LIVES OF
THE FOUNDERS
OF THE
BRITISH MUSEUM;
WITH
NOTICES OF ITS CHIEF AUGMENTORS
AND OTHER BENEFACTORS.
1570–1870.
BY EDWARD EDWARDS.
PART II.
LONDON:
TRÜBNER AND CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1870.
(_All rights reserved._)
PRINTED BY J. E. ADLARD, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.
CHAPTER III.
A GROUP OF BOOK-LOVERS AND PUBLIC BENEFACTORS.
‘If we were to take away from the Museum Collection [of Books] the
King’s Library, and the collection which George the Third gave before
that, and then the magnificent collection of Mr. Cracherode, as well
as those of Sir William Musgrave, Sir Joseph Banks, Sir Richard Colt
Hoare, and many others,—and also all the books received under the
Copyright Act,—if we were to take away all the books so given, I am
satisfied not one half of the books [in 1836], nor one third of the
_value_ of the Library, has been procured with money voted by the
Nation. The Nation has done almost nothing for the Library....
‘Considering the British Museum to be a National Library for research,
its utility increases in proportion with the very rare and costly
books, in preference to modern books.... I think that scholars have a
right to look, for these expensive works, to the Government of the
Country....
‘I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned
curiosity,—of following his rational pursuits,—of consulting the same
authorities,—of fathoming the most intricate inquiry,—as the richest
man in the kingdom, as far as books go. And I contend that Government
is bound to give him the most liberal and unlimited assistance in this
respect. I want the Library of the British Museum to have books of
both descriptions....
‘When you have given a hundred thousand pounds,—in ten or twelve
years,—you will begin to have a library worthy of the British
Nation.’—
ANTONIO PANIZZI—_Evidence before Select Committee on British Museum_,
7th June, 1836. (Q. 4785–4795.)
_Notices of some early Donors of Books.—The Life and Collections of
Clayton Mordaunt_ CRACHERODE.—_William_ PETTY, _first Marquess of
Lansdowne, and his Library of Manuscripts.—The Literary Life and
Collections of Dr. Charles_ BURNEY.—_Francis_ HARGRAVE _and his
Manuscripts.—The Life and Testamentary Foundations of Francis
Henry_ EGERTON, _Ninth Earl of Bridgewater_.
The Reader has now seen that, within some twelve or fifteen years, a
Collection of Antiquities, comparatively small and insignificant, was so
enriched as to gain the aspect of a National Museum of which all
English-speaking men might be proud, and mere fragments of which
enlightened Foreign Sovereigns were under sore temptation to covet. He
has seen, also, that the praise of so striking a change was due, in the
main, to the public spirit and the liberal endeavours of a small group
of antiquarians and scholars. They were, most of them, men of high
birth, and of generous education. They were, in fact, precisely such men
as, in the jargon of our present day, it is too much the mode to speak
of as the antitheses of ‘the People,’ although in earlier days men of
that strain were thought to be part of the very core and kernel of a
nation.
But if it be undeniably true that the chief and primary merit of so good
a piece of public service was due to the HAMILTONS, TOWNELEYS, ELGINS,
and KNIGHTS of the last generation, it is also true that the Public,
through their representatives, did, at length, join fairly in the work
by bearing their part of the cost, though they could share neither the
enterprise, the self-denial, nor the wearing toils, which the work had
exacted.
Now that the story turns to another department of the National Museum,
we find that the same primary and salient characteristic—private
liberality of individuals, as distinguished from public support by the
Kingdom—still holds good. But we have to wait a very long time indeed,
before we perceive public effort at length falling into rank with
private, in the shape of parliamentary grants for the purchase of books,
calculated even upon a rough approximation towards equality.
As COTTON, SLOANE, HARLEY, and Arthur EDWARDS, were the first founders
of the Library, so BIRCH, MUSGRAVE, TYRWHITT, CRACHERODE, BANKS, and
HOARE, were its chief augmentors, until almost ninety years had elapsed
since the Act of Organization. Of the Collections of those ten
benefactors, eight came by absolute gift. For the other two, much less
than one half of their value was returned to the representatives of the
founders. And that, it has been shown, was provided, not by a
parliamentary grant, but out of the profits of a lottery.
The first important addition to the Library, subsequent to those gifts
which have been mentioned in a preceding chapter as nearly
contemporaneous with the creation of the Museum, was made by the Will of
Dr. Thomas BIRCH, [Sidenote: BEQUEST OF DR. THOMAS BIRCH, January,
1766.] one of the original Trustees. It comprised a valuable series of
manuscripts, rich in collections on the history, and especially the
biographical history, of the realm, and a considerable number of printed
books of a like character.
Dr. BIRCH was born in 1705, and died on the ninth of January, 1766. He
was one of the many friends of Sir Hans SLOANE, in the later years of
Sir Hans’ life. When the Museum was in course of organization, BIRCH
acted not only as a zealous Trustee, but he occasionally supplied the
place of Dr. MORTON as Secretary. His literary productions have real and
enduring value, though their value would probably have been greater had
their number been less. His activity is sufficiently evidenced by the
works which he printed, but can only be measured when the large
manuscript collections which he bequeathed are taken into the account.
Very few scholars will now be inclined to echo Horace WALPOLE’S
inquiry—made when he saw the Catalogue of the Birch MSS.—‘Who cares for
the correspondence of Dr. BIRCH?’
[Sidenote: BEQUEST OF DAVID GARRICK, January, 1779.]
Soon after the receipt of the BIRCH Collection, a choice assemblage of
English plays was bequeathed to the Museum by David GARRICK. Its
formation had been one of the favourite relaxations of the great actor.
And the study of the plays gathered by GARRICK had a large share in
moulding the tastes and the literary career of Charles LAMB. Thence he
drew the materials of the volume of _Specimens_ which has made the rich
stores of the early drama known to thousands of readers who but for it,
and for the Collection which enabled him to compile it, could have
formed no fair or adequate idea of an important epoch in our literature.
[Sidenote: BENEFACTIONS OF SIR W. MUSGRAVE.]
Sir William MUSGRAVE was another early Trustee whose gifts to the Public
illustrated the wisdom of SLOANE’S plan for the government of his Museum
and of its parliamentary adoption. MUSGRAVE shared the predilection of
Dr. BIRCH for the study of British biography and archæology, and he had
larger means for amassing its materials. He was descended from a branch
of the Musgraves of Edenhall, and was the second son of Sir Richard
MUSGRAVE of Hayton Castle, to whom he eventually succeeded. He made
large and very curious manuscript collections for the history of
portrait-painting in England (now _Additional MSS._ 6391–6393), and also
on many points of the administrative and political history of the
country. He was a zealous Trustee of the British Museum, and in his
lifetime made several additions to its stores. On his death, in 1799,
all his manuscripts were bequeathed to the Museum, together with a
Library of printed British Biography—more complete than anything of its
kind theretofore collected.
This last-named Collection extended (if we include a partial and
previous gift made in 1790) to nearly two thousand volumes, and it
probably embraced much more than twice that number of separate works.
For it was rich in those biographical ephemera which are so precious to
the historical inquirer, and often so difficult of obtainment, when
needed. Nearly at the same period (1786) a valuable Collection of
classical authors, in about nine hundred volumes, was bequeathed by
another worthy Trustee, Mr. Thomas TYRWHITT, distinguished both as a
scholar and as the Editor of CHAUCER.
But all the early gifts to the Museum, made after its parliamentary
organization, were eclipsed, at the close of the century, by the bequest
of the Cracherode Collections. [Sidenote: THE BEQUEST OF THE CRACHERODE
COLLECTION.] That bequest comprised a very choice library of printed
books; a cabinet of coins, medals, and gems; and a series of original
drawings by the great masters, chosen, like the books and the coins,
with exquisite taste, and, as the auctioneers say, quite regardless of
expense. [Sidenote: 1799.] It also included a small but precious cabinet
of minerals.
The collector of these rarities was wont to speak of them with great
modesty. They are, he would say, mere ‘specimen collections.’ But to
amass them had been the chief pursuit of a quiet and blameless life.
[Sidenote: LIFE AND CHARACTER OF MR. MORDAUNT CRACHERODE.]
Clayton Mordaunt CRACHERODE was born in London about the year 1730. And
he was ‘a Londoner’ in a sense and degree to which, in this railway
generation, it would be hard to find a parallel. Among the rich
possessions which he inherited from Colonel CRACHERODE, his father—whose
fortune had been gathered, or increased, during an active career in
remote parts of the world—was an estate in Hertfordshire, on which there
grew a certain famous chestnut-tree, the cynosure of all the
country-side for its size and antiquity. This tree was never seen by its
new owner, save as he saw the poplars of Lombardy, or the cedars of
Lebanon—in an etching. In the course of a long life he never reached a
greater distance from the metropolis than Oxford. He never mounted a
horse. The ordinary extent of his travels, during the prime years of a
long life, was from Queen Square, in Westminster, to Clapham. For almost
forty years it was his daily practice to walk from his house to the shop
of ELMSLY, a bookseller in the Strand, and thence to the still more
noted shop of Tom PAYNE, by ‘the Mews-Gate.’ Once a week, he varied the
daily walk by calling on MUDGE, a chronometer-maker, to get his watch
regulated. His excursions had, indeed, one other and not infrequent
variety—dictated by the calls of Christian benevolence—but of these he
took care to have no note taken.
Early in life, and probably to meet his father’s wish, he received holy
orders, but he never accepted any preferment in the Church. He took the
restraints of the clerical profession, without any of its emoluments.
His classical attainments were considerable, but the sole publication of
a long life of leisure was a university prize poem, printed in the
_Carmina Quadragesimalia_ of 1748. The only early tribulation of a life
of idyllic peacefulness was a dread that he might possibly be called
upon, at a coronation, to appear in public as the King’s cupbearer—his
manor of Great Wymondley being held by a tenure of grand-serjeantry in
that onerous employment. Its one later tinge of bitterness lay in the
dread of a French invasion. These may seem small sorrows, to men who
have had a full share in the stress and anguish of the battle of life.
But the weight of a burden is no measure of the pain it may inflict. Mr.
CRACHERODE looked to his possible cupbearership, with apprehension just
as acute as that with which COWPER contemplated the awful task of
reading in public the Journals of the House of Lords. And the sleepless
nights which long afterwards were brought to CRACHERODE by the horrors
of the French revolutionary war were caused less by personal fears than
by the dread of public calamities, more terrible than death. During one
year of the devastations on the other side of the Channel, chronicled by
our daily papers, Mr. CRACHERODE was thought by his friends to have
‘aged’ full ten years in his aspect.
The one active and incessant pursuit of this noiseless career was the
gathering together of the most choice books, the finest coins and gems,
the most exquisite drawings and prints, which money could buy, without
the toils of travel. Our Collector’s liberality of purse enabled him to
profit, at his ease, by the truth expressed in one of the wise maxims of
John SELDEN:—‘The giving a dealer his price hath this advantage;—he that
will do so shall have the refusal of whatsoever comes to the dealer’s
hand, and so by that means get many things which otherwise he never
should have seen.’ The enjoyment—almost a century ago—of six hundred
pounds a year in land, and of nearly one hundred thousand pounds
invested in the ‘sweet simplicity’ of the three per cents., enabled Mr.
CRACHERODE to outbid a good many competitors. His natural wish that what
he had so eagerly gathered should not be scattered to the four winds on
the instant he was carried to his grave, and also the public spirit
which dictated the choice of a national repository as the permanent
abode of his Collections, has already made that long course of daily
visits to the London dealers in books, coins, and drawings, fruitful of
good to hundreds of poorer students and toilers, during more than two
generations. From stores such as Mr. CRACHERODE’S—when so preserved—many
a useful labourer gets part of his best equipment for the tasks of his
life. He, too, would enjoy a visit to the ‘PAYNES’ and the ‘ELMSLYS’ of
the day as keenly as any book-lover that ever lived, but is too often,
perhaps, obliged to content himself with an outside glance at the
windows. Public libraries put him practically on a level with the
wealthiest connoisseur. When, as in this case—and in a hundred more—such
libraries derive much of their best possessions from private liberality,
a life like Mordaunt CRACHERODE’S has its ample vindication, and the
sting is taken out of all such sarcasms as that which was levelled—in
the shape of the query, ‘In all that big library is there a single book
written by the Collector himself?’—by some snarling epistolary critic,
when commenting on a notice that appeared in _The Times_ on the occasion
of Mr. CRACHERODE’S death.
On another point our Collector was exposed to the shafts of sarcastic
comment. He loved a good book to be printed on the very choicest
material, and clothed in the richest fashion. The treasure within would
not incline him to tolerate blemishes without.—
‘Nusquam blatta, vel inquinata charta,
Sed margo calami notæque purus,
Margo latior, albus integerque,
Nec non copia larga pergainenæ.—
Adsint Virgilius, paterque Homerus,
Mundi pumice, purpuraque culti;
Et quicquid magica quasi arte freti
Faustusque Upilioque præstiterunt.
· · · · ·
Hic sit qui nitet arte Montacuti,
Aut Paini, Deromique junioris;
Illic cui decus arma sunt Thuani,
Aut regis breve lilium caduci.’
In CRACHERODE’S eyes, external charms such as these were scarcely less
essential than the intrinsic worth of the author. ‘Large paper’ and
broad pure margins are fancies which it needs not much culture or much
wit to banter. But now and then, they are ridiculed by those who have
just as little capacity to judge the pith and substance of books, as of
taste to appreciate beauty in their outward form.[1]
The solidity of those three per cents., and the plodding perseverance of
their owner, were in time rewarded by the collection (1) of a library
containing only four thousand five hundred volumes, but of which
probably every volume—on an average of the whole—was worth, in
mercantile eyes, some three pounds; (2) of seven portfolios of drawings,
still more choice; (3) of a hundred portfolios of prints, many of which
were almost priceless; and (4) of coins and gems—such as the cameo of a
lion on sardonyx, and the intaglio of the _Discobolos_—worthy of an
imperial cabinet.
The ruling passion kept its strength to the last. An agent was buying
prints, for addition to the store, when the Collector was dying. About
four days before his death, Mr. CRACHERODE mustered strength to pay a
farewell visit to the old shop at the Mews-Gate. He put a finely printed
_Terence_ (from the press of FOULIS) into one pocket, and a large paper
_Cebes_ into another; and then,—with a longing look at a certain choice
_Homer_, in the course of which he mentally, and somewhat doubtingly,
balanced its charms with those of its twin brother in Queen
Square,—parted finally from the daily haunt of forty peripatetic and
studious years.
Clayton Mordaunt CRACHERODE died towards the close of 1799. He
bequeathed the whole of his collections to the Nation, with the
exception of two volumes of books. A polyglot _Bible_ was given to Shute
BARRINGTON, Bishop of Durham; a princeps _Homer_ to Cyril JACKSON, Dean
of Christ Church. Those justly venerated men were his two dearest
friends.
The next conspicuous donor to the Library of the British Museum was a
contemporary of the learned recluse of Queen Square, but one whose life
was passed in the thick of that worldly turmoil and conflict of which
Mr. CRACHERODE had so mortal a dread. [Sidenote: THE COLLECTOR OF THE
LANSDOWNE MANUSCRIPTS.] To the Collector of the ‘Lansdowne Manuscripts,’
political excitement was the congenial air in which it was indeed life
to live. But he, also, was a man beloved by all who had the privilege of
his intimate friendship.
William PETTY-FITZMAURICE, third Earl of Shelburne, and first Marquess
of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin, in May, 1737. He was the son of John,
Earl of Shelburne in the peerage of Ireland, and afterwards Baron
Wycombe in the peerage of Great Britain. The Marquess’s father united
the possessions of the family founded by Sir William PETTY with those
which the Irish wars had left to the ancient line of Fitzmaurice.
William, Earl of SHELBURNE, was educated by private tutors, and then
sent to Christ Church, Oxford. He left the University early, to take (in
or about the year 1756) a commission in the Guards. He was present in
the battles of Campen and of Minden. At Minden, in particular, he
evinced distinguished bravery. In May, 1760, and again in April, 1761,
he was elected by the burgesses of High Wycombe to represent them in the
House of Commons. But the death of Earl John, in the middle of 1761,
called his son to take his seat in the House of Lords. He soon evinced
the possession of powers eminently fitted to shine in Parliament. The
impetuosity he had shown on the field of Minden did not desert him in
the strife of politics. Those who had listened to the early speeches of
PITT might well think that the army had again sent them a ‘terrible
cornet of horse.’ So good a judge of political oratory as was Lord
CAMDEN thought SHELBURNE to be second only to CHATHAM himself.
[Sidenote: BEGINNING OF LORD SHELBURNE’S CAREER IN PARLIAMENT.]
Lord SHELBURNE’S first speech in Parliament—the first, at least, that
attracted general notice—was made in support of the Court and the
Ministry (November 3, 1762). Within less than six months after its
delivery he was called to the Privy Council, and placed at the head of
the Board of Trade and Plantations. This appointment was made on the
23rd of April, 1763. Just before it he had taken part in that delicate
negotiation between Lord BUTE and Henry FOX (afterwards Lord HOLLAND)
which has been kept well in memory by a jest of the man who thought
himself the loser in it. This early incident is in some sort a key to
many later incidents in Lord SHELBURNE’S life.
[Sidenote: SHELBURNE AND HENRY FOX.]
For, in all the acts and offices of a political career, save only one,
Lord SHELBURNE was characteristically a lover of soft words. In debate,
he could speak scathingly. In conversation, he was always under
temptation to flatter his interlocutor. In this conversation of 1763
with FOX, SHELBURNE’S innate love of smoothing asperities co-operated
with his belief that it was really for the common interest that BUTE and
FOX should come to an agreement, to make him put the premier’s offer
into the most pleasing light. When FOX found he was to get less than he
thought to have, he fiercely assailed the negotiator. Lord SHELBURNE’S
friends dwelt on his love of peace and good fellowship. At worst, said
they, it was but a ‘pious fraud.’ ‘I can see the fraud plainly enough,’
rejoined FOX, ‘but where is the piety?’
The office accepted in April was resigned in September, when the
coalition with ‘the BEDFORD party’ was made. Lord SHELBURNE’S loss was
felt in the House of Lords. But it was in the Commons that the Ministry
were now feeblest. ‘I don’t see how they can meet Parliament,’ said
CHESTERFIELD. ‘In the Commons they have not a man with ability and words
enough to call a coach.’
In February, 1765, SHELBURNE married Lady Sophia CARTERET, one of the
daughters of the Earl of GRANVILLE. The marriage was a very happy one.
Not long after it, he began to form his library. [Sidenote: FORMATION OF
LORD SHELBURNE’S LIBRARY.] Political manuscripts, state papers of every
kind, and all such documents as tend to throw light on the arcana of
history, were, more especially, the objects which he sought. And the
quest, as will be seen presently, was very successful. For during his
early researches he had but few competitors.
[Sidenote: THE SECRETARYSHIP OF STATE.]
On the organization of the Duke of GRAFTON’S Ministry in 1766 (July 30)
Lord SHELBURNE was made Secretary of State for the Southern Department,
to which at that time the Colonial business was attached. [Sidenote:
1766–1768.] His colleague, in the Northern, was CONWAY, who now led the
House of Commons. As Secretary, Lord SHELBURNE’S most conspicuous and
influential act was his approval of that rejection of certain members of
the Council of Massachusetts by Governor BERNARD, which had so important
a bearing on colonial events to come.
SHELBURNE, however, was one of a class of statesmen of whom, very
happily, this country has had many. He was able to render more efficient
service in opposition than in office. Of the Board of Trade he had had
the headship but a few months. As Secretary of State, under the GRAFTON
Administration, he served little more than two years. His opponents were
wont to call him an ‘impracticable’ man. But if he shared some of
CHATHAM’S weaknesses, he also shared much of his greatness. And on the
capital question of the American dispute, they were at one. They both
thought that the Colonies had been atrociously misgoverned. They were
willing to make large concessions to regain the loyalty of the
Colonists. They were utterly averse to admit of a severance.
[Sidenote: LORD SHELBURNE IN OPPOSITION.]
Under circumstances familiar to all readers, and by the personal urgency
of the King, Lord SHELBURNE was dismissed from his first Secretaryship
in October, 1768. His dismissal led to CHATHAM’S resignation. SHELBURNE
became a prominent and powerful leader of the Opposition, an object of
special dislike to a large force of political adversaries, and of warm
attachment to a small number of political friends. His personal friends
were, at all times, many.
The nickname under which his opponents were wont to satirize him has
been kept in memory by one of the many infelicities of speech which did
such cruel injustice to the fine parts and the generous heart of
GOLDSMITH. The story has been many times told, but will bear to be told
once again. The author of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ was an occasional
supporter of the Opposition in the newspapers. One day, in the autumn of
1773, he wrote an article in praise of Lord SHELBURNE’S ardent friend in
the City, the Lord Mayor TOWNSHEND. Sitting, in company with Topham
BEAUCLERC, at Drury Lane Theatre, just after the appearance of the
article, GOLDSMITH found himself close beside Lord SHELBURNE. His
companion told the statesman that his City friend’s eulogy came from
GOLDSMITH’S pen. [Sidenote: 1773. November.] ‘I hope,’ said his
Lordship—addressing the poet—‘you put nothing in it about Malagrida?’
[Sidenote: Hardy, _Life of Lord Charlemont_, vol. i, p. 177.] ‘Do you
know,’ rejoined poor GOLDSMITH, ‘I could never conceive the reason why
they call you “Malagrida,”—_for_ Malagrida was a very good sort of man.’
This small misplacement of an emphasis was of course quoted in the clubs
against the unlucky speaker. ‘Ah!’ said Horace WALPOLE, with his wonted
charity, ‘that’s a picture of the man’s whole life.’
[Sidenote: GROWTH OF LORD SHELBURNE’S LIBRARY.]
Lord SHELBURNE’S library profited by his long releasement from the cares
of office. He bestowed much of his leisure upon its enrichment, and
especially upon the acquisition of manuscript political literature. In
1770, he was fortunate enough to obtain a considerable portion of the
large and curious Collection of State Papers which Sir Julius CÆSAR had
begun to amass almost two centuries before. Two years later, he acquired
no inconsiderable portion of that far more important series which had
been gathered by BURGHLEY.
[Sidenote: THE CÆSAR PAPERS.]
Whilst Lord SHELBURNE was serving with the army in Germany, the ‘Cæsar
Papers’ had been dispersed by auction. There were then—1757—a hundred
and eighty-seven of them. About sixty volumes were purchased by Philip
Cartaret WEBB, a lawyer and juridical writer, as well as antiquary, of
some distinction. On Mr. WEBB’S death, in 1770, these were purchased by
SHELBURNE from his executors. On examining his acquisition, the new
possessor found that about twenty volumes related to various matters of
British history and antiquities; thirty-one volumes to the business of
the British Admiralty and its Courts; ten volumes to that of the
Treasury, Star Chamber, and other public departments; two volumes
contained treaties; and one volume, papers on the affairs of Ireland.
[Sidenote: THE CECIL OR BURGHLEY PAPERS.]
The ‘Burghley papers,’ acquired in 1772, had passed from Sir Michael
HICKES, one of that statesman’s secretaries, to a descendant, Sir
William HICKES, by whom they were sold to CHISWELL, a bookseller, and by
him to STRYPE, the historian. These (as has been mentioned in a former
chapter) were looked upon with somewhat covetous eyes by Humphrey
WANLEY, who hoped to have seen them become part of the treasures of the
Harleian Library. On STRYPE’S death they passed into the hands of James
WEST, and from his executors into the Library at Shelburne House. They
comprised a hundred and twenty-one volumes of the collections and
correspondence of Lord BURGHLEY, together with his private note-book and
journal.
Another valuable acquisition, made after Lord SHELBURNE’S retirement in
1768 from political office, consisted of the vast historical Collections
of Bishop White KENNETT, extending to a hundred and seven volumes, of
which a large proportion are in the Bishop’s own untiring hand.
Twenty-two of these volumes contain important materials for English
Church History. Eleven volumes contain biographical collections, ranging
between the years 1500 and 1717. All that have been enumerated are now
national property.
Other choice manuscript collections were added from time to time. Among
them may be cited the papers of Sir Paul RYCAUT—which include
information both on Irish and on Continental affairs towards the close
of the seventeenth century; the correspondence of Dr. John PELL, and
that of the Jacobite Earl of MELFORT.
These varied accessions—with many others of minor importance—raised the
Shelburne Library into the first rank among private repositories of
historical lore. To amass and to study them was to prove to its owner
the solace of deep personal affliction, as well as the relief of public
toils. At the close of 1770, he lost a beloved wife, after a union of
less than six years. He remained a widower until 1779.
Another source of solace was found in labours that have an inexhaustible
charm, for those who are so happy as to have means as well as taste for
them. [Sidenote: LORD SHELBURNE AS A LANDSCAPE GARDENER.] Lord SHELBURNE
lived much at Loakes—now called Wycombe Abbey—a delightful seat, just
above the little town of High Wycombe. Its striking framework of
beech-woods, its fine plane-trees and ash-trees, and its broad piece of
water, make up a lovely picture, much of the attraction of which is due
to the skill and judgment with which its then owner elicited and
heightened the natural beauties of the place.[2] But those of Bowood
exceeded them in Lord SHELBURNE’S eyes. There, too, he did very much to
enhance what nature had already done, and he had the able assistance of
Mr. HAMILTON of Pains-Hill. In consequence of their joint labours,
almost every species of oak may be seen at Bowood, with great variety of
exotic trees of all sorts. Both wood and water combine to make, from
some points of view, a resemblance between Wycombe and Bowood. And both
differ from many much bepraised country seats in the wise preference of
natural beauty—selected and heightened—to artificial beauty. Lord
SHELBURNE himself was wont to say: ‘Mere workmanship should never be
introduced where the beauty and variety of the scenery are, in
themselves, sufficient to excite admiration.’
But, in their true place, few men better loved the productions of
artistic genius. He collected pictures and sculpture, as well as trees
and books. He was the first of his name who made Lansdowne House in
London, as well as Loakes and Bowood in the country, centres of the best
society in the intellectual as well as in the fashionable world.
Years passed on. The course of public events—and especially the death of
Lord CHATHAM and the issues of the American war—together with many
conspicuous proofs of his powers in debate, tended more and more to
bring Lord SHELBURNE to the front. Between him and Lord ROCKINGHAM, as
far as regards real personal ability—whether parliamentary or
administrative—there could, in truth, be little ground for comparison.
But in party connection and following, the claims of the inferior man
were incontestible. Lord SHELBURNE, towards the close of 1779, signified
his readiness to waive his pretensions to take the lead—in the event of
the overthrow of the existing Government—and his willingness to serve
under Lord ROCKINGHAM; so little truth was there in the assertion,
[Sidenote: H. Walpole to Mann; 1780. March 21.] made by Horace WALPOLE
to his correspondent at Florence, that SHELBURNE ‘will stick at nothing
to gratify his ambition.’
But that very charge is, in fact, a tribute. WALPOLE’S indignation had
been excited just at that moment by the zealous assistance which
SHELBURNE had given, in the House of Lords, to the efforts of BURKE in
the lower House in favour of economical reforms. He had brought forward
a motion on that subject on the same night on which BURKE had given
notice for the introduction of his famous Bill (December, 1779). He
continued his efforts, and presently had to encounter a more active and
pertinacious opponent of retrenchment than Horace WALPOLE.
In the course of a vigorous speech on reform in the administration of
the army, Lord SHELBURNE had censured a transaction in which Mr.
FULLERTON, a Member of the House of Commons, was intimately concerned.
[Sidenote: LORD SHELBURNE’S DUEL WITH FULLERTON.] FULLERTON made a
violent attack, in his place in the House, upon his censor. But his
speech was so disorderly that he was forced to break off. In his anger
he sent Lord SHELBURNE a minute, not only of what he had actually
spoken, but of what he had intended to say, in addition, had the rules
of Parliament permitted. And he had the effrontery to wind up his
obliging communication with these words:—‘You correspond, as I have
heard abroad, with the enemies of your country.’ His letter was
presented to Lord SHELBURNE by a messenger.
The receiver, when he had read it, said to the bearer: ‘The best answer
I can give Mr. FULLERTON is to desire him to meet me in Hyde Park, at
five, to-morrow morning.’ They fought, and SHELBURNE was wounded. On
being asked how he felt himself, he looked at the wound, and said: ‘I do
not think that Lady SHELBURNE will be the worse for this.’ But it was
severe enough to interrupt, for a while, his political labours.
[Sidenote: HIS SECRETARYSHIP IN THE ROCKINGHAM ADMINISTRATION.]
On the formation in March, 1782, of the Rockingham Administration, he
accepted the Secretaryship of State, and took with him four of his
adherents into the Cabinet. But the most curious feature in the
transaction was that Lord SHELBURNE carried on, personally, all the
intercourse in the royal closet that necessarily preceded the formation
of the Ministry, although he was not to be its head. GEORGE THE THIRD
would not admit Lord ROCKINGHAM to an audience until his Cabinet was
completely formed. The man whose exclusion from the Grafton Ministry the
King had so warmly urged a few years before, was now not less warmly
urged by him to throw over his party, and to head a cabinet of his own.
He resisted all blandishment, and virtually told the King that the
triumph of the Opposition must be its triumph as an unbroken whole;
though he doubtless felt, within himself, that the cohesion was of
singularly frail tenacity.
On the 24th of March, SHELBURNE had the satisfaction of conveying to
Lord ROCKINGHAM the royal concession of his constitutional
demands—obtained after a wearisome negotiation, and only by the piling
up of argument on argument in successive conversations at the ‘Queen’s
House,’ lasting sometimes for three mortal hours. [Sidenote: DEATH OF
LORD ROCKINGHAM, 1782, 1 July.] Three months afterwards, the new Premier
was dead. And with him departed the cohesion of the Whigs.
[Sidenote: FORMATION OF LORD SHELBURNE’S MINISTRY.]
As Secretary of State, Lord SHELBURNE’S chief task had been the control
of that double and most unwelcome negotiation which was carried on at
Paris with France and with America.[3] For it had fallen to the lot of
the utterer of the ‘sunset-speech,’[4]—‘if we let America go, the sun of
Great Britain is set’—to arrange the terms of American pacification. And
the obstructions in that path which were created at home were even more
serious stumbling-blocks than were the difficulties abroad. The cardinal
points of Lord SHELBURNE’S policy, at this time, were to retain, by hook
or crook, some amount or other of hold upon America, and at the worst to
keep the Court of France from enjoying the prestige, or setting up the
pretence, of having dictated the terms of peace.
That the split in the Whig party was really and altogether inevitable,
now that ROCKINGHAM’S death had placed SHELBURNE above reasonable
competition for the premiership, was made known to him when at Court, in
the most abrupt manner. On the 7th of July (six days after the death of
the Marquess), Fox took him by the sleeve, with the blunt question: ‘Are
you to be First Lord of the Treasury?’ [Sidenote: Walpole to Mann (from
an eye witness), 1782, July 7.] When SHELBURNE said ‘Yes,’ the instant
rejoinder was, ‘Then, my Lord, I shall resign.’ Fox had brought the
seals in his pocket, and proceeded immediately to return them to the
King.
In his first speech as Premier, Lord SHELBURNE spoke thus:—‘It has been
said that I have changed my opinion about the independence of
America.... My opinion is still the same. When that independence shall
have been established, the sun of England may be said to have set. I
have used every effort, public and private—in England, and out of it—to
avert so dreadful a disaster.... [Sidenote: _Parliamentary Debates_,
vol. xxiii, col. 194.] But though this country should have received a
fatal blow, there is still a duty incumbent upon its Ministers to use
their most vigorous exertions to prevent the Court of France from being
in a situation to dictate the terms of Peace. The sun of England may
have set. But we will improve the twilight. We will prepare for the
rising of that sun again. And I hope England may yet see many, many
happy days.’
The best achievements of the brief government of Lord SHELBURNE were
(first) the resolute defence, in its diplomacy at Paris and Versailles,
of our territories in Canada, and (secondly) its consistent assertion of
the principle that underlay a sentence contained in a former speech of
the [Sidenote: MERITS OF THE SHELBURNE MINISTRY.] Premier—a sentence
which, at one time, was much upon men’s lips:—‘I will never consent,’ he
had said, ‘that the King of England shall be a King of the Mahrattas.’
The merits, I venture to think, of that short Ministry, have had scant
acknowledgment in our current histories. And the reason is, perhaps, not
far to seek.
The popular history of GEORGE THE THIRD’S reign has been, in a large
degree, imbued with Whiggism. The historians most in vogue have had a
sort of small apostolical succession amongst themselves, which has had
the result of giving a strong party tinge to those versions of the
course of political events in that reign which have most readily gained
the public ear. When the full story shall come to be told, in a later
day and from a higher stand-point, Lord SHELBURNE, not improbably, will
be one among several statesmen whose reputation with posterity (in
common—in some measure—with that of their royal master himself, it may
even be) will be found to have been elevated, rather than lowered, by
the process.
[Sidenote: _Debates_, vol. xix, col. 850.]
But, be that as it may, party intrigue, rather than ministerial
incapacity, had to do, confessedly, with the rapid overthrow of the
Government of July, 1782.
Personally, Lord SHELBURNE was in a position which, in several points of
view, bears a resemblance to that in which another able statesman, who
had to fight against a powerful coterie, was to find himself forty years
later. But in SHELBURNE’S case, the struggle of the politician did not,
as in CANNING’S, break down the bodily vigour of the man. Lord SHELBURNE
had twenty-two years of retirement yet before him, when he resigned the
premiership in 1783. And they were years of much happiness.
[Sidenote: THE CLOSING YEARS OF LORD LANSDOWNE’S LIFE.]
Part of that happiness was the result of the domestic union just
adverted to. Another part of it accrued from the rich Library which the
research and attention of many years had gradually built up, and from
the increased leisure that had now been secured, both for study and for
the enjoyment of the choice society which gathered habitually at
Lansdowne House and at Bowood.
Lord SHELBURNE’S retirement had been followed, in 1784, by his creation
as Earl Wycombe and Marquess of Lansdowne. In the following year, he
sold the Wycombe mansion and its charming park to Lord CARRINGTON.
Thenceforward, Bowood had the benefit, exclusively, of his taste and
skill in landscape-gardening. Unfortunately, his next successor, far
from continuing his father’s work, did much to injure and spoil it. But
the third Marquess, in whom so many of his father’s best qualities were
combined with some that were especially his own, made ample amends.
The exciting debates which grew out of the French Revolution and the
ensuing events on the Continent, called Lord LANSDOWNE, now and then,
into the old arena. But the domestic employments which have been
mentioned, together with that which was entailed by a large and varied
correspondence, both at home and abroad, were the things which chiefly
filled up his later years. The Marquess died in London on the seventh of
May, 1805. He was but sixty-eight years of age, yet he was then the
oldest general officer on the army list, having been gazetted as a
major-general just forty years before.
[Sidenote: THE PURCHASE OF THE LANSDOWNE MANUSCRIPTS.]
In order to acquire for the nation that precious portion of Lord
LANSDOWNE’S Library which was in manuscript, the national purse-strings
were now, for the first time, opened on behalf of the literary stores of
the British Museum. Fifty-three years had passed since its complete
foundation as a national institution, and exactly twice that number of
years since the first public establishment of the Cottonian Library, yet
no grant had been hitherto made by Parliament for the improvement of the
national collections of books.
Four thousand nine hundred and twenty-five pounds was the sum given to
Lord LANSDOWNE’S executors for his manuscripts. Besides the successive
accumulations of State Papers heretofore mentioned, the LANSDOWNE
Collection included other historical documents, extending in date from
the reign of HENRY THE SIXTH to that of GEORGE THE THIRD; the varied
Collections of William _Petyt_ on parliamentary and juridical lore;
those of WARBURTON on the topography and family history of Yorkshire,
and of HOLLES, containing matter of a like character for the local
concerns of the county of Lincoln; the Heraldic and Genealogical
Collections of SEGAR, SAINT GEORGE, DUGDALE, and LE NEVE; and a most
curious series of early treatises upon music, which had been collected
by John WYLDE, who was for many years precentor of Waltham Abbey, in the
time of the second of the Tudor monarchs.
[Sidenote: THE ACQUISITION OF THE HARGRAVE AND BURNEY LIBRARIES.]
The Lansdowne Collection did not contain very much of a classical
character. Its strength, it has been seen already, lay in the sections
of Modern History and Politics. The next important addition to the
Library of the Museum—that of the manuscripts and printed books of
Francis HARGRAVE—was likewise chiefly composed of political and
juridical literature. But the third parliamentary acquisition brought to
the Museum a store of classical wealth, both in manuscripts and in
printed books. HARGRAVE’S Legal Library was bought in 1813. Charles
BURNEY’S Classical Library was bought in 1818. In the biographical point
of view neither of these men ran a career which offers much of narrative
interest. The one career was that of a busy lawyer; the other, that of a
laborious scholar. But to BURNEY’S life a few sentences may be briefly
and fitly given.
The second Charles BURNEY was a younger son of the well-known historian
of Music, who for more than fifty years was a prominent figure in the
literary circles—and especially in the Johnsonian circle—of London; and
in whose well-filled life a very moderate share of literary ability was
made to go a long way, and to elicit a very resonant echo. That ‘clever
dog BURNEY,’ as he was wont to be called by the autocrat of the
dinner-table, had the good fortune to be the father of several children
even more clever than himself. Their reputation enhanced his own.
[Sidenote: THE LIFE AND LITERARY WORKS OF DR. CHAS. BURNEY.]
Charles BURNEY, junior, was born at Lynn, in Norfolk, on the 10th of
December, 1757. He was educated at the Charter House in London, at Caius
College, Cambridge, and at King’s College, Aberdeen. At Aberdeen, BURNEY
formed a friendship with Dr. DUNBAR, a Scottish professor of some
distinction, and an incident which grew, in after-years, out of that
connection, determined the scene and character of the principal
employments of BURNEY’S life. He devoted himself to scholastic labours,
in both senses of the term; their union proved mutually advantageous,
and as tuition gave leisure for literary labour, so the successful
issues of that labour spread far and wide his fame as a schoolmaster. He
was one of the not very large group of men who in that employment have
won wealth as well as honour. It was finely said, many years ago—in one
of the State Papers written by GUIZOT, when he was Minister of Public
Instruction in France—‘the good schoolmaster must work for man, and be
content to await his reward from God.’ In BURNEY’S case, the combined
assiduity of an energetic man at the author’s writing-table, at the
master’s desk, and also (it must in truthful candour be added) at his
flogging block,[5] brought him a large fortune as well as a wide-spread
reputation. This fortune enabled him to collect what, for a
schoolmaster, I imagine to have been a Classical Library hardly ever
rivalled in beauty and value. It was the gathering of a deeply read
critic, as well as of an open-handed purchaser.
The bias of Dr. BURNEY’S learning and tastes in literature led him to a
preference of the Greek classics far above the Latin. Naturally, his
Library bore this character in counterpart. He aimed at collecting Greek
authors—and especially the dramatists—in such a way that the collocation
of his copies gave a sort of chronological view of the literary history
of the books and of their successive recensions.
For the tragedians, more particularly, his researches were brilliantly
successful. Of _Æschylus_ he had amassed forty-seven editions; of
_Sophocles_, one hundred and two; of _Euripides_, one hundred and
sixty-six.
His first publication was a sharp criticism (in the _Monthly Review_) on
Mr. (afterwards Bishop) HUNTINGFORD’S Collection of Greek poems entitled
_Monostrophica_. This was followed, in 1789, by the issue of an Appendix
to SCAPULA’S Lexicon; and in 1807 by a collection of the correspondence
of BENTLEY and other scholars. Two years later, he gave to students of
Greek his _Tentamen de Metris ab Æschylo in choricis cantibus
adhibitis_, and to the youthful theologians his meritorious abridgment
of Bishop PEARSON’S _Exposition of the Creed_. In 1812, he published the
Lexicon of PHILEMON.
The only Church preferments enjoyed by Dr. BURNEY were the rectory of
St. Paul, Deptford, near London, and that of Cliffe, also in Kent. His
only theological publication—other than the abridgment of PEARSON—was a
sermon which he had preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1812. Late in
life he was made a Prebendary of Lincoln.
Like his father, and others of his family, Charles BURNEY was a very
sociable man. He lived much with PARR and with PORSON, and, like those
eminent scholars, he had the good and catholic taste which embraced in
its appreciations, and with like geniality, old wine, as well as old
books. He was less wise in nourishing a great dislike to cool breezes.
‘Shut the door,’ was usually his first greeting to any visitant who had
to introduce himself to the Doctor’s notice; and it was a joke against
him, in his later days, that the same words were his parting salutation
to a couple of highwaymen who had taken his purse as he was journeying
homewards in his carriage, and who were adding cruelty to robbery by
exposing him to the fresh air when they made off.
[Sidenote: CHOICE BOOKS IN BURNEY’S LIBRARY.]
Some of Dr. BURNEY’S choicest books were obtained when the Pinelli
Library was brought to England from Italy. The prime ornament of his
manuscript Collection, a thirteenth century copy of the _Iliad_, of
great beauty and rich in scholia, was bought at the sale of the fine
Library of Charles TOWNELEY, Collector of the Marbles.
Although classical literature was the strength of the BURNEY Collection,
it was also rich in some other departments. Of English newspapers, for
example, he had brought together nearly seven hundred volumes of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reaching from the reign of JAMES
THE FIRST to the reign of GEORGE THE THIRD. No such assemblage had been
theretofore formed, I think, by any Collector. He had also amassed
nearly four hundred volumes containing materials for a history of the
British Stage, which materials have subsequently been largely used by
Mr. GENEST, in his work on that subject. For BURNEY’S life-long study of
the Greek drama had gradually inspired him with a desire to trace what,
in a sense, may be termed its modern revival, in the grand sequel given
to it by SHAKESPEARE and his contemporaries. He had also collected about
five thousand engraved theatrical portraits, and two thousand portraits
of literary personages.
A large number of his printed books contained marginal manuscript notes
by BENTLEY, CASAUBON, BURMANN, and other noted scholars. And in a series
of one hundred and seventy volumes BURNEY had himself collected all the
extant remains and fragments of Greek dramatic writers—about three
hundred in number. These remains he had arranged under the collective
title of _Fragmenta Scenica Græca_.
A splendid vellum manuscript of the Greek orators, in scription of the
fourteenth century, had been obtained from Dr. CLARKE, by whom it had
been acquired during Lord ELGIN’S Ottoman Embassy, and brought into
England. It supplied lacunæ which are found wanting in all other known
manuscripts. It completed an imperfect oration of _Lycurgus_, and
another of _Dinarchus_. Another MS. of the Greek orators, of the
fifteenth century, is only next in value to that derived from CLARKE’S
researches in the East, of 1800. There is also a very fine manuscript of
the Geography of PTOLEMY, with maps compiled in the fifteenth century,
and two very choice copies of the Greek _Gospels_, one of which is of
the tenth, and the other of the twelfth centuries.
In Latin classics, the BURNEY Manuscripts include a fourteenth century
_Plautus_, containing no fewer than twenty plays—whereas a manuscript
containing even twelve plays has long been regarded as a rarity. A
fifteenth century copy of the mathematical tracts collected by PAPPUS
ALEXANDRINUS, a _Callimachus_ of the same date, and a curious Manuscript
of the _Asinus Aureus_ of APULEIUS, are also notable. The whole number
of Classical Manuscripts which this Collector had brought together was
stated, at the time of his death, to be three hundred and eighty-five.
Dr. BURNEY died on the twenty-eighth of December, 1817, having just
entered upon his sixty-first year. He was buried at Deptford, amidst the
lamentations of his parishioners at his loss.
[Sidenote: DOCTOR BURNEY’S CHARACTER.]
For in BURNEY, too, the scholar and the Collector had not been suffered
to dwarf or to engross the whole man. His parishioners assembled, soon
after his death, to evince publicly their sense of what Death had robbed
them of. The testimony then borne to his character was far better,
because more pertinent, laudation, than is usually met with in the
literature of tombstones. Those who had known the man intimately then
said of him: ‘His attainments in learning were united with equal
generosity and kindness of heart. His impressive discourses from the
pulpit became doubly beneficial from the influence of his own example.’
The parishioners agreed to erect a monument to his memory, ‘as a record
of their affection for their revered pastor, monitor, and friend; of
their gratitude for his services, and of their unspeakable regret for
his loss.’
Another meeting was called shortly afterwards, with a like object, but
of another sort. Despite his reverence for Busbeian traditions, Dr.
BURNEY had known how to win the love of his pupils. [Sidenote: _Annual
Biography and Obituary_, vol. iii, p. 225.] A large body of them met,
under the chairmanship of the excellent John KAYE, then Regius Professor
of Divinity at Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, and they
subscribed for the placing of a monument to their old master in
Westminster Abbey.
[Sidenote: THE APPLICATION OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM TO
PARLIAMENT FOR THE PURCHASE OF BURNEY’S LIBRARY.]
On the twenty-third of February, 1818, the Trustees of the British
Museum presented to the House of Commons a petition, praying that Dr.
BURNEY’S Library should be acquired for the Public. The prayer of the
petition was supported by Mr. BANKES and by Mr. VANSITTART, and a Select
Committee was appointed to inquire and report upon the application.
In order to an accurate estimate of the value of the Library, a
comparison was instituted, in certain particulars, between its contents
and those of the Collection already in the national Museum. In comparing
the works of a series of twenty-four Greek authors, it was found that of
those authors, taken collectively, the Museum possessed only two hundred
and thirty-nine several editions, whereas Dr. Charles BURNEY had
collected no fewer than seven hundred and twenty-five editions.[6]
[Sidenote: ACQUISITION OF THE BURNEY LIBRARY BY THE NATION.] His
Collection of the Greek dramatists was not only, as I have said,
extensive, but it was arrayed after a peculiar and interesting manner.
By making a considerable sacrifice of duplicate copies, he had brought
his series of editions into an order which exhibited, at one view, all
the diversities of text, recension, and commentary. His Greek
grammarians were arrayed in like manner. And his collection of
lexicographers generally, and of philologists, was both large and well
selected.
[Sidenote: _Report of Select Committee_, 1818; passim.]
The total number of printed books was nearly thirteen thousand five
hundred volumes, that of manuscripts was five hundred and twenty; and
the total sum given for the whole was thirteen thousand five hundred
pounds.
It was estimated that the Collection had cost Dr. BURNEY a much larger
sum, and that, possibly, if sold by public auction, it might have
produced to his representatives more than twenty thousand pounds.
In the same year with the acquisition of the Burney Library, the
national Collections were augmented by the purchase of the printed books
of a distinguished Italian scholar long resident in France, and eminent
for his contributions to French literature. [Sidenote: COLLECTION OF P.
L. GINGUENÉ. (Died 11 Nov., 1816.)] Pier Luigi GINGUENÉ—author of the
_Histoire Littéraire d’Italie_ and a conspicuous contributor to the
early volumes of the _Biographie Universelle_—had brought together a
good Collection of Italian, French, and Classical literature. It
comprised, amongst the rest, the materials which had been gathered for
the book by which the Collector is now chiefly remembered, and extended,
in the whole, to more than four thousand three hundred separate works,
of which number nearly one thousand seven hundred related to Italian
literature, or to its history. This valuable Collection was obtained by
the Trustees—owing to the then depressed state of the Continental
book-market—for one thousand pounds. And, in point of literary value, it
may be described as the first—in point of price, as the cheapest—of a
series of purchases which now began to be made on the Continent.
A more numerous printed Library had been purchased together with a
cabinet of coins and a valuable herbarium, at Munich, three years
earlier, at the sale of the Collections of Baron VON MOLL. His Library
exceeded fourteen thousand volumes, nearly eight thousand of which
related to the physical sciences and to cognate subjects. [Sidenote:
COLLECTION OF BARON VON MOLL. (1815.)] The cost of this purchase, with
the attendant expenses, was four thousand seven hundred and seventy
pounds. The whole sum was defrayed out of the fund bequeathed by Major
Arthur EDWARDS.[7]
These successive purchases, together with the Hargrave
Collection—acquired in 1813—increased the theretofore much neglected
Library by an aggregate addition of nearly thirty-five thousand volumes.
And for four successive years (1812–15) Parliament made a special annual
grant of one thousand pounds[8] for the purchase of printed books
relating to British History.
[Sidenote: FRANCIS HARGRAVE AND HIS COLLECTIONS IN LAW LITERATURE.]
The peculiar importance of the Hargrave Collection consisted in its
manuscripts and its annotated printed books. The former were about five
hundred in number, and were works of great juridical weight and
authority, not merely the curiosities of black-letter law. Their
Collector was the most eminent parliamentary lawyer of his day, but his
devotion to the science of law had, to some degree, impeded his
enjoyment of its sweets. During some of the best years of his life he
had been more intent on increasing his legal lore than on swelling his
legal profits. And thus the same legislative act which enriched the
Museum Library, in both of its departments, helped to smooth the
declining years of a man who had won an uncommon distinction in his
special pursuit. Francis HARGRAVE died on the sixteenth of August, 1821,
at the age of eighty.
[Sidenote: THE EGERTON BEQUEST.]
Leaving now this not very long list of acquisitions made by the National
Library, in the way of purchase, either at the public cost or from
endowments, we have again to turn to a new and conspicuous instance of
private liberality. Like CRACHERODE, and like BURNEY, Francis Henry
EGERTON belonged to a profession which at nearly all periods of our
history—though in a very different degree in different ages—has done
eminent honour and rendered large services to the nation, and that in an
unusual variety of paths.
Each of these three clergymen is now chiefly remembered as a
‘Collector.’ Each of them would seem to have been placed quite out of
his true element and sphere of labour, when assuming the
responsibilities of a priest in the Church of England. CRACHERODE was
scarcely more fitted for the work, at all events, of a preacher—save by
the tacit lessons of a most meek and charitable life—than he was fitted
to head a cavalry charge on the field of battle. BURNEY was manifestly
cut out by nature for the work of a schoolmaster; although, as we have
seen, he was able—late, comparatively, in life—so to discharge (for a
very few years) the duties of a parish priest as to win the love of his
flock. EGERTON was unsuited to clerical work of almost any and every
kind. Yet he, too, with all his eccentricities and his indefensible
absenteeism, became a public benefactor. The last act of his life was to
make a provision which has been fruitful in good, having a bearing—very
real though indirect—upon the special duties of the priestly function,
for which he was himself so little adapted. The bequests of Francis
EGERTON had, among their many useful results, the enabling of Thomas
CHALMERS to add one more to his fruitful labours for the Christian
Church and for the world.
It may not, I trust, be out of place to notice in this connection, and
as one among innumerable debts which our country owes specifically to
its Church Establishment, the impressive and varied way in which the
English Church has, at every period, inculcated the lesson (by no means,
nowadays, a favourite lesson of ‘the age’) that men owe duties to
posterity, as well as duties to their contemporaries. The fact bears
directly on the subject of this book. Into every path of life many men
must needs enter, from time to time, without possessing any peculiar and
real fitness for it. In a path which (in the course of successive ages)
has been trodden by some millions of men, there must needs have been a
crowd of incomers who had been better on the outside. They were like the
square men who get to be thrust violently into round holes. But, even of
these misplaced men, not a few have learnt, under the teaching of the
Church, that if they could not with efficiency do pulpit work or parish
work, there was other work which they could do, and do perpetually. Men,
for example, who loved literature could, for all time to come, secure
for the poorest student ample access to the best books, and to the
inexhaustible treasures they contain. CRACHERODE did this. BURNEY helped
to do it. EGERTON not only did the like, in his degree, in several parts
of England, but he enabled other and abler men to write new books of a
sort which are conspicuously adapted to add to the equipment of divines
for their special duty and work in the world. Neglecting to learn many
lessons which the Church teaches, to her clergy as well as to laymen, he
had at least learnt one lesson of practical and permanent value.
Hence it is that, in addition to the matchless roll of English worthies
which, in her best days, the Church has furnished—in that long line of
men, from her ranks, who have done honour to her, and to England, under
_every_ point of view—she can show a subsidiary list, comprising men
whose benefactions are more influential than were, or could have been,
the labours of their lives; men of the sort who, being dead, can yet
speak, and to much better purpose than ever they could speak when alive.
Among such is the Churchman whose testamentary gifts have now very
briefly to be mentioned.
[Sidenote: LIFE OF FRANCIS HENRY EGERTON, EARL OF BRIDGEWATER, AND
FOUNDER OF THE ‘BRIDGEWATER TREATISES.’]
Francis Henry EGERTON was a younger son of John EGERTON, Bishop of
Durham, by the Lady Anna Sophia GREY, daughter and coheir of Henry GREY,
Duke of Kent. He was born on the eleventh of November, 1756. The Bishop
of Durham was fifth in descent from the famous Chancellor of England,
Thomas EGERTON, Viscount Brachley, to whom, as he lay upon his
death-bed, BACON came with the news of King JAMES’S promise to make him
an Earl. Before the patent could be sealed, the exchancellor, it will be
remembered, was dead, and JAMES, to show his gratitude to the departed
statesman, sold for a large sum the Earldom of Bridgewater to the
Chancellor’s son. Eventually, of that earldom Francis Henry EGERTON was,
in his old age, the eighth and last inheritor.
Mr. EGERTON was educated at Eton and at All Souls. He took his M.A. in
1780, and in the following year was presented, by his relative, Francis,
Duke of BRIDGEWATER—the father of inland navigation in Britain—to the
Rectory of Middle, in Shropshire, a living which he held for eight and
forty years.
He was a toward and good scholar. From his youth he was a great reader
and a lover of antiquities, as well as a respectable philologist. His
foible was an overweening although a pardonable pride in his ancestry.
That ancestry embraced what was noblest in the merely antiquarian point
of view, along with the grand historical distinctions of state service
rendered to Queen ELIZABETH, and of a new element introduced into the
mercantile greatness of England under GEORGE THE THIRD. A man may be
forgiven for being proud of a family which included the servant of
ELIZABETH and friend of BACON, as well as the friend of BRINDLEY. But
the pride, as years increased, became somewhat wearisome to
acquaintances; though it proved to be a source of no small profit to
printers and engravers, both at home and abroad. Mr. EGERTON’S writings
in biography and genealogy are very numerous. They date from 1793 to
1826. Some of them are in French. All of them relate, more or less
directly, to the family of EGERTON.
In the year 1796, he appeared as an author in another department, and
with much credit. His edition of the _Hippolytus_ of EURIPIDES is also
noticeable for its modest and candid acknowledgment of the assistance he
had derived from other scholars. He afterwards collected and edited some
fragments of the odes of SAPPHO. The later years of his life were
chiefly passed in Paris. His mind had been soured by some unhappy family
troubles and discords, and as years increased a lamentable spirit of
eccentricity increased with them. It had grown with his growth, but did
not weaken with his loss of bodily and mental vigour.
One of the most noted manifestations of this eccentricity was but the
distortion of a good quality. He had a fondness for dumb animals. He
could not bear to see them suffer by any infliction,—other than that
necessitated by a love of field sports, which, to an Englishman, is as
natural and as necessary as mother’s milk. At length, the Parisians were
scandalised by the frequent sight of a carriage, full of dogs, attended
with as much state and solemnity as if it contained ‘milord’ in person.
To his servants he was a most liberal master. He provided largely for
the parochial service and parochial charities of his two parishes of
Middle and Whitchurch (both in Shropshire). He was, occasionally, a
liberal benefactor to men of recondite learning, such as meet commonly
with small reward in this world.[9] But much of his life was stamped
with the ineffaceable discredit of sacred functions voluntarily assumed,
yet habitually discharged by proxy.
On the death, in 1823, of his elder brother—who had become seventh Earl
of BRIDGEWATER, under the creation of 1617, on the decease of Francis
third Duke and sixth (Egerton) Earl—Francis Henry EGERTON became eighth
Earl of BRIDGEWATER. But he continued to live chiefly in Paris, where he
died, in April, 1829, at the age of seventy-two years. With the peerage
he had inherited a very large estate, although the vast ducal property
in canals had passed, as is well known, in 1803, to the LEVESON-GOWERS.
Part of Lord BRIDGEWATER’S leisure at Paris was given to the composition
of a largely-planned treatise on Natural Theology. But the task was far
above the powers of the undertaker. He had made considerable progress,
after his fashion, and part of what he had written was put superbly into
type, from the press of DIDOT. Very wisely, he resolved to enable abler
men to do the work more efficiently. And this was a main object of his
remarkable Will.
That portion of the document which eventually gave to the world the
well-known ‘Bridgewater Treatises’ of CHALMERS, BUCKLAND, WHEWELL,
PROUT, ROGET, and their fellows in the task, reads thus:—
[Sidenote: LORD BRIDGEWATER’S BEQUESTS FOR THE PREPARATION OF TREATISES
ON NATURAL THEOLOGY.]
‘I give and bequeath to the President of the Royal Society the sum of
eight thousand pounds, to be applied according to the order and
direction of the said President of the Royal Society, in full and
without any diminution or abatement whatsoever, in such proportions and
at such times, according to his discretion and judgment, and without
being subject to any control or responsibility whatsoever, to such
person or persons as the said President for the time being of the
aforesaid Royal Society shall or may nominate or appoint and employ. And
it is my will and particular request that some person or persons be
nominated and appointed by him to write, print, publish, and expose to
public sale, one thousand copies of a work “_On Power, Wisdom, and
Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation_,” illustrating such work
by all reasonable arguments; as, for instance, the variety and formation
of God’s creatures, in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms; the
effect of digestion, and thereby of conversion; the construction of the
hand of man, and an infinite variety of arrangements; as also by
discoveries, ancient and modern, in arts, sciences, and in the whole
extent of literature. And I desire that the profits arising from and out
of the circulation and sale of the aforesaid work shall be paid by the
said President of the said Royal Society, as of right, as a further
remuneration and reward to such persons as the said President shall or
may so nominate, appoint, and employ as aforesaid. And I hereby fully
authorise and empower the said President, in his own discretion, to
direct and cause to be paid and advanced to such person or persons
during the printing and preparing of the said work the sum of three
hundred pounds, and also the sum of five hundred pounds sterling to the
same person or persons during the printing and preparing of the said
work for the press, out of, and in part of, the same eight thousand
pounds sterling. And I will and direct that the remainder of the said
sum of eight thousand pounds sterling, or of the stocks or funds wherein
the same shall have been invested, together with all interest, dividend,
or dividends accrued thereon, be transferred, assigned, and paid over to
such person or persons, their or his executors, administrators, or
assigns, as shall have been so nominated, appointed, and employed by the
said President of the said Royal Society, at the instance and request of
the same President, as and when he shall deem the object of this bequest
to have been fully complied with by such person or persons so nominated,
appointed, and employed by him as aforesaid.’
[Sidenote: BEQUESTS OF LORD BRIDGEWATER TO THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]
What was done by the Trustees under this part of Lord BRIDGEWATER’S
Will, and with what result, is known to all readers. That other
portion of the Will which relates to his bequest to the British Museum
reads thus:—‘I give and bequeath to the Trustees for the time being of
the _British Museum_ at Montagu House, in London, to be there
deposited ... for the use of the said Museum, in conformity with the
rules, orders, and regulations of the said establishment, absolutely
and for ever, all and every my Collection of Manuscripts as
hereinafter particularly described. That is to say, the several
volumes of Manuscripts, and all papers, parchments (written or
printed), and all letters, despatches, registers, rolls, documents,
evidences, authorities and signatures, and all impressions of seals
and marks, of every description and sort, and of what nature or kind,
severally and generally belonging to my Collection of Manuscripts, or
in my possession, stamped with my arms or otherwise (except such
letters, notes, papers, &c.), as are hereinafter directed to be burned
and destroyed [‘_two words cancelled_, BRIDGEWATER’], in the
discretion of my Trustees and Executors hereinafter appointed; and
also save and except all such letters, papers, and writings as are
attached to and accompanying the printed books specifically bequeathed
by me to the Library at _Ashridge_, and which said last-mentioned
letters, papers, and writings are also, if I mistake not, stamped with
my arms. And I also will and require that all and every the aforesaid
manuscripts, papers, parchments (written or printed), letters,
despatches, registers, rolls, documents, evidences, authorities,
signatures, impressions of seals and marks of every description and
sort, and every other Manuscript or Manuscripts appertaining to my
said Collection whatsoever and wheresoever, or which shall or may
hereafter, during my life, be added thereto (but not private letters,
notes, or memorandums of any sort or kind, which I direct to be burned
or destroyed), shall, within the space of two years from the day of my
decease, be collected and removed to the _British Museum_ as
aforesaid, under the particular care, superintendence, and direction
of Eugene Auguste BARBIER, one of my Trustees and Executors
hereinafter appointed; for which particular service I give and
bequeath to him, the said Eugene Auguste BARBIER, the sum of two
thousand pounds sterling. I also give, bequeath, and demise unto the
said Trustees of the _British Museum_ all my estate, lands, parcels of
land, ground, hereditaments and appurtenances, situate in the parish
of _Whitchurch-cum-Marbury_, or in any other parish or place in the
Counties of Salop or Chester, or in either or both of the said
Counties, and also all the trees growing thereon, and all seats,
sittings, and pews in the Parish Church of Whitchurch-cum-Marbury
aforesaid, all or any of which I shall or may have bought or
purchased, and which now belong to me by right of purchase, descent,
or otherwise, to have and to hold the same estate, lands, parcels of
land, ground, hereditaments and appurtenances, to them the said
Trustees of the said _British Museum_ for the time being for ever,
upon the trusts nevertheless, and to and for the ends, intents, and
purposes hereinafter particularly mentioned, expressed, and declared;
that is to say, that the trees growing on the aforesaid estate, lands,
parcels of lands, ground, hereditaments, and appurtenances, shall not
be cut or brought down or destroyed, but shall and may be suffered to
grow during their natural life, and that the smaller trees only may be
thinned here and there, with care and judgment, so as to promote the
growth of the larger trees; and that the same estate, lands, parcels
of land, ground, hereditaments and appurtenances, seats, sittings or
pews, or any part thereof, shall not be susceptible of being let,
underlet or rented, by or to any person or persons who shall hold,
have, take, or rent any estate, farm, lands, or property of or from
the family of EGERTON, or of or from any person or persons having that
name, or of or from the Rector of _Whitchurch-cum-Marbury_ aforesaid
for the time being; and upon further trust that they the said Trustees
of the British Museum for the time being do and shall lay out and
apply the rents, issues, and profits which shall from time to time
arise from and out of the said estate, lands, parcels of land, ground,
hereditaments and appurtenances, in the purchase of manuscripts for
the continual augmentation of the aforesaid Collection of Manuscripts.
I further will and direct that my said Trustees hereinafter appointed,
within the space of eighteen calendar months after my decease, do lay
out and invest in the Three per cent. Consolidated stocks or funds of
England, in the names of the Trustees of the _British Museum_ for the
time being, or in such names and for such account as the said Trustees
shall direct, the sum of seven thousand pounds sterling, the interest
and dividends whereof, as the same shall from time to time become due
and payable, I desire and direct shall and may be paid over by the
said Trustees to such person or persons as shall from time to time be
charged with the care and superintendence of the said Collection of
Manuscripts. I also give, grant, bequeath, and devise unto my Trustees
hereinafter appointed all and singular my house, land, tenements,
hereditaments, and appurtenances at or near _Little Gaddesden_, in the
County of Herts, upon trust that they my said Trustees do and shall,
during their joint lives and the life of the survivor of them, let and
demise the same for such term or time as they shall think fit, for the
best rent that can be had and gotten for the same; but the same
premises, under no circumstances, to be let, underlet, or rented by or
to any person or persons who shall have, hold, take, or rent any
estate, farm, or property of or from the family of EGERTON, or any
person or persons bearing that name, and do and shall pay over the
rents, issues, and profits thereof, as and when received, to the
Trustees for the time being of the _British Museum_ aforesaid, to be
laid out and applied by such last-mentioned Trustees in the service
and for the continued augmentation of the said Collection of
Manuscripts; and from and after the decease of the survivor of them my
said Trustees hereinafter appointed, I give and devise the said house,
land, tenements, hereditaments and appurtenances, unto and for the use
of the proprietor or proprietors of the Manor and Estate of
_Ashridge_, his heirs and assigns for ever. And as to all the rest,
residue and remainder of my real and personal estate and effects, of
every nature and kind soever and wheresoever situate, not hereinbefore
disposed of, or availably so, for the purposes intended, I give,
devise, and bequeath the same to my said Trustees, upon trust that
they my said Trustees do pay over and transfer the same to the said
Trustees of the _British Museum_, and do otherwise render the same
available for the service of and towards maintaining, preserving,
keeping up, improving, augmenting, and extending, as opportunities may
offer, [Sidenote: _Will of Francis Henry, Earl of Bridgewater._
(Official copy.)] my said Collection of Manuscripts so deposited in
the _British Museum_ as aforesaid, in the most advantageous manner,
according to their judgment and discretion.’
The eccentricity of which I have spoken showed itself in the successive
changes of detail and other modifications which these bequests underwent
before the testator’s death. What with the Will and its many codicils,
the documents, collectively, came to be of a kind which might task the
acumen of a FEARNE or a St. LEONARDS. But the drift of the Will was
undisturbed. The restrictions as to the underletting of the Whitchurch
estate, and the like, were now limited by codicils to a prescribed term
of years after the testator’s death; power was given to the Museum
Trustees to sell, also after a certain interval, the landed estate
bequeathed for the purchase of manuscripts, should it be deemed
conducive to the interest of the Library so to do; and an additional sum
of five thousand pounds was given to the Trustees for the further
increase of the Collection of Manuscripts, and for the reward of its
keeper, in lieu of the residuary interest in the testator’s personal
estate.
[Sidenote: _Minutes of Trustees_; (printed in Parliamentary Paper of
1835–6).]
On the 10th of March, 1832, the Trustees resolved that the yearly
proceeds of the last-named bequest should be paid to the Librarians in
charge of the MSS., but that their ordinary salaries, on the
establishment, should be diminished by a like amount.
[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE EGERTON MSS.;]
The Manuscripts bequeathed by Lord BRIDGEWATER comprise a considerable
collection of the original letters of the Kings, Queens, Statesmen,
Marshals, and Diplomatists, of France; another valuable series of
original letters and papers of the authors and scientific men of France
and of Italy; many papers of Italian Statesmen; and a portion of the
donor’s own private correspondence. The latter series of papers
includes, amongst others, letters by Andres, D’Ansse de Villoisin, the
Prince of Aremberg, Auger, Barbier, the Duke of Blacas, Bodoni,
Boissonade, Bonpland, Canova, Cuvier, Ginguené, Humboldt, Valckenaer,
and Visconti. Some of these are merely letters of compliment.
Others—and, in an especial degree, those of D’Ansse de Villoisin, of
Boissonade, of Ginguené, of Humboldt, and of Visconti—contain much
interesting matter on questions of archæology, art, and history.
[Sidenote: AND OF THE ADDITIONS MADE TO IT FROM 1832 TO 1870.]
The earliest additions to the Egerton Collection were made by the
Trustees in May, 1832. In the selection of MSS. for purchase the
Trustees, with great propriety, have given a preference—on the whole;
not exclusively—to that class of documents of which the donor’s own
Collection was mainly composed—the materials, namely, of Continental
history. Amongst the earliest purchases of 1832 was a curious Venetian
_Portolano_ of the fifteenth century. [Sidenote: THE HARDIMAN MSS. ON
IRISH ARCHÆOLOGY AND ENGLISH HISTORY.] In the same year a large series
of Irish Manuscripts, collected by the late John HARDIMAN, was acquired.
This extends from the Egerton number ‘74’ to ‘214’; and from the same
Collector was obtained the valuable _Minutes of Debates in the House of
Commons_, taken by Colonel CAVENDISH, between the years—so memorable in
our history—from 1768 to 1774.[10] In the year 1835, a large collection
of manuscripts illustrative of Spanish history was purchased from Mr.
RICH, a literary agent in London, and another large series of
miscellaneous manuscripts—historical, political, and literary—from the
late bookseller, Thomas RODD. From the same source another like
collection was obtained in 1840. An extensive series of French State
Papers was acquired (by the agency of Messrs. BARTHES and LOWELL) in
1843; and also, in that year, a collection of Persian MSS. In the
following year a curious series of drawings, illustrating the
antiquities, manners, and customs of China, was obtained; and, in 1845,
another valuable series of French historical manuscripts.
Meanwhile, the example set by Lord BRIDGEWATER had incited one of those
many liberal-minded Trustees of the British Museum who have become its
benefactors by augmentation, as well as by faithful guardianship, to
follow it in exactly the same track. [Sidenote: AUGMENTATION OF LORD
BRIDGEWATER’S GIFT BY THAT OF LORD FARNBOROUGH, 1838.] Charles LONG,
Lord Farnborough, bequeathed (in 1838) the sum of two thousand eight
hundred and seventy-two pounds in Three per cent. Consols, specifically
as an augmentation of the Bridgewater fund. Lord FARNBOROUGH’S bequest
now produces eighty-six pounds a year; Lord BRIDGEWATER’S, about four
hundred and ninety pounds a year. Together, therefore, they yield five
hundred and seventy pounds, annually, for the improvement of the
National Collection of Manuscripts.
In 1850 and 1852, an extensive series of German _Albums_—many of them
belonging to celebrated scholars—was acquired. These are now ‘Egerton
MSS. 1179’ to ‘1499,’ inclusive, and ‘1540’ to ‘1607.’ A curious
collection of papers relating to the Spanish Inquisition was also
obtained in 1850. [Sidenote: _Egerton MSS._ 1704–1756.] [Sidenote: _Ib._
1758–1772.] In 1857, the important historical collection, known as ‘the
Bentinck Papers,’ was purchased from Tycho MOMMSEN, of Oldenburgh. In
the following year, another series of Spanish State Papers, and also the
Irish Manuscripts of Henry MONCK MASON;—in 1860, a further series of
‘Bentinck Papers,’—and in 1861, an extensive collection of the
Correspondence of POPE and of Bishop WARBURTON, were successively
acquired.
To these large accumulations of the materials of history were added, in
the succeeding years, other important collections of English
correspondence, and of autograph MSS. of famous authors; and also a
choice collection of Spanish and Portuguese Manuscripts brought together
by Count DA PONTE, and abounding with historical information. [Sidenote:
_Egerton MSS._ 2047–2064.] To this an addition was made last year (1869)
of other like papers, amongst which are notable some Venetian
_Relazioni_; papers of Cardinals Carlo CARAFFA and Flavio ORSINI; and
some letters of Antonio PEREZ. [Sidenote: _Ib._ 2077–2084.] In 1869,
there was also obtained, by means of the conjoined Egerton and
Farnborough funds, [Sidenote: _Ib._ 2087–2099.] a curious parcel of
papers relating to the early affairs of the Corporation and trade of
Dover, from the year 1387 to 1678; [Sidenote: _Ib._ 2086; 2100.]
together with some other papers illustrative of the cradle-years of our
Indian empire.
Amongst the latest accessions obtained from the Bridgewater fund are
some MSS. from the hand of a famous English poet of the last generation.
These have now an additional, and special, interest in English eyes,
from a recent lamentable occurrence. [Sidenote: THE ‘BYRON MSS.’ IN THE
EGERTON COLLECTION (1867).] The pen of a slanderer has aimed at gaining
a sort of celebrity, more enduring than anything of its own proper
production could hope to secure, by attempting to affix on BYRON and on
Augusta LEIGH—after both the great poet and the affectionate sister have
lain many years in their several graves, and can no longer rebut the
slander—the stain of an enormous guilt. Some, however, are yet alive, by
whom the calumny _can_, and will, be conclusively exposed. Meanwhile,
the slanderer’s poor aim will, probably, have been reached—but in an
unexpected and unenviable way.
‘The link
_Thou_ formest in his fortunes, bids us think
Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn.’
Very happily, the calumniating pen was not held in any English hand.
Much more might, and not unfitly, be said in illustration of the
historical and literary value of those manuscript accessions to the
National Library which, in these later years, have accrued out of the
proceeds of Lord BRIDGEWATER’S gift. Enough, however, has been stated,
to serve by way of sample.
[Sidenote: OTHER BENEFACTIONS OF LORD BRIDGEWATER.]
Nor were these the only literary bequests and foundations of the last
Earl of BRIDGEWATER. He bequeathed, as heir-looms, two considerable
Libraries, rich both in theology and in history—to the respective
rectors, for ever, of the parishes of Middle and of Whitchurch. These, I
learn—from MS. correspondence now before me—are of great value, and are
gladly made available, by their owners for the time being, to the use of
persons able and willing to profit by them. He also founded a Library,
likewise by way of heirloom, at Ashridge.
Whilst the National Library was thus being gradually improved, both by
increased liberality on the part of Parliament and, far more largely, by
the munificent gifts of individuals, other departments of the Museum had
not been neglected.
[Sidenote: THE ACQUISITION OF THE GREVILLE MINERALS;]
Charles GREVILLE, the nephew of Sir William HAMILTON, had collected, in
his residence at Paddington Green, a noble cabinet of minerals. It was
the finest assemblage of its kind which had yet been seen in England.
For the purchase of this Collection Parliament made a grant, in the year
1810, of thirteen thousand seven hundred and twenty-seven pounds.
[Sidenote: OF THE MONTAGU MUSEUM; [See, hereafter, Book III, c. I.]]
In 1816, a valuable accession came to the zoological department, by the
purchase, for the sum of eleven hundred pounds, of a Collection of
British Zoology, which had been formed at Knowle, in Devonshire, by
Colonel George MONTAGU. The Montagu Collection was especially rich in
birds.
[Sidenote: AND OF THE COLLECTIONS OF SIR R. C. HOARE.]
Nine years later, the Library was further benefited, in the way of gift,
by a choice Italian Collection, gathered and given by Sir Richard Colt
HOARE, of Stourhead; and, in the way of Parliamentary grant, by the
acquisition of the collection of manuscripts, coins, and other
antiquities, which had been made in the East, during his years of
Consulship at Baghdad, by Claudius James RICH.
Sir Richard HOARE was not less distinguished for the taste and judgment
with which he had collected the historical literature of Italy, than for
the zeal and ability with which he cultivated, both as author and as
patron, the—in Britain—too much neglected department of provincial
topography. He had spent nearly five years in Italy—partly during the
reign of NAPOLEON—and amassed a very fine collection of books
illustrative of all departments of Italian history. In 1825, Sir Richard
presented this Collection to the Trustees of the British Museum in these
words:—‘Anxious to follow the liberal example of our gracious monarch
GEORGE THE FOURTH, of Sir George BEAUMONT, and of Richard Payne KNIGHT
(though in a very humble degree), I do give unto the British Museum my
Collection of Topography, made during a residence of five years abroad;
and hoping that the more modern publications may be added to it
hereafter.’ The Library so given included about seventeen hundred and
thirty separate works. Sir Richard did something, himself, to secure the
fulfilment of the annexed wish, by adding to his first gift, made in
1825, in subsequent years.
[Sidenote: COLLECTIONS OF CLAUDIUS RICH. [See, hereafter, Book III, c.
3.]]
The researches of Claudius RICH merit some special notice. He may be
regarded as the first explorer of Assyria. Had it not been for his early
death, it is very probable that he might have anticipated some of the
brilliant discoveries of Mr. LAYARD. But his quickly intercepted
researches will be best described, in connection with the later
explorations in the same field. Here it may suffice to say that from Mr.
RICH’S representatives a Collection of Manuscripts, extending to eight
hundred and two volumes—Syriac, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish—was
obtained, by purchase, in 1825, together with a small Collection of
Coins and miscellaneous antiquities.
To the Oriental Manuscripts of RICH, an important addition was made in
the course of the same year by the bequest of [Sidenote: HULL’S ORIENTAL
MSS.] Mr. John Fowler HULL—another distinguished Orientalist who passed
from amongst us at an early age—who also bequeathed a Collection of
Oriental and Chinese printed books. Mr. HULL’S legacy was the small
beginning of that Chinese Library which has now become so large.
[Sidenote: THE PERSEPOLITAN MARBLES.]
It was also in the year 1825 that Sir Gore OUSELEY presented a
Collection of Marbles obtained from Persepolis. These will be mentioned
hereafter in connection with the antiquarian explorations of Claudius
RICH and his successors. The donor of the Persepolitan Marbles died on
the eighteenth of November, 1844.
[Sidenote: HISTORY OF ‘THE PORTLAND VASE.’]
In addition to these many liberal benefactions made during the earlier
years of the present century, a smaller gift (virtually a gift, though
in name a ‘deposit’) of the same period claims brief notice, on account
both of its artistic value and of its curious history. I refer to that
exquisite monument of ancient art known, for many years, as the
‘Barberini Vase,’ but now more commonly as the ‘Portland Vase,’ from the
name of its last individual possessor.
This vase is one of the innumerable acquisitions which the country owes
to the intelligent research and cultivated taste of Sir William
HAMILTON. It had been found more than a century before his time
(probably in the year 1640), beneath the Monte del Grano, about three
miles from Rome, on the road to Tusculum. The place of the discovery was
a sepulchral chamber, within which was found a sarcophagus containing
the vase, and bearing an inscription to the memory of the Emperor
ALEXANDER SEVERUS (_A.D._ 222–235) and to his mother. About this
sarcophagus and its inscription there have been dissertations and
rejoinders, essays and commentaries, illustrative and obscurative, in
sufficient number to immortalise half a dozen Jonathan OLDBUCKS and
‘Antigonus’ MAC-CRIBBS. And the controversy is still undetermined.
After having been long a conspicuous ornament of the Barberini Palace,
the ‘Barberini Vase’ was bought by HAMILTON. When, in December, 1784, he
paid one of his visits to England, the vase came with him. Its fame had
previously excited the desires of many virtuosi. By the Duchess of
PORTLAND it was so strongly coveted, that she employed a niece of Sir
William to conduct a negotiation with much more solemnity and mystery
than the ambassador would have thought needful in conducting a critical
Treaty of Peace. [Sidenote: _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_, vol. ii (in
many places).] The Duchess’s precautions foiled the curiosity of not a
few of her fellow-collectors in virtû. ‘I have heard,’ wrote Horace
WALPOLE, ‘that Sir W. HAMILTON’S renowned vase, which had disappeared
with so much mystery, is again recovered; not in the tomb, but the
treasury, of the Duchess of PORTLAND, in which, I fancy, it had made
ample room for itself. Sir William told me it would never go out of
England. I do not see how he could warrant _that_. The Duchess and Lord
Edward have both shown how little stability there is in the riches of
that family.’ [Sidenote: H. Walpole to Lady Upper-Ossory, 10 August,
1785. (Cunn. Edit., vol. ix, p. 3.)] As yet, the reader will remember,
that ‘Portland Estate,’ which was so profitably to turn farms into
streets, was but in expectancy.
And then WALPOLE adds: ‘_My_ family has felt how insecure is the
permanency of heir-looms,’—the thought of that grand ‘Houghton Gallery,’
and its transportation to Russia, coming across his memory, whilst
telling Lady UPPER-OSSORY the story of the coveted vase, just imported
from the Barberini Palace at Rome.
The Duchess of PORTLAND enjoyed the sight of her beautiful purchase only
during a few weeks. It was bought in by the family (at the nominal price
of £1029[11]) at the sale of her famous museum of curiosities—a sale
extending to more than four thousand lots—and twenty-four years
afterwards, it was lent, for exhibition (1810), by the third Duke of
PORTLAND, to the Trustees of the British Museum, where it has since
remained.
When WEDGWOOD set about imitating the Portland Vase in his manufactory
at Etruria—for which purpose the then Duke liberally lent it to him—he
discovered that the vase had been broken and skilfully put together
again. After it had been publicly exhibited during almost thirty-five
years in London, the frenzy of a maniac led—as it seemed at the
moment—to its utter destruction. But, mainly by the singular skill and
patience of the late John DOUBLEDAY (a craftsman attached to the
Department of Antiquities for many years), it was soon restored to its
pristine beauty. That one act of violence in 1845 is the only instance
of very serious injury arising from open exhibition to all comers which
the annals of the Museum record.
CHAPTER IV.
THE KING’S OR ‘GEORGIAN’ LIBRARY;—ITS COLLECTOR, AND ITS DONOR.
‘A crown,
Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns;
Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights,
To him who wears the regal diadem.’
· · · · ·
‘O polish’d perturbation! golden care!
That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide
To many a watchful night!’—
_Henry IV_, Part 2, iv, 4.
_Notices of the Literary Tastes and Acquirements of King_ GEORGE THE
THIRD.—_His Conversations with Men of Letters.—History of his
Library and of its Transfer to the British Nation by_ GEORGE THE
FOURTH.
The strong antagonisms in mind, in disposition, and in tastes, which
existed between GEORGE THE THIRD and GEORGE THE FOURTH, may be seen in
the small and incidental acts of their respective lives, almost as
distinctly, and as sharply defined, as they are seen in their private
lives, or in their characteristic modes of transacting the public
business. [Sidenote: THE CONTRASTS BETWEEN GEORGE III AND GEORGE IV.]
GEORGE THE THIRD regretted the giving away of the old ‘Royal Library’ of
the Kings his ancestors, not because he grudged a liberal use of royal
books by private scholars, but because he thought a fine Library was the
necessary appendage of a palace. He occasionally stinted himself of some
of his personal enjoyments in life, in order to have the more means to
amass books. He formed, during his own lifetime, a Library which is
probably both larger and finer than any like Collection ever made by any
one man, even under the advantageous conditions of royalty. When he had
collected his books, he made them liberally accessible. To himself, as
we all know, Nature had not given any very conspicuous faculty for
turning either books or men to good account; nor had education done much
to improve the parts he possessed.
GEORGE THE FOURTH, as it seems, regretted the formation of the new Royal
Library by the King his father, because, when he inherited it, he found
that its decent maintenance and upkeeping would demand every year a sum
of money which he could spend in ways far more to his taste. He had been
far better educated than his father had been. And to him Nature had
given good abilities; but study was about the last and least likely use
to which, at any time, he was inclined to apply them. If he saw any good
at all in having, on his accession, the ownership of a large Library, it
lay, not in the power it afforded him of benefiting literature, and the
labourers in literature, but in the possibility he saw that so fine a
collection of books might be made to produce a round sum of money. One
of his first thoughts about the matter was, that it would be a good
thing to offer his father’s beloved Library for sale—to the Emperor of
Russia. By what influences that shrewd scheme of turning a penny was
diverted will be seen in the sequel.
If GEORGE THE THIRD was, in respect to his parts, only slenderly
endowed, he had in another respect large gifts. Both his industry and
his power of sustained application were uncommon. And his conscientious
sense of responsibility for the use of such abilities as he had was no
less remarkable. Whatever may have been his mistakes in government, no
man ever sat on the British throne who was more thoroughly honest in his
intentions, or more deeply anxious to show, in the discharge of his
duties, his consciousness of being
‘Ever in his great taskmaster’s eye.’
That his public acts did not more adequately correspond with his good
desires was due, in large measure, to an infelicitous parentage and a
narrow education.
As the father of lies sometimes speaks truth, so a mere party manifesto
may sometimes give sound advice, though clothed in a discreditable garb.
[Sidenote: THE EDUCATION OF GEORGE III, AFTER THE DEATH OF FREDERICK,
PRINCE OF WALES.] When public attention came first to be attracted to
the character of the peculiar influences which began to mould the
training of the young Prince of WALES soon after his father’s death, a
Court Chamberlain received, one morning, by the post, an unsigned
document, which he thought it his duty to place in the hands of the
Prime Minister, and he, when he had read it, thought the paper important
enough to be laid before the King. This anonymous memorial denounced, as
early as in the winter of 1752 (when the Prince was but fourteen years
old), the sort of education which GEORGE THE THIRD was receiving as
being likely to initiate an unfortunate reign.
The paper (which I have now before me) is headed: ‘_A Memorial of
several Noblemen and Gentlemen of the first rank_,’ and in the course of
it there is an assertion—as being already matter of public
notoriety—‘that books inculcating the worst maxims of government, and
defending the most avowed tyrannies, have been put into the hands of the
Prince of Wales,’ and such a fact, it is said, ‘cannot but affect the
memorialists with the most melancholy apprehensions when they find that
the men who had the honesty and resolution to complain of such
astonishing methods of instruction are driven away from Court, and the
men who have dared to teach such doctrines are continued in trust and
favour.’[12]
[Sidenote: _A Memorial_, &c.; MS. ADDIT. 6271, fol. 3.]
Making all allowance for partisan feeling and for that tinge of Whig
oligarchism which peeps out, as well in the very title, as in the
contents of this ‘Memorial,’ there was obvious truth in the
denunciation, and a modicum of true prophecy in the inference. But such
a remonstrance had just as little effect, in the way of checking undue
influences, as it had of wisdom in the form given to it, or in the mode
of its presentation at Court.
[Sidenote: NARROW RANGE OF GEORGE THE THIRD’S TASTES FOR BOOKS.]
The Prince’s education was not merely imbued with ideas and maxims
little likely to conduce towards a prosperous reign. It was
intellectually narrow and mean. He grew up, for example, in utter
ignorance of many of the great lights of English literature. In respect
to all books, save one (that, happily, the greatest of all), he became
one of those who, through life, draw from the small cisterns, instead of
going to the deep wells. He seems to have been trained to think that the
literary glories of his country began with the age of Queen ANNE.
In after-years, GEORGE THE THIRD attained to some dim consciousness of
his own narrowness of culture. The ply, however, had been too early
taken to be got rid of. No training, probably, could have made him a
scholar. But his powers of application under wise direction would have
opened to him stores of knowledge, from which unwise influences shut him
out for life. His faculty of perseverance in study, it must be
remembered, was backed by thorough honesty of nature, and by an ability
to withstand temptations. When he was entering his nineteenth year, a
sub-preceptor, who had watched him sedulously, said of him: ‘He is a lad
of good principle. He has no heroic strain, and no turn for
extravagance. He loves peace, and, as yet, has shown very virtuous
principles. He has the greatest temptation to gallant with ladies, who
lay themselves out in the most shameless manner to draw him on, but to
no purpose.’ Certainly this last characteristic was neither an inherited
virtue nor an ancestral tradition. And it stands in curious contrast
with the tendencies of all his brothers and of almost all his sons.
From youth upwards the Prince read much, though he did not read wisely.
No sooner was he King than he began to set about the collection of his
noble Library. In the choice of a librarian he was not infelicitous,
though the selection was in part dictated by a feeling of brotherly
kindness. For he chose a very near relative—Mr. afterwards Sir Frederick
Augusta BARNARD. Mr. BARNARD had many qualities which fitted him for his
task.
[Sidenote: FOUNDATION OF THE NEW ROYAL LIBRARY.]
The foundation of the Library was laid by a very fortunate purchase on
the Continent. Its increase was largely promoted by a political
revolution which ensued shortly afterwards; and, in order to turn his
large opportunities to most account, the King’s Librarian modestly
sought and instantly obtained the best advice which that generation
could afford him—the advice of Samuel JOHNSON.
In 1762, the fine Library of Joseph SMITH, who had been British Consul
at Venice during many years, was bought for the King. It cost about ten
thousand pounds. SMITH had ransacked Italy for choice books, much as his
contemporary, Sir William HAMILTON, had ransacked that country for
choice vases. And he had been not less successful in his quest. In
amassing early and choice editions of the classics, and also the
curiosities and rarities of fifteenth century printing, he had been
especially lucky. From the same source, but at a later date, GEORGE THE
THIRD also obtained a fine gallery of pictures and a collection of coins
and gems. For these he gave twenty thousand pounds. [Sidenote:
_Dactyliotheca Smithiana_; 1767; Lady M. W. Montagu, _Letters_, vol.
iii, p. 89.] For seven or eight years the shops and warehouses of
English booksellers were also sedulously examined, and large purchases
were made from them. In this labour JOHNSON often assisted, actively, as
well as by advice.
When the suppression of the Jesuits in many parts of Europe made the
literary treasures which that busy Society had collected—often upon a
princely scale and with admirable taste, so far as their limitations
permitted—both the King and his librarian were struck with the idea that
another fine opportunity opened itself for book-buying on the Continent.
It was resolved that Mr. BARNARD should travel for the purpose of
profiting by it. Before he set out on his journey, he betook himself to
JOHNSON for counsel as to the best way of setting about the task.
JOHNSON’S counsel may be thus abridged: The literature of every country
may be best gathered on its native soil. And the studies of the learned
are everywhere influenced by peculiarities of government and of
religion. In Italy you may, therefore, expect to meet with abundance of
the works of the Canonists and the Schoolmen; in Germany with store of
writers on the Feudal Laws; in Holland you will find the booksellers’
shops swarming with the works of the Civilians. [Sidenote: SUBSTANCE OF
JOHNSON’S ADVICE ON THE COLLECTION OF THE KING’S LIBRARY.] Of Canonists
a few of the most eminent will suffice. Of the Schoolmen a liberal
supply will be a valuable addition to the King’s Library. The
departments of Feudal and Civil Law you can hardly render too complete.
In the Feudal Constitutions we see the origin of our property laws. Of
the Civil Law it is not too much to say that it is a regal study.
In respect to standard books generally, continued JOHNSON, a Royal
Library ought to have the earliest or most curious edition, the most
sumptuous edition, and also the most useful one, which will commonly be
one of the latest impressions of the book. As to the purchase of entire
libraries in bulk, the Doctor inclined to think—even a century ago—that
the inconvenience would commonly almost overbalance the advantage, on
the score of the excessive accumulation of duplicate copies.
And then he added a remark which (long years afterwards) Sir Richard
Colt HOARE profited by, and made a source of profit to our National
Museum. ‘I am told,’ said JOHNSON, ‘that scarcely a village of Italy
wants its historian. And it will be of great use to collect, in every
place, maps of the adjacent country, and plans of towns, buildings, and
gardens. By this care you will form a more valuable body of geography
than could otherwise be had.’
On that point—as, indeed, on all the points about which he gave
advice—JOHNSON’S counsel bore excellent fruit. The ‘body of geography’
contained in the Georgian Library has never, I think, been surpassed in
any one Collection (made by a single Collector) in the world. It laid,
substantially, the foundation of the noble assemblage of charts and maps
which now forms a separate Department of the Museum, under the able
superintendence of Mr. Richard Henry MAJOR, who has done much for the
advancement of geographical knowledge in many paths, but in none more
efficiently than in his Museum labours.
Like good counsel was given to BARNARD by the great lexicographer, in
relation to the gathering of illustrated books. He told the King’s
Librarian that he ought to seek diligently for old books adorned with
woodcuts, because the designs were often those of great masters.
[Sidenote: JOHNSON’S REMARK ON MODERN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS.]
When to this remark the Doctor added the words: ‘Those old prints are
such as cannot be made by any artist now living,’ he asserted what was
undoubtedly true, if he limited that high praise to the best class of
the works of which he was speaking. But his words carry in them also an
indirect testimony of honour to GEORGE THE THIRD. If, in the century
which has passed since Samuel JOHNSON discussed with Frederick BARNARD
the wisest means of forming a Royal Library, a great stride has been
made by the arts of design in Britain, a share of the merit belongs to
the patriotic old King. He was amongst the earliest in his dominions to
encourage British art with an open hand. He was not only the founder of
the Royal Academy, but a most liberal patron to artists; and he did not
limit his patronage to those men alone who belonged to his own Academy.
If for a series of years the Royal Academy did less for Art, and did its
work in a more narrow spirit of coterie than it ought to have done, the
fault was not in the founder. And, of late years, the Academy itself
has, in many ways, nobly vindicated its foundation and the aid it has
received from the Public. Towards the foundation of the Academy, GEORGE
THE THIRD gave, from his privy purse, more than five thousand pounds. To
many of its members he was a genial friend, as well as a liberal patron.
Many other institutions of public education shared his liberality. Some
generous benefactions which he gave to the British Museum itself, in the
earlier years of his reign, have been mentioned already. But there were
a crowd of other gifts, both in the earlier and in the later years, of
which the limits of this volume at present forbid me to make detailed
mention.
The Continental tour of Mr. BARNARD was very successful as to its main
object. He obtained such rich accessions for the Library as raised
it—especially in the various departments of Continental history and
literature—much above all other Libraries in Britain.
[Sidenote: _Bibliotheca Askeviana_ (1775). _Literary Anecdotes of
Eighteenth Century_, vol. iv, p. 513 (183–).]
Within a few years of his return to England the very choice Collection
which had been formed by Dr. Anthony ASKEW came into the market. For
this Library, in bulk, the King offered ASKEW’S representatives five
thousand pounds. They thought they could make more of the Collection by
an auction, but, in the event, obtained less than four thousand pounds.
The Askew Library extended only to three thousand five hundred and
seventy separate printed works, but it contained a large proportion of
rare and choice books. The chief buyers at the sale were the Duke of LA
VALLIÈRE and (through the agency of DE BURE) LEWIS THE SIXTEENTH. The
King of England bought comparatively little, although on this occasion
Mr. BARNARD could scarcely have withholden his hand on the score of the
special injunctions which the King had formerly laid down for his
guidance in such public competitions.
For it deserves to be remembered that GEORGE THE THIRD’S conscientious
thoughtfulness for other people led him, early in his career as a
Collector, to give to his librarian a general instruction such as the
servants of wealthy Collectors rarely receive. ‘I do not wish you,’ he
said, ‘to bid either against a literary man who wants books for study,
or against a known Collector of small means.’ He was very free to bid,
on the other hand, against a Duke of ROXBURGHE or an Earl SPENCER.
The King’s kindness of nature was also shown in the free access which he
at all times afforded to scholars and students in his own Library. To
this circumstance we owe some of the most interesting notices we have of
his opinions of authors and of books.
[Sidenote: THE OLD LOCALITIES OF THE GEORGIAN LIBRARY.]
In the earliest years of the Royal Collectorship part of the Library was
kept in the old palace at Kew, which has long since disappeared, the
site of it being now a gorgeous flower-bed. Afterwards, and on the
acquisition for the Queen, of Buckingham House,[13] the chief part of
the Collection was removed to Pimlico, and arranged in the handsome
rooms of which a view appears, by way of vignette, on the title-pages of
the sumptuously printed catalogue prepared by BARNARD. It was at
Buckingham House that JOHNSON’S well-known conversation with the King
took place, in February, 1767.
When JOHNSON first began to use the Royal Collection it was still in its
infancy. He was surprised both at its extent and at the number of rare
and choice books which it already included. He had seen BARNARD’S
assiduity, and had helped him occasionally in his book-researches, long
prior to the tour of 1768. But it astonished him to see that the King,
within six or seven years, had gathered so fine a Library as that which
he saw in 1767. He became a frequent visitor. The King, hearing of the
circumstance, desired his librarian to let him know when the literary
autocrat came again.
[Sidenote: THE INTERVIEW AT BUCKINGHAM HOUSE BETWEEN GEORGE III AND DR.
JOHNSON.]
The King’s first questions were about the doings at Oxford, whence, he
had been told, Johnson had recently returned. The Doctor expressed his
inability to bestow much commendation on the diligence then exhibited
by the resident scholars of the University in the way of any
conspicuous additions to literature. [Sidenote: 1767, February.]
Presently, the King put to him the question, ‘And what are you about
yourself?’ ‘I think,’ was the answer—given in a tone more modest than
the strict sense of the words may import—‘that I have already done my
part as a writer.’ To which the King rejoined, ‘I should think so too,
had you not written so well.’ After this happy retort, the King turned
the conversation on some recent theological controversies. About that
between WARBURTON and LOWTH he made another neat though obvious
remark—‘When it comes to calling names, argument, truly, is pretty
well at an end.’ They then passed in review many of the periodical
publications of the day, in the course of which His Majesty displayed
considerable knowledge of the chief books of that class, both English
and French. [Sidenote: Croker’s _Boswell_, pp. 184–186.] He showed his
characteristic and kingly attention to minutiæ by an observation which
he made when JOHNSON had praised an improved arrangement of the
contents of the _Philosophical Transactions_—oblivious, at the moment,
that he had himself suggested the change. ‘They have to thank Dr.
