The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-09 00:00:00

A LITERARY C&RIOSITY.

A singularly beautiful, and, in some respects, a
really marvellous specimen of photography, was a
considerable time back submitted to us. It was sub-
mitted to us then in our capacity as reviewers both
of art and of literature. And although our com-
ments upon this truly remarkable specimen at once
( of art and of literature have been delayed unavoid-
ably until now, they will nevertheless be the ex-
pression rather of the spontaneous effusion of our
appreciation at the moment of writing than the
deliberate utterance of any opinion over-scrupu-
lously weighed in the balance of our judgment. In
simple truth there is no need, if indeed there be
any possibility, for hesitation in the recognition
either of the interest or of the value attached to this
very curious example of the application of the photo-
graphic art to the preservation and perpetuation of
a world-famous masterpiece in the world of letters.
A single glance at the production we are here refer-
ring to 1611 be quite sufficient to assure any one of
even an ordinary amount of taste, or of what is called
(rather rashly perhaps) common sense, that he is
gazing at a magic facsimile of the only original
draught now in existence of a poem renowned all
over the :earth as the most popular poem in the
English language !
A Facsimile of Thomas Gray's Autograph Manu-
script of his exquisite .Elegy in a Country Church-
yard. A Facsimile published for half-a-guinea by
Messrs. Sampson Low, Son, and Company, of 47,
Ludgate-hill. The photographers who have pro-
duced this perfectly unique specimen of their beauti-
ful art being the Messrs. Cundall and Downes, a
firm already honourably known by the microscopic
daintiness of their manipulation. The extraordi-
nary specimen of photography we are now remark-
ing upon, it should be observed, at once extends to
no more than four quarto pages—representing
the four pages of an old-fashioned sheet
of letter-paper, not note-paper, but letter-paper.
But together with these four quarto pages of what
may be termed photographic calligraphy, there are
besides several pages of illustrative letter-press,
charmingly written throughout, giving, a succinct
account of what.they serve, indeed, only verLagtrieoen-
ably to annotate. The editor of the entires
publication
(as now issued to the public by
these Low, Son,ite andre interesting
iCn og. )
runningto whose
commentaries,p e n weMe arees sr
indebted. s Sampson,
for
identi-
cal, we believe, with the present possessor of the
Original MS. in Gray's handwriting.' A manu-
script, remember, of which these four quarto pages
are the literal fac simile—thanks to the marvellous
agencies of the photographic lens and the glass
sensitized by collodion ! Thanks immediately to
these agencies, but decidedly also it should, in simple
gratitude, be remembered by every purchaser of this
" Fac simile"—thanks directly and obviously to the
unselfish munificence (as we do not for an instant
hesitate to call it) of the actual possessor of the
manuscript, namely, Mr. Robert Charles Wrightson,
now of St. James's, formerly of Birmingham.
As we have already remarked, but as we would
here particularly repeat it, the original MS.—now,
we need hardly say for the first time photograph( d
and thereby rendered (so far as an absolute fac simile
can render it) public property—is the only autogra-
phic draught of Gray's Elegy now in existence. There
is the well-known autograph manuscript of the
poems, of COUTO()) still treasured up in the Library