette ease. All these portraits have been reproduced as picture postcards, and ;lte handwriting in every case is perfectly distinct when viewed through a magnifying giass. Mr Sofer has written upon a grain of wheat a brief biography ol the King and the Royal Family, ami on the edge of a' visiting caul the whole of the Engish National Anthem. The work, -ome of which has been seen before in London, has brought him a remarkable album of autograph letters from the Sovereigns whom he has depicted, and from men like the late Princ* Bismarck and Jlr Gladstone, His writing, minute as it is, is done without the aid of a magnifying giass.