JOHNSON for that,’ said the King.
Another remark made by GEORGE THE THIRD during this conversation
deserves to be remembered. ‘I wish,’ said he, ‘that we could have a
really well-executed body of British Biography.’ This was a desideratum
in the seventh year of the old King, and it is a desideratum still in
the thirty-fourth year of his granddaughter. The reign of Queen VICTORIA
was comparatively young when the late Mr. MURRAY first announced, not
without some flourish of trumpets, a forthcoming attempt at such a
labour, but the little that was said as to the precise plan and scope of
the work then contemplated, gave small promise of an adequate
performance; and hitherto there has been no performance at all.
[Sidenote: THE KING’S CONVERSATION WITH DR. BEATTIE;]
Six years after the interview with JOHNSON, another literary
conversation, of which we have a record, was held in the Royal Library.
But on this occasion the scene was Kew. Dr. BEATTIE’S fame is now a
thing of the past. There is still, however, some living interest in the
account of the talk between the author of _The Minstrel_ and his
sovereign, held in 1773, [Sidenote: 1773. August.] about liturgies,
[Sidenote: Forbes, _Life of Beattie_, vol. i, pp. 347–354.] about
prayers occasional and prayers _ex tempore_, and about the methods of
education adopted in the Scottish universities.
The King’s least favourable—but not least characteristic—appearance, as
a talker on literary subjects, is made in that conversation with Miss
BURNEY, [Sidenote: AND WITH MISS BURNEY.] in which he uttered his
often-quoted remark on SHAKESPEARE:—‘Was there ever such stuff as great
part of _Shakespeare_—only one must not say so?’ [Sidenote: 1785.
December.] The sense of the humorous seems in GEORGE III to have been
wholly lacking. And some part of the sadness of his life has probably a
vital connexion with that deficiency.
In the last-mentioned conversation, the King evinced considerable
acquaintance with French literature. He shared, to some extent, the then
very general admiration for ROUSSEAU, on whom he had bestowed more than
one act of kindness during the brief English exile of the author of
_Emile_. [Sidenote: D’Arblay, _Diary_, vol. ii, pp. 395–398.] He shared,
also, the common impression as to the absence of gratitude in the
brilliant Frenchman’s character. When Miss BURNEY told him that his own
portrait had been seen to occupy the most conspicuous place in
ROUSSEAU’S living-room after his return to France, the King was both
surprised and touched.
Next after the large and choice acquisitions made for the King’s Library
on the Continent, some of its most conspicuous and valuable literary
treasures were acquired at the several sales, in London, of the
Libraries of James WEST (1773), of John RATCLIFFE (1776), and of Richard
FARMER (1798). It was at the first of these sales that GEORGE THE THIRD
laid the foundation of his unequalled series of the productions of the
father of English printing.
[Sidenote: GEORGE THE THIRD’S SERIES OF BOOKS FROM CAXTON’S PRESS.]
The _Caxtons_ bought for the King at West’s sale included the dearly
prized _Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_ (1472–1474?), the _Booke of
the Chesse_ (1476?), the _Canterbury Tales_ of CHAUCER (1478?), the
_Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers_ (1480), the _Mirrour of the
World_ (1481), the _Godfrey of Boloyne_ (1482), the _Confessio Amantis_
(1483), the _Paris and Vienne_ (1485), and the _Royal Booke_ (1487?). Of
these, the lowest in price was the _Confessio_ of 1483, which the King
acquired for nine guineas, and the highest in price was the _Chaucer_ of
1478, which cost him forty-seven pounds fifteen shillings.
At the same sale, he also acquired another Caxton, which has a peculiar
interest. The King’s copy of the _Troylus and Creside_ (probably printed
in the year 1484) formerly belonged
‘To Her, most gentle, most unfortunate,
Crowned but to die—who in her chamber sate
Musing with Plato, though the horn was blown,
And every ear and every heart was won,
And all, in green array, were chasing down the sun;’
and it bears her autograph.
Three years after the dispersion of WEST’S Library came that of the
extraordinary Collection which had been made by a Bermondsey
ship-chandler, John RATCLIFFE by name. This worthy and fortunate
Collector has been said, commonly, to have amassed his black-letter
curiosities by buying them, at so much a pound, over his counter.[14]
But of such windfalls no man has ever been so lucky as to have more than
a few. [Sidenote: JOHN RATCLIFFE OF BERMONDSEY AND HIS CURIOUS LIBRARY.]
John RATCLIFFE was, like his King, a large buyer at WEST’S sale, and at
many other sales, upon the ordinary terms.
By pains and perseverance he had collected of books printed by CAXTON
the extraordinary number of forty-eight. No Collector ever surpassed, or
even reached, that number, except Robert HARLEY, in whose days books
that are now worth three hundred pounds could, not infrequently, be
bought for much less than the half of three hundred pence.
RATCLIFFE’S forty-eight _Caxtons_ produced at his sale two hundred and
thirty-six pounds. The King bought twenty of them at an aggregate cost
of about eighty-five pounds. Amongst them were the _Boethius_, of 1478;
the _Reynarde the Foxe_, of 1481; the _Golden Legende_, and the
_Curial_, both of 1484; and the _Speculum Vitæ Christi_, probably
printed in 1488. The _Boethius_ is a fine copy, and was obtained for
four pounds six shillings. A few years ago an imperfect copy of the same
book brought more than sixteen times that sum.
[Sidenote: GIFTS TO THE KING’S LIBRARY.]
Two others of the King’s _Caxtons_ were the gift of Jacob BRYANT. One of
these is Ralph LEFEVRE’S _Recueil des histoires de Troye_, printed,
probably, in 1476. The other is the _Doctrinal of Sapience_, printed in
1489. This last-named volume is on vellum, and is the only copy so
printed which is known to exist. A third Caxton volume was bequeathed to
GEORGE THE THIRD by Mr. HEWETT, of Ipswich. This is the _Æsop_ of 1484,
and is the only extant copy. [Sidenote: GEORGE III AND THE BIBLIOMANIA.]
It was delivered to the King by Sir John HEWETT and Mr. Philip BROKE,
the legator’s executors. GEORGE THE THIRD was very sensitive to the
special triumphs of collectorship, and would be sure to prize the _Æsop_
all the more for its attribute of uniqueness.
A story in illustration of this specific tinge of the bibliomania in our
royal Collector was wont to be told by Sir Walter SCOTT, and is
mentioned in his interesting obituary notice of the King, printed in the
_Edinburgh Weekly Journal_[15] immediately after the King’s death.
According to SCOTT, GEORGE THE THIRD was fond of crowing a little over
his brother-collector, the Duke of ROXBURGHE, on the score that the
royal copy of the famous _Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_ had a
pre-eminence over the Roxburghe copy. The pre-eminence was of a sort,
indeed, to which no one but a thorough-paced Collector would be
sensible. For it consisted in the ‘locking,’ or wrong imposing, of
certain pages, afterwards corrected at press. The fault, therefore,
indicated priority of working off. But I do not find in the King’s
_Recuyell_—which now lies before me—the peculiarity spoken of in the
poet’s story. Such a fault does exist in the Roxburghe copy, which now
belongs to the Duke of DEVONSHIRE. Other and authenticated anecdotes,
however, are abundant, which suffice to show the close knowledge of, and
the keen interest in, his books, by which GEORGE THE THIRD was
characterised. It was a still better trait in him that he found real
pleasure in knowing that the treasures and rarities of his Library
subserved the inquiries and studies of scholars. Nor did he make narrow
limitations. Men like JOHNSON and Bishop HORSLEY profited by the
Collection. So, too, did men like GIBBON and PRIESTLEY.
The total number of Caxton prints amassed by GEORGE III was thirty-nine.
Of these three are in the Royal Library at Windsor—namely, the _Recueil_
(1476?), the _Æsop_ (1484), and the _Doctrinal_ (1489).
[Sidenote: GEORGE THE THIRD’S APPEARANCE AS AN AUTHOR.]
To a keen enjoyment of the pleasures of collectorship, the King added,
in 1787, a passing taste of those of authorship. As a Collector, the
bibliomania did not engross him. He had a delight in amassing fine
plants as well as fine books. The _Hortus Kewensis_ (in both
applications of the term) was largely indebted to his liberality of
expenditure and to his far-spread research. He sent botanic missionaries
to the remotest parts of Asia, as well as to Africa. He took the most
cordial interest in those varied voyages of discovery which—as I have
observed in a former chapter—cast so distinctive a lustre on his reign,
and in consequence of which such large additions were made to our
natural history collections, public and private. And he did much to
promote scientific agriculture, both by precept and by example. It was
as a practical agriculturist that the King (under a slight veil of
pseudonymity[16]) made his bow to the reading public by the publication
of seven articles in Arthur YOUNG’S useful and then well-known
periodical, the _Annals of Agriculture_.
Those articles have a threefold aim. They inculcate the wisdom, for
certain soils, of an intermediate system of treatment and of cropping,
midway between the old routine and the drill-husbandry, then of recent
introduction; they describe several new implements, introduced by DUCKET
of Esher and of Petersham; and they advocate an almost entire rejection
of fallows. They further describe a method, also introduced by Farmer
DUCKET, and then peculiar, of destroying that farmer’s pest, couch-grass
(_triticum repens_), by trench-ploughing it deep into the ground, and
contain many other practical suggestions, some of which seem to have
been empirical, and others so good that they have become trite.
But the best service rendered by GEORGE THE THIRD to the agricultural
pursuits, of which he was so fond, was his introduction of the Merino
flocks, which became conspicuous ornaments to the great and little parks
at Windsor. Part of the success which, for a time, attended the
importation of those choice Merino breeds was due to the zealous
co-operation of Lord SOMERVILLE and of Sir Joseph BANKS [see the next
chapter], but the King himself took a real initiative in the matter;
acquired real knowledge about it; and deserved, by his personal efforts,
the cognomen given him (by some of those worthy farmers who used to
attend the annual sales at Windsor) of ‘the Royal Shepherd.’
[Sidenote: ILLNESS OF GEORGE III;]
The recreative pursuits, alike of the book-collector and of the
agriculturist, as well as the labours of the conscientious monarch, were
at length to be arrested by that great calamity which, after clouding
over some months of the years of vigour, was destined to veil in thick
gloom all the [Sidenote: 1810.] years of decline—the years when great
public triumphs and crushing family afflictions passed equally unnoted
by the recluse of Windsor.
‘Thy lov’d ones fell around thee.
... Thou, meanwhile,
Didst walk unconscious through thy royal towers,
The one that wept _not_, in the tearful isle!
· · · · ·
But who can tell what visions might be thine?
The stream of thought, though broken, still was pure.
Still on that wave the stars of Heaven might shine
Where earthly image would no more endure.
Nor might the phantoms to thy spirit known,
Be dark or wild,—creations of Remorse,—
Unstain’d by thee, the blameless Past had thrown
No fearful shadows o’er the Future’s course.’
[Sidenote: AND HIS DEATH.]
When GEORGE THE THIRD died at Windsor Castle, on the 29th of January,
1820, the public mourning was sincere. [Sidenote: 1820. January.] During
its ten years of rule, the Regency had done very much to heighten and
intensify regret for the calamity of 1810. The errors of the old monarch
came, naturally, to be dwarfed to the view, when his private virtues
acquired all the sharp saliency of contrast.
Since his death, political writers have usually been somewhat harsh to
his memory. But the verdict of history has not yet been given in. When
the time for its delivery shall at length come, there will be a long
roll of good deeds to set off against many mistakes in policy. Nor will
the genuine piety, and the earnest conscientiousness of the individual
man—up to the measure of the light vouchsafed to him—be forgotten in the
preliminary summing up. What GEORGE THE THIRD did for Britain simply in
conferring upon it the social blessings of a pure Court, and of a bright
personal example, is best to be estimated by contemplating what, in that
respect, existed before it, and also what came immediately after it.
Comparisons of such a sort will serve, eventually, to better purpose
than that of feathering the witty shafts of reckless satirists, whether
in prose or in verse. Meanwhile, it is enough to say that no honester,
no more God-fearing man, than was GEORGE THE THIRD, ever sat upon the
throne of England.
During all the time of his long illness, the King’s Library had
continued, more or less, to grow. When he died, it contained sixty-five
thousand two hundred and fifty volumes, besides more than nineteen
thousand unbound tracts. [Sidenote: STATE OF THE KING’S LIBRARY IN
JANUARY, 1820.] These have since been bound severally. The total number
of volumes, therefore, which the Collection comprised was about
eighty-four thousand. At the time of the King’s decease, the annual cost
of books in progress, and of periodical works, somewhat exceeded one
thousand pounds. The annual salaries of the staff—four officers and two
servants—amounted to eleven hundred and seventy-one pounds. The Library
occupied a fine and extensive suite of rooms in Buckingham Palace. One
of them was large enough to make a noble billiard-room.
The Royal Library, therefore, embarrassed King GEORGE THE FOURTH in two
ways. It cost two thousand two hundred pounds a year, even without
making any new additions to its contents. It occupied much space in the
royal residence which could be devoted to more agreeable purposes. Then
came the welcome thought that, instead of being a charge, it might be
made a source of income. The Emperor of Russia was known to covet, as a
truly imperial luxury, what to the new King of Great Britain was but a
costly burden. He broached the idea—but met, instead of encouragement,
with strong remonstrance.
The news of the royal suggestion soon spread abroad. Amongst those who
heard of it with disgust were Lord FARNBOROUGH (who is said to have
learnt the design in talking, one day, with Princess LIEVEN) and Richard
HEBER. Both men bestirred themselves to prevent the King from publicly
disgracing the country in that way. Lord FARNBOROUGH betook himself to a
conference with the Premier, Lord LIVERPOOL. Mr. HEBER discussed the
matter with Lord SIDMOUTH. By the ministers, public opinion upon the
suggested sale was pretty strongly and emphatically conveyed to His
Majesty, whatever may have been the courtliness of tone employed about
it.
[Sidenote: CONFERENCE BETWEEN GEORGE IV AND HIS MINISTERS ON DISPOSAL OF
THE LIBRARY.]
GEORGE THE FOURTH, however, was not less strongly impressed by the
charms of the prospective rubles from Russia. He felt that he could find
pleasant uses for a windfall of a hundred and eighty thousand pounds, or
so. And he fought hard to secure his expected prize—or some indubitably
solid equivalent. [Sidenote: R. Ford, in the _Quarterly Review_ (Dec.,
1850), vol. lxxxviii, p. 143;] ‘If I can’t have the rubles,’ said the
King, ‘you must find me their value in pounds sterling.’ The Ministers
were much in earnest to save the Library, and, in the emergency, laid
their hands upon a certain surplus which had accrued from a fund
furnished some years before by France, to meet British claims for losses
sustained at the date of the first French Revolution. [Sidenote: Comp.
_Minutes of Evidence taken by the Commissioners on Brit. Mus._ (also in
1850), pp. 117, 118.] But the expedient became the subject of an
unpleasant hint in the House of Commons. And the Government, it is said,
then resorted to that useful fund, the ‘Droits of Admiralty.’ By hook or
crook, GEORGE THE FOURTH received his ‘equivalent.’ He then sat down to
his writing-table (at Brighton), to assure Lord LIVERPOOL—in his
official capacity—of the satisfaction he felt in having ‘this means of
advancing the Literature of my Country.’ Then he proceeded to add:—‘I
also feel that I am paying a just tribute to the memory of a Parent,
whose life was adorned with every public and private virtue.’
The Executors or Trustees of King GEORGE THE THIRD knew well what the
monarch’s feelings about his Library would, in all reasonable
probability, have been, had he possessed mental vigour when preparing
for his last change. They exacted from the Trustees of the Museum a
pledge that the Royal Library should be preserved apart, and entire.
[Sidenote: THE NEW BUILDING ERECTED FOR THE GEORGIAN LIBRARY.]
Parliament, on its side, made a liberal provision for the erection of a
building worthy to receive the Georgian Library. The fine edifice raised
in pursuance of a parliamentary vote cost a hundred and forty thousand
pounds. [Sidenote: 1821–28.] It provided one of the handsomest rooms in
Europe for the main purpose, and it also made much-needed arrangements
for the reception and exhibition of natural-history Collections, above
the books.
The removal of the Royal Library from Buckingham House was not completed
until August, 1828. All who saw the Collection whilst the building was
in its first purity of colour—and who were old enough to form an opinion
on such a point—pronounced the receptacle to be eminently worthy of its
rich contents. The floor-cases and the heavy tables—very needful, no
doubt—have since detracted not a little from the architectural effect
and elegance of the room itself.
Along with the printed books, and the extensive geographical
Collections, came a number of manuscripts—on historical, literary, and
geographical subjects.[17] By some transient forgetfulness of the pledge
given to Lord FARNBOROUGH, the manuscripts, or part of them, were, in
March, 1841, sent to the ‘Manuscript Department’ of the Museum.
[Sidenote: _Minutes of Evidence_ (1850), as above.] But Mr. PANIZZI,
then the Keeper of the Printed Books, successfully reclaimed them for
their due place of deposit, according to the arrangement of 1823. Nor
was such a claim a mere official punctilio.
In every point of view, close regard to the wishes of donors, or of
those who virtually represent them, is not more a matter of simple
justice than it is a matter of wise and foreseeing policy in the
Trustees of Public Museums. The integrity of their Collections is often,
and naturally, an anxious desire of those who have formed them. In a
subsequent chapter (C. ii of Book III) it will be seen that the wish
expressed by the representatives of King GEORGE THE THIRD was also the
wish of a munificent contemporary and old minister of his, who, many
years afterwards, gave to the Nation a Library only second in splendour
to that which had been gathered by GEORGE THE THIRD.
Not the least curious little fact connected with the Georgian Library
and its gift to the Public, is that the gift was _predicted_ thirty-one
years before GEORGE THE FOURTH wrote his letter addressed to Lord
LIVERPOOL from the Pavilion at Brighton, and twenty-eight years before
the death of GEORGE THE THIRD.
In 1791, Frederick WENDEBORN wrote thus:—‘The King’s private Library ...
can boast very valuable and magnificent books, which, as it is said,
will be one time or another joined to those of the British Museum.’
WENDEBORN[18] was a German preacher, resident in London for many years.
He was known to Queen CHARLOTTE, and had occasional intercourse with the
Court. May it not be inferred that on some occasion or other the King
had intimated, if not an intention, at least a thought on the matter,
which some courtier or other had repeated in the hearing of Dr.
WENDEBORN?
CHAPTER V.
THE FOUNDER OF THE BANKSIAN MUSEUM AND LIBRARY.
‘It may be averred for truth that they be not the highest instances
that give the best and surest information.... It often comes to pass
[in the study of Nature] that small and mean things conduce more to
the discovery of great matters, than great things to the discovery of
small matters.’—BACON.
‘Not every man is fit to travel. Travel makes a wise man better, but a
fool worse.’—OWEN FELLTHAM.
_The Life, Travels, and Social Influence, of Sir Joseph_ BANKS.—_The
Royal Society under his Presidency.—His Collections and their
acquisition by the Trustees of the British Museum.—Notices of some
other contemporaneous accessions._
[Sidenote: BOOK II, Chap. V. THE FOUNDER OF THE BANKSIAN MUSEUM AND
LIBRARY.]
We have now to glance at the career—personal and scientific—of an
estimable public benefactor, with whom King GEORGE THE THIRD had much
pleasant intercourse, both of a public and a private kind. Sir Joseph
BANKS was almost five years younger than his royal friend and
correspondent, but he survived the King by little more than three
months, so that the Georgian and the Banksian Libraries were very nearly
contemporaneous accessions. The former, as we have seen, was given in
1823, and fully received in 1828; the latter was bequeathed
(conditionally) in 1820, and received in 1827. These two accessions,
taken conjointly, raised the Museum collection of books (for the first
time in its history) to a respectable rank amongst the National
Libraries of the day. The Banksian bequest made also an important
addition to the natural-history collections, especially to the herbaria.
It is as a cultivator and promoter of the natural sciences, and
pre-eminently of botany, that Sir Joseph won for himself enduring fame.
But he was also conspicuous for those personal and social qualities
which are not less necessary to the man, than are learning and
liberality to the philosopher. For the lack of such personal qualities
some undoubted public benefactors have been, nevertheless, bad citizens.
In this public benefactor both sets of faculties were harmoniously
combined. They shone in his form and countenance. They yet dwell in the
memory of a survivor or two, here and there, who were the contemporaries
of his closing years.
Joseph BANKS was born at Reresby Abbey, in Lincolnshire, on the
thirteenth of December, 1743. He was the only son of William
BANKS-HODGKENSON, of Reresby ABBEY, by his wife Sophia BATE.
[Sidenote: THE BANKESES OF RERESBY ABBEY.]
Mr. BANKS-HODGKENSON was the descendant of a Yorkshire family, which was
wont, of old, to write itself ‘Banke,’ and was long settled at
Banke-Newton, in the wapentake of Staincliffe. The second son of a
certain Henry BANKE, of Banke-Newton, acquired, by marriage, Beck Hall,
in Giggleswick; and by his great-grandson, the first Joseph BANKES,
Reresby Abbey was purchased towards the close of the seventeenth
century. His son (also Joseph) sat in Parliament for Peterborough, and
served as Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1736. The second (and eldest
surviving) son of the Member for Peterborough took the name of
HODGKENSON, as heir to his mother’s ancestral estate of Overton, in
Derbyshire, but on the death of his elder brother (and his consequent
heirship) resumed the paternal name, and resigned the Overton estate to
his next brother, who became Robert HODGKENSON, of Overton. Mr.
BANKS-HODGKENSON died in 1761, leaving to his son, afterwards Sir Joseph
BANKS, a plentiful estate.
The youngster was then little more than beginning his career at Oxford,
whither he had recently come from Eton, though his schooling had been
begun at Harrow. [Sidenote: EARLY YEARS OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS.] He was
‘lord of himself,’ and of a fine fortune, at the critical age of
eighteen. To many, such an inheritance, under like circumstances, has
brought misery. To Joseph BANKS, it brought noble means for the
prosecution of a noble aim. It was the ambition of this young
Etonian—not to eclipse jockies, or to dazzle the eyes of fools, but—to
tread in the footsteps of LINNÆUS. Rich, hardy, and handsome in person,
sanguine in temperament, and full of talent, he resolved that, for some
years to come, after leaving the University, the life that might so
easily be brimmed with enjoyments should incur many privations and face
many hardships, in order to win both knowledge and the power of
benefiting the Public by its communication. That object of early
ambition, it will be seen, was abundantly realised in the after-years.
There is no reason to think that a resolution, not often formed at such
an age as eighteen, was come to in the absence of temptation to a
different course. BANKS was no ascetic. Nor was it his fortune, at any
time, to live much with ascetics. One of his earliest friends was that
Lord SANDWICH[19] whose memory now chiefly connects itself with the
unsavoury traditions of Medmenham Abbey, and with the peculiar pursuits
in literature of John WILKES. With SANDWICH he spent many of the bright
days of youth in fishing on Whittlesea Mere. BANKS had the good
fortune—and the skill—to make his early acquaintanceship with the future
First Lord of the Admiralty conducive to the interests of science. The
connexion with the Navy of another friend of his youth, Henry PHIPPS,
afterwards Earl of MULGRAVE, was also turned, eventually, to good
account in the same way.
Part of young BANKS’ vacations were passed at Reresby and in frequent
companionship with Lord SANDWICH; part at his mother’s jointure-house at
Chelsea, very near to the fine botanic garden which, a few years before,
had been so much enriched by the liberality of Sir Hans SLOANE. In that
Chelsea garden, and in other gardens at Hammersmith, BANKS studied
botany with youthful ardour. And he made frequent botanic excursions in
the then secluded neighbourhood. In the course of one of these rambles
he fell under suspicion of felony.
[Sidenote: BANKS’ YOUTHFUL ADVENTURE NEAR HAMMERSMITH.]
He was botanizing in a ditch, and his person happened to be partially
concealed by a thick growth of briars and nettles, at a moment when two
or three constables, who were in chase of a burglar, chanced to approach
the spot. The botanist’s clothes were in a miry condition, and his
suspicious posture excited in the minds of the local Dogberries the idea
that here they had their man. They were deaf to all expostulations. The
future President of the Royal Society was dragged, by ignominious hands,
before the nearest justice. The magistrate agreed with the constables
that the case looked black, but, before committing either the prisoner
or himself, he directed that the culprit’s pockets should be searched.
They contained little money, and no watches; but an extraordinary
abundance of plants and wild flowers. The explanations which before had
been refused were now accepted, and very courteous apologies were
tendered to the victim of an excess of official zeal. But the
awkwardness of the adventure failed to deter the sufferer from his eager
pursuit, in season and out of it, of his darling science. A botanist he
was to be.
He left Oxford in 1763, and almost instantly set out on a scientific
voyage to Newfoundland and Labrador. [Sidenote: THE FIRST VOYAGE OF
EXPLORATION TO NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR.] Here he laid the first
substantial groundwork of his future collections in natural history. He
sailed with PHIPPS, who was already a captain in the Navy, and had been
charged with the duty of protecting the Newfoundland fisheries.
[Sidenote: 1763.] The voyage proved to be one of some hardship, but its
privations rather sharpened than dulled the youthful naturalist’s
appetite for scientific explorations. He had learned thus early to
endure hardness, for a worthy object.
[Sidenote: THE SECOND VOYAGE;—TO THE SOUTH SEAS.]
His second voyage was to the South Seas, and it was made in company with
the most famous of the large band of eighteenth century maritime
discoverers—James COOK, [Sidenote: 1768.] and also with a favourite
pupil of LINNÆUS (the idol of BANKS’ youthful fancy), Daniel Charles
SOLANDER, who, though he was little above thirty years of age, had
already won some distinction in England, and had been made an
Assistant-Librarian in the British Museum.[20]
To make the voyage of _The Endeavour_ as largely conducive as was
possible to the interests of the natural sciences, Mr. BANKS incurred
considerable personal expense, and he induced the Admiralty to make
large efforts, on its part, to promote and secure the various objects of
the new expedition. One of those objects was the observation at Otaheite
of a coming transit of Venus over the Sun; another was the further
progress of geographical discovery in a quarter of the world to which
public interest was at that time specially and strongly turned. BANKS,
individually, was also bent on collecting specimens in all departments
of natural history, and on promoting geographical knowledge by the
completest possible collection of drawings, maps, and charts of all that
was met with. He engaged Dr. SOLANDER as his companion, and gave him a
salary of four hundred pounds a year. With them sailed two draughtsmen
and a secretary, besides four servants.
[Sidenote: THE BOTANICAL EXPLORATIONS AT TERRA-DEL-FUEGO.]
_The Endeavour_ set sail from Plymouth on the twenty-sixth of August,
1768, and from Rio-de-Janeiro on the eighth of December. [Sidenote:
1769. January.] On the fourteenth of January, 1769, the naturalists
landed at Terra-del-Fuego, and they gathered more than a hundred plants
theretofore unknown to European botanists. Proud of their success, they
resolved that, after a brief rest, they would explore the higher
regions, in hope to reap a rich harvest of Alpine plants. SOLANDER, as a
Swede and as a traveller in Norway, knew something of the dangers they
would have to face. BANKS himself was not without experience. But both
were enterprising and resolute men. They set out on their long march in
the night of the fifteenth of January, in order to gain as much of
daylight as possible for the work of botanizing. They hoped to return to
the ship within ten hours. As they ascended, SOLANDER warned his
companions against the temptation that he knew awaited them of giving
way to sleep when overcome by the toil of walking. ‘Whoever sits down,’
said he, ‘will be sure to sleep, and whoever sleeps will wake no more.’
But the fatigue proved to be excessive. The foreseeing adviser was borne
down by it, and was the first to throw himself upon the snow. BANKS was
the younger man by six or seven years, and had a strong constitution. He
fought resolutely against temptation, and, with the help of the
draughtsmen, exerted himself with all his might to keep SOLANDER awake.
They succeeded in getting him to walk on for a few miles more. Then he
lay down again, with the words, ‘Sleep I must, for a few minutes.’ In
those few minutes the fierce cold almost paralysed his limbs. Two
servants (a seaman and a negro) imitated the Swede’s example, and were
really paralysed. With much grief, it was found that the servants must,
inevitably, be left to their fate. The party had wandered so far that
when they set about to return they were—if the return should be by the
way they had come—a long day’s journey from the ship. And their route
had lain through pathless woods. Their only food was a vulture. A third
man seemed in peril—momentarily—of death by exhaustion. Happily, a
shorter cut was found. Their journey had not been quite fruitless. But
they all felt that they had bought their botanical specimens at too dear
a rate. Two men were already dead. One of the draughtsmen seems to have
suffered so severely that he never recovered from the effects of the
journey. Mr. BUCHAN died, three months afterwards, in Otaheite, just
four days after they had landed in the celebrated island, to visit which
was among the especial objects of their mission.
[Sidenote: THE STAY IN OTAHEITE.]
The transit of Venus over the Sun’s disc was satisfactorily observed on
the third of June, [Sidenote: 1769.] but the observation had been nearly
foiled by the roguery of a native, who had carried off the quadrant. The
thief was found amongst several hundred of his fellows, and, but for a
characteristic combination in BANKS of frank good humour and of firm
hardihood, the spoil would not have been recovered. On this, as upon
many other occasions, both his fine personal qualities and his genial
manners marked him as a natural leader of men. On occasions, however, of
a more delicate kind they brought him into a peculiar peril. Queen
OBEREA fell in love with him. She was not herself without attractions.
And they were clad in all the graces of unadorned simplicity. The
poetical satirists of his day used Sir Joseph—after his return—with
cruel injustice if he was really quite so successful, in resisting
feminine charms in Otaheite, as he had formerly been at home.
[Sidenote: THE VOYAGE TO NEW HOLLAND.]
But however that may have been, his researches, as a naturalist, at
Otaheite were abundantly successful. And to the island, in return, he
was a friend and benefactor. [Sidenote: 1769–1770.] After a stay of
three months the explorers left Otaheite for New Holland on the 15th of
August, 1769. In Australia their collections were again very numerous
and valuable. But their long stay in explorations exposed them to two
great dangers, each of which was very nearly fatal to Mr. BANKS and to
most of his companions. They struck upon a rock, while coasting New
South Wales. Their escape was wonderful. The accident entailed an amount
of injury to the ship which brought them presently within a peril more
imminent still. Whilst making repairs in the noxious climate of Batavia,
a pestilence seized upon nearly all the Europeans. Seven, including the
ship’s surgeon, died in Batavia. Twenty-three, including the second
draughtsman, Mr. PARKINSON, died on shipboard afterwards. BANKS and
SOLANDER were so near death that their recovery seemed, to their
companions, almost miraculous.
[Sidenote: THE RETURN HOME.]
After leaving New South Wales and Batavia they had a prosperous passage
[Sidenote: 1771. June.] to the Cape—prosperous, save for the loss of
those whom the pestilence had previously stricken—and made some
additions to their scientific stores. _The Endeavour_ anchored in the
Downs on the 12th of June, 1771, after an absence of nearly three years.
Beyond the immediate and obvious scientific results of the voyage, it
was the means, eventually, of conferring an eminent benefaction on our
West Indian Colonies. It gave them the Bread-Fruit tree (_Artocarpus
incisa_). The transplantation of GOD’S bounties from clime to clime was
a favourite pursuit—and a life-long one—with Sir Joseph BANKS, and its
agencies cost him much time and thought, as well as no small expenditure
of fortune.
The hardships and sufferings of Terra-del-Fuego and of Batavia had not
yet taken off the edge of his appetite for remote voyages. [Sidenote:
THE EXPEDITION TO ICELAND.] He expended some thousands of pounds in
buying instruments and making preparations for a new expedition with
COOK, [Sidenote: 1772. July.] but the foolish and obstructive conduct of
our Navy Board inspired him with a temporary disgust. He then turned his
attention to Northern Europe. He resolved that after visiting the
western isles of Scotland he would explore Iceland. SOLANDER was again
his companion, together with two other northern naturalists, Drs. LIND
and VON TROIL. BANKS chartered a vessel at his own cost (amounting, for
the ship alone, to about six hundred pounds).
Before starting for the cold north, they refreshed their eyes with the
soft beauties of the Isle of Wight. There, said one of the delighted
party, ‘Nature has spared none of her favours;’ and a good many of us
have unconsciously repeated his remark, long afterwards. They reached
the Western Isles of Scotland before the end of July, and, after a long
visit, explored Staffa, the wonders of which were then almost unknown.
Scientific attention, indeed, was first called to them by BANKS, when he
communicated to Thomas PENNANT, of Downing, his minute survey, and his
drawings of the basaltic columns.
He thought that the mind can scarcely conceive of anything more
splendid, in its kind, than the now famous cave. [Sidenote: THE VISIT TO
STAFFA.] When he asked the local name of it, his guide gave him an
answer which, to Mr. BANKS, seemed to need explanation, [Sidenote: 1772.
August 12.] though the name has nowadays become but too familiar to our
ears. ‘The Cave of FIUHN,’ said the islander. ‘Who or what is “Fiuhn”?’
rejoined BANKS. The stone, he says, of which the pillars are formed, is
a coarse kind of basalt, much resembling the ‘Giants’ Causeway’ in
Ireland, ‘though none of them so neat as the specimens of the latter
which I have seen at the British Museum.... [Sidenote: Banks to Pennant;
Aug., 1772.] Here, it is dirty brown; in the Irish, a fine black.’ But
he carried away with him the fullest impression of the amazing grandeur
of the whole scene.
[Sidenote: THE TOUR IN ICELAND.]
The tourists reached Iceland on the twenty-eighth of August. They
explored the country, and saw everything notable which it contained. On
the twenty-first of September they visited the most conspicuous of the
_geysers_, or hot-springs, and spent thirteen hours in examining them.
On the twenty-fourth, they explored Mount Hecla.
The most famous geyser described by VON TROIL (who acted usually as
penman for the party) was situate near a farm called Harkaudal, about
two days’ journey from Hecla. You see, he tells us, a large expanse of
fields shut in, upon one side, by lofty snow-covered mountains, far
away, with their heads commonly shrouded in clouds, that occasionally
sink (under the force of a prevalent wind) so as to conceal the slopes,
while displaying the peaks. The peaks, at such moments, seem to spring
out of the clouds themselves. On another hand, Hecla is seen, with its
three ice-capped summits, and its volcanic vapours; and then, again, a
ridge of stupendous rocks, at the foot of which the boiling springs gush
forth, with deafening roar, and are backed by a broad marsh containing
forty or fifty other springs, or ‘geysers,’ from which arise immense
columns of vapour, subject of course to all the influences and
lightings-up of wind and sky. Our tourists carefully watched the
‘spoutings’ of the springs—which are always fitful—and, according to
their joint observations, some of these rose to the height of sixty
feet. [Sidenote: Von Troil to Bergmann; 7 Sept., 1773. (Abridged.)]
Occasionally—it has since been observed by later explorers—they reach to
an elevation of more than three times that number of feet.
Nor did Mr. BANKS neglect the literature of Iceland, which abounds with
interest. He bought the Library of Halfdan EINARSSON, the literary
historian of Iceland, and made other large and choice collections. And
he presented the whole to the British Museum—after bestowing, I believe,
some personal study on their contents—upon his return to England at the
close of the year.
[Sidenote: SOCIAL POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS.]
For many generations, it has been very conducive to the possession of
social prestige in this country that a man should have acquired the
reputation of an adventurous traveller. Even if the traveller shall have
seen no anthropophagi, no men ‘whose heads do grow beneath their
shoulders,’ he is likely to attain to some degree of social eminence,
merely as one who has explored those
‘Antres vast and desarts idle,’
of which home-keeping people have no knowledge, save from the tales of
voyagers. To prestige of this kind, Mr. BANKS added respectable
scientific attainments, a large fortune, and a liberal mind. He was also
the favoured possessor of graceful manners and of no mean powers of
conversation. It was, therefore, quite in the ordinary course of things
that his house in London should become one of the social centres of the
metropolis. It became much more than that. From the days of his youth
BANKS had seen much of foreigners; he had mixed with men of European
distinction. An extensive correspondence with the Continent became to
him both a pursuit and an enjoyment, and one of its results, in course
of time, was that at his house in Soho Square every eminent foreigner
who came to England was sure to be seen. To another class of persons
that house became scarcely less distinguished as the abode, not only of
the rich Collections in natural history which their owner had gone so
far to seek, and had gathered with so much toil and hardship, but of a
noble Library, for the increase of which the book-shops of every great
town in Europe had been explored.
[Sidenote: THE ROYAL SOCIETY, AND ITS HISTORY UNDER THE RULE OF SIR
JOSEPH BANKS.]
The possessor of such manifold distinctions and of such habits of mind
seemed, to most men, marked out as the natural head of a great
scientific institution. Such a man would be sure to reflect honour on
the Society, as well as to derive honour from his headship. But at this
particular epoch the Royal Society (then the one conspicuous scientific
association in the kingdom) was much embroiled. Mr. BANKS was, in many
respects, just the man to assuage dissensions. But these particular
dissensions were of a kind which his special devotion to natural history
tended rather to aggravate than to soften.
Mathematicians, as all men know, have been illustrious benefactors to
the world, but—be the cause what it may—they have never been famous for
a large-minded estimate of the pursuits and hobbies of other men, whom
Nature had not made mathematical. At the time when Joseph BANKS
leaped—as one may say—into eminence, both scientific and social, in
London, Sir John PRINGLE was President of the Royal Society, and his
position there somewhat resembled the position in which we have seen Sir
Hans SLOANE to have been placed. [Sidenote: See before, Book I, c. 6.]
Like Sir Hans, PRINGLE was an eminent physician, and a keen student of
physics. He did not give umbrage to his scientific team, exactly in the
way in which SLOANE had given it—by an overweening love of reading long
medical papers. But natural, not mathematical, philosophy, was his
forte; and the mathematicians were somewhat uneasy in the traces whilst
Sir John held the reins. If PRINGLE should be succeeded by BANKS, there
would be a change indeed on the box, but the style of coachmanship was
likely to be little altered. It is not surprising that there should have
been a good deal of jibbing, just as the change was at hand, and also
for some time after it had been made.
[Sidenote: THE ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY.]
Mr. BANKS was elected to the chair of the Royal Society on the 30th of
November, 1777. He found it to be a very difficult post. [Sidenote:
1777. 30 Nov.] But, in the end, the true geniality of the man, the
integrity of his nature, and the suavity of his manners, won over most,
if not quite all, of his opponents. The least that can be said of his
rule in that chair is that he made the Royal Society more famous
throughout Europe, than it had ever been since the day when it was
presided over by NEWTON.
For it was not the least eminent quality of BANKS’ character that, to
him, a touch of _science_ ‘made the whole world kin.’ He was a good
subject, as well as a good man. He knew the blessings of an aristocratic
and time-honoured monarchy. He had that true insight which enables a man
to discriminate sharply between the populace and the People. But, when
the interests of science came into play, he could say—with literal and
exactest truth,—
‘Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur.’
He took a keen and genial delight both in watching and in promoting the
progress of science on the other side of the Channel, whether France
itself lay under the loose rule of the republican and dissolute
Directory, or under the curbing hand of the First Consul, who was
already rapidly aspiring towards empire.
On ten several occasions, BANKS was the means of inducing our Government
to restore scientific collections, which had been captured by British
cruisers, to that magnificent Botanic Garden (the _Jardin des Plantes_,
at Paris) for which they had been originally destined. [Sidenote:
Cuvier, _Éloge de M. Banks_, passim.] Such conduct could not but win for
him the affectionate reverence of Frenchmen. On one eminent occasion his
good services went much further.
[Sidenote: BANKS’ INTERVENTION WITH RESPECT TO SOME OF THE FRUITS OF THE
EXPEDITION OF LA PÉROUSE.]
Men yet remember the European interest excited by the adventurous
expedition and the sad fate of the gallant seaman, John Francis DE LA
PÉROUSE. When the long search for LA PÉROUSE, which had been headed by
the French Admiral BRUNI D’EUTRECASTEAUX, came by discords to an
untimely end, the collection of specimens of natural history which had
been made, in the course of it, by DE LA BILLARDIÈRE, was brought into
an English port. The commander, it seems, felt much as SLOANE’S
captain[21] had felt at the time of our own Revolution of 1688. From
LEWIS THE SIXTEENTH he had received his commission. He was unprepared to
yield an account of its performance to anybody else. He brought his
cargo to England, and placed it at the absolute disposal of the French
emigrant Princes.
By the eldest Prince, afterwards LEWIS THE EIGHTEENTH, directions were
given that an offer should be made to Queen CHARLOTTE to place at Her
Majesty’s disposal whatever she might be pleased to select from the
Collections of LA BILLARDIÈRE, and that all the remainder of them should
be given to the British Museum.
To the interests of that Museum no man of sense will think that Sir
Joseph BANKS was, at any time, indifferent. At this particular time, he
had been, repeatedly, an eminent benefactor to it. By the French Prince
the Collections were put at his orders for the advantage of the Museum,
of which he was now a Trustee, as well as a benefactor. But his first
thought was for the national honour of Britain, not for the mere
aggrandizement of its Museum. ‘I have never heard,’ said BANKS, ‘of any
declaration of war between the philosophers of England and the
philosophers of France. These French Collections must go to the French
Museum, not to the British.’ And to France he sent them, without a
moment’s hesitation. Such an act, I take it, is worthy of the name of
‘cosmopolitanism.’ The bastard imitation, sometimes current under that
much abused term—that which knows of no love of country, except upon a
clear balance of mercantile profit—might be more fitly called by a
plainer word.
[Sidenote: INSTANCES OF BANKS’ LIBERALITY TO HUMBOLDT.]
Nor were Frenchmen the only persons to benefit by the largeness of view
which belonged to the new President of the Royal Society. At a later
period, he heard that Collections which had been made by William VON
HUMBOLDT, and subsequently seized by pirates, had been carried to the
Cape, and there detained. BANKS sent to the Cape a commission for their
release, and restoration to the Collector. He defrayed the expenses, and
refused to accept of any reimbursement. Such actions might well reflect
honour on the Royal Society, as well as on the man whom the wisest among
its fellows had placed at their head.
The Royal Society had but a share of its President’s attention, though
the share was naturally a Benjamin’s portion. He worked assiduously on
the Board of Agriculture. He helped to found the Horticultural Society
and the Royal Institution of London. He became, also, in 1788, a
co-founder of that ‘African Institution’ which contributed so largely,
in the earlier years of this century, to promote geographical discovery
in Africa, and to spread—of dire necessity, at but a snail’s pace—some
of the blessings of Christian civilization to those dark places of the
earth which are full of cruelty.
BANKS’ close intercourse with the Continent enabled him to do yeoman’s
service to the African Institution. Many ardent and aspiring young men
in all parts of Europe were fired, from time to time, with an ambition
to do some stroke or other of good work in an enterprise which was, at
once, scientific and, in its ultimate issues, evangelical. Some of the
aspirants were, of course, but very partially fitted or equipped for
such labours. But among those who entered on it with fairest promise the
protégés of BANKS were conspicuous. Some brief notice of the services he
was enabled to render in this direction belongs, however, more fitly, to
a somewhat later date than that at which we have, as yet, arrived.
[Sidenote: BANKS’ FAVOURABLE RECEPTION AT THE COURT OF GEORGE III.]
Among the Fellows of the Royal Society there had been much division of
opinion as to the eligibility of Joseph BANKS for their Presidency. At
Court, there was none. GEORGE THE THIRD, with all his genuine good
nature, had been unable to restrain a lurking dislike of Sir John
PRINGLE’S friendly intercourse with Benjamin FRANKLIN. He was pleased to
see PRINGLE retire to his native Scotland, and to receive BANKS at
Court, in Sir John’s place. He did not then anticipate that the new
President would, one day, offend (for a moment) his irrepressible
prejudices in a somewhat like manner.
Sometimes, Sir Joseph’s attendance at Court brought him into company
which had become to him, in some degree, unwonted. We have seen him
making a very favourable impression in the feminine circles at Otaheite.
But the ladies in attendance on Queen CHARLOTTE were less charmed with
him. In March, 1788, I find Fanny BURNEY diarizing (at Windsor Castle)
thus:—‘Sir Joseph BANKS was so exceedingly shy that we made no
acquaintance at all. If, instead of going round the world, he had only
fallen from the moon, he could not appear less versed in the usual modes
of a tea-drinking party. [Sidenote: D’Arblay, _Diary_, vol. iv, p. 128.]
But what, you will say, has a tea-party to do with a botanist, a man of
science, and a President of the Royal Society?’
In March, 1779, Mr. BANKS made a happy marriage with Dorothea HUGESSEN,
daughter and coheir of William Weston HUGESSEN, of Provender, in Kent.
Two years afterwards, the King made him a Knight Grand Cross of the
Order of the Bath, and cultivated his familiar and frequent acquaintance
both in town and at Windsor. Ere long, he was still further honoured
with the rank of a Privy Councillor. Both men were deeply interested in
agriculture and in the improvement of stock. Sir Joseph shared his
sovereign’s liking for the Merino breeds; took an active part in
managing those in Windsor Park, and for many years presided, very
successfully, over the annual sales. The King had been willing to give
away his surplus stock, for the mere sake of promoting improvement, but
he was made to see that more good was likely to accrue from sales than
from gifts. When in Lincolnshire Sir Joseph BANKS laboured hard for the
more complete drainage of the fens, and in many ways furthered the
introduction of sound agricultural methods. He was a good neighbour;
though not a very keen sportsman. And most of his time was now
necessarily passed either in London or in its neighbourhood. But, among
other acts of good fellowship, he rarely visited Reresby Abbey without
patronising a picnic ball at Horncastle, for the benefit of the public
dispensary of that town. And it was noted by Lincolnshire people that
when, in the after-years, Sir Joseph’s severe sufferings from gout kept
him much away from Reresby, the dispensary suffered also—from
depletion—until Mr. DYMOKE, of Scrivelsby, had revived, after BANKS’
example, the good old annual custom of the town.
[Sidenote: THE AFRICAN INSTITUTION.]
It was in the year 1797, and again in 1806, that Sir Joseph was enabled
to render special service to that African enterprise which lay near his
heart, by enlisting in its toils a zealous German and a not less zealous
Swiss—Frederick HORNEMANN and John Lewis BURCKHARDT. It was the fate of
both of those enterprising men to pay the usual penalty of African
exploration. HORNEMANN succumbed, after six years’ service. BURCKHARDT
was spared to work for ten years. Some among the minor scientific
results of his well-known travels are preserved in the Public Library at
Cambridge (to which he bequeathed his manuscripts). Others of them are
in the British Museum. The latter would deserve record in these pages,
were it now practicable. BURCKHARDT died at Cairo on the seventeenth of
October, 1817, just eleven years after his arrival in London, from
Göttingen, with that letter to Sir Joseph BANKS in his pocket which,
under Divine Providence, determined his work in life. Another great
public service of a like kind, rendered by Sir Joseph BANKS to his
country and to mankind, was his zealous encouragement of explorations in
Australia.
Meanwhile, a new outburst of discord in the Royal Society arose out of a
well-merited honour conferred on its President by the Institute of
France, in 1802. It was inevitable that a body so eminent and
illustrious as the French Institute should not only feel gratitude to
Sir Joseph BANKS for that liberality of spirit which had dictated, in
the midst of war, his many gracious and generous acts of service to
Frenchmen, but should long since have reached the conviction that they
would be honouring themselves, not less than honouring him, by his
reception in their midst. [Sidenote: HIS ELECTION INTO THE INSTITUTE OF
FRANCE.] During the momentary lull afforded by the Peace of Amiens—when
the Institute was reorganized by the hand of the great man who was proud
of its badge of fellowship, even when clad in the dalmatica—they placed
BANKS at the head of their eight Foreign Members. BANKS’ estimate of the
honour of membership was much like NAPOLEON’S. ‘I consider this mark of
your esteem,’ said BANKS, in his reply, ‘the highest and most enviable
literary distinction which I could possibly attain. To be the first
elected as an Associate of the first Literary Society in the world
surpasses my most ambitious hopes.’
Several Fellows of the Royal Society resented these warm
acknowledgments. [Sidenote: _Letter of Misogallus_, 1802 (privately
printed).] They thought them both unpatriotic, and uncomplimentary to
themselves. The mathematical malcontents, with Bishop HORSLEY at their
head, eagerly profited by so favourable an opportunity of renewing the
expression of their old and still lurking dissatisfaction with the
choice of their President. HORSLEY addressed to Sir Joseph a letter of
indignant and angry remonstrance. Somewhat discreditably, the Bishop
chose a pseudonymous signature instead of manfully affixing his own.
‘_Misogallus_’[22] was the mask under which he made an appeal to those
anti-Gallican prejudices which so many of us imbibe almost with our
mother’s milk, and have in after-years to get rid of. He aimed a
poisoned dart at his old antagonist, when pointing one of his many
passionate sentences in a way which he knew would arrest the special
attention of the King. The shaft hit the mark. But the King was
presently appeased. He knew BANKS, and he knew the Bishop of St. Asaph.
[Sidenote: SIR JOSEPH BANKS AS AN AUTHOR.]
From time to time Sir Joseph BANKS contributed many interesting articles
to the _Philosophical Transactions_, and to the _Annals of Agriculture_.
His able paper on the Blight in Wheat did service in its day, and was
separately published. But it is not as an author that this illustrious
man will be remembered. He knew how to fructify the thoughts and to
disseminate the wisdom of minds more largely gifted than his own.
Necessarily, space and prominence in the public eye is—more especially
after a man’s death—a good deal determined by authorship. Hence, in our
_Biographical Dictionaries_, a crowd of small writers occupy a
disproportionate place, and some true and illustrious public benefactors
remain almost unnoticed. Undeniably, the fame of one such benefactor as
a Joseph BANKS ought to outweigh, and must, intrinsically, outweigh,
that of many scores of minor penmen. His benefactions were world-wide.
And by them he, being dead, yet speaks, and will long continue to speak,
to very good and lofty purpose. He died in London on the ninth of May,
1820, at the venerable age of eighty-one years completed.
He died without issue, and was succeeded in his chief Lincolnshire
estates by the Honourable James Hamilton STANHOPE (afterwards Mr.
STANHOPE BANKS), and by Sir Henry HAWLEY. [Sidenote: DEATH.] [Sidenote:
BEQUESTS.] His Kentish estates were bequeathed to Sir Edward KNATCHBULL.
[Sidenote: _Will and Codicils_, Jan. 7 and 21; and March 7, 1820.]
His Library, Herbarium, Manuscripts, Drawings, Engravings, and all his
other subsisting Collections, he bequeathed to the Trustees of the
British Museum, for public use for ever, subject to a life-use and a
life-interest in them which, together with an annuity, he specifically
bequeathed to the eminent botanist, Robert BROWN, who was, for many
years, both his friend and his librarian. He also gave an annuity of
three hundred pounds a year to Mr. BAUER, an eminent botanical
draughtsman; and he added, largely, to the innumerable benefactions he
had made in his lifetime to the Botanical Gardens at Kew. To Mr. BROWN
he also left the use, for life, of his town house in Soho Square,
subject to the life-interest, or the voluntary concession, of the
testator’s widow.
In his first Codicil, Sir Joseph BANKS made a proviso that, if it should
be the desire of the Trustees of the British Museum—and if that desire
should also receive the approval of Mr. BROWN—the life-possessor should
be at full liberty to cause the Collections to be transferred to the
Museum during his lifetime. That, in fact, was the course which, by
mutual consent, was eventually taken, to the manifest advantage of the
British Public and the promotion of Science.
Part of Sir Joseph’s personal Manuscripts were bequeathed to the Royal
Society; another portion to the British Museum; and a third portion
(connected with the Coinage of the Realm) to the Royal Mint. A minor
part of his Collections in Natural History had been given to the British
Museum in his own lifetime, [Sidenote: OTHER BEQUESTS.] and he had
personally superintended their selection and arrangement. He had also
been a benefactor to the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow, to the Museum of
the London College of Surgeons, and to that, also in London, formerly
known as ‘Bullock’s Museum.’ He was, throughout life, as eager to give,
as he was diligent to get.
[Sidenote: THE TRANSFER OF THE BANKSIAN COLLECTIONS TO THE MUSEUM.]
About the year 1825, negotiations were opened by the Trustees of the
British Museum with Mr. Robert BROWN, with the view of obtaining for the
Public the immediate use of the Banksian Library and the other
Collections, and, along with them, the public services of the eminent
botanist under whose charge they then were. The then President of the
Royal Society, Sir Humphrey DAVY, acted for the Public in that
negotiation; but some delays intervened, so that it was not brought to a
close until nearly the end of the year 1827.
At that date, the transfer was effected. Mr. BROWN became the head of
the Botanical Department of the Museum, and his accession to the Staff
added honour to the institution—in the eyes of all scientific Europe—as
well as eminent advantage to the public service. Mr. BROWN acted as
Keeper until nearly the time of his decease. He died in the year 1858,
full of years and of botanical fame.
The Library of Sir Joseph BANKS comprised the finest collection of books
on natural history which had ever been gathered into one whole in
England. It was also pre-eminently rich in the transactions, generally,
of learned societies in all parts of the world; and there is a masterly
Catalogue of the Collection, by Jonas DRYANDER, which was printed, at
Sir Joseph’s cost, in the years 1798–1800. [Sidenote: THE BANKSIAN
LIBRARY.] That Catalogue, I venture to hope, will, some day, become—with
due modification—the precedent for a printed Catalogue of the whole
Museum Library—vast as it already is, and vaster as it must needs become
before that day shall have arrived.
[Sidenote: THE BANKSIAN HERBARIA.]
The Banksian Herbaria comprise BANKS’ own botanical collections in his
travels, and those of CLIFFORT, HERMANN, CLAYTON, AUBLET, MILLER,
JACQUIER, and LOUREIRO, together with part of those made by TOURNEFORT,
the friend and fellow-botanizer of SLOANE, and the author of the
_Corollarium_. They also include many valuable plants gathered during
those many English Voyages of Discovery which, from time to time, BANKS’
example and his liberal encouragement so largely fostered. From the
Collections now seen in the Botanical Room of the British Museum not a
few of the great works of LINNÆUS, GRONOVIUS, and other famous
botanists, derived some of their best materials. These Collections are
at present under the zealous and faithful care of Mr. John Joseph
BENNETT, long the assistant and the friend of BROWN.
[Sidenote: BRIEF NOTICE OF SOME OTHER NEARLY CONTEMPORANEOUS
ACCESSIONS.]
Among nearly contemporaneous accessions which would well merit some
detailed notice, were the space for it available, are a valuable
assemblage of Marbles from Persepolis, which had been collected by Sir
Gore OUSELEY, and were given to the Museum by the Collector, and a small
but choice Collection of Minerals from the Hartz Mountains, given to the
Public by King GEORGE THE FOURTH. The Persepolitan sculptures were
received in the year 1825; the Minerals from the Hartzgebirge, in the
year 1829.
BOOK THE THIRD.
_LATER AUGMENTORS AND BENEFACTORS._
1829–1870.
_CONTENTS OF BOOK III_:—
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION:—SUMMARY VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH
MUSEUM DURING THE PRINCIPAL-LIBRARIANSHIP OF JOSEPH
PLANTA.
II. INTRODUCTION (CONTINUED):—SUMMARY VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE
BRITISH MUSEUM DURING THE PRINCIPAL-LIBRARIANSHIP OF SIR
HENRY ELLIS.
III. INTRODUCTION (CONTINUED):—SUMMARY VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE
BRITISH MUSEUM DURING THE PRINCIPAL-LIBRARIANSHIP OF SIR
ANTONIO PANIZZI.
IV. ANOTHER GROUP OF ARCHÆOLOGISTS AND CLASSICAL EXPLORERS.
V. THE FOUNDER OF THE GRENVILLE LIBRARY.
VI. BENEFACTORS OF RECENT DAYS.
VII. RECONSTRUCTORS AND PROJECTORS.
‘The comprehensive character of the British Museum—the origin of which
may be traced to the heterogeneous nature of Sir Hans SLOANE’S
bequest—doubtless makes it difficult to provide for the expansion of its
various branches, according to their relative demands upon the space and
light which can be applied to their accommodation. Any attempt, however,
now to diminish that difficulty by segregating any portion, or by
scattering in various localities the components of the vast aggregate,
would involve a sacrifice of great scientific advantages which are not
the less inherent in their union because that union was, in its origin,
fortuitous....
‘Some passages of our evidence ... illustrate the difficulty of
drawing a line of separation, for purposes of management and
superintendence, between certain Collections.... Its occurrence [_i.
e._ the occurrence of such a difficulty] indicates strongly the value
to Science, of the accidents which have placed in near juxtaposition
the Collections of mineralogy [and] of forms of existing and extinct
animal and vegetable life. The immediate connexion of all alike with
the Library of the Museum is too important to allow us to contemplate
its dissolution.’—_Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire
into the Constitution and Management of the British Museum_ (1850), p.
36.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM, UNDER THE
ADMINISTRATION, AS PRINCIPAL-LIBRARIAN, OF JOSEPH PLANTA.
... Perséverance keeps honour bright.
To have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery.
_Troilus and Cressida._
‘Signor, mirate, come ’l tempo vola,
E siccome la vita
Fugge, e la Morte nè sovra le spalle,
Voi siete or qui: pensate alla partita
Che l’ alma ignuda e sola
Conven ch’ arrive a quel dubbioso calle.’.
PETRARCH (_Italia mia_, &c.).
_Notices of the Life of Joseph_ PLANTA, _third
Principal-Librarian.—Improvements in the Internal Economy of the
Museum