important steps in the progress of this interesting paper, from the
garret of the starving poet to the drawing-rooms of Holberton House,
merely observing by way of preface that the following notice may be
relied on so far as it goes, the writer--Colonel Jonathan Howard of
Trenton, New Jersey,--having had access to the very best authorities,
and having also had the honor of being enlisted in the service of the
Lumley Autograph upon an occasion of some importance, as will be
shown by the narrative.

It was just one hundred years since, in 1745, that this celebrated
letter was first brought to light, from the obscurity in which it had
already lain some half a century, and which no subsequent research
has been able fully to clear away. In the month of August of that
year, the Rev. John Lumley, tutor to Lord G-----, had the honor of
discovering this curious relic under the following circumstances.

Mr. Lumley was one day perched on the topmost step of a library
ladder, looking over a black letter volume of Hollinshed, from the
well filled shelves of his pupil. Suddenly he paused, and his
antiquarian instincts were aroused by the sight of a sheet of paper,
yellow and time worn. He seized it with the eagerness of a book-
worm, and in so doing dropped the volume of Hollinshed alarmingly
near the wig-covered head of his youthful pupil, who with closed
eyes, and open mouth, lay reclining on a sofa below. The book,
grazing the curls of the young lord's wig, he sprang up from his nap,
alive and sound, though somewhat startled.

{Hollinshed = Raphael Holinshed (d. 1580), famous writer of British
historical chronicles, used by Shakespeare as source for some of his
plays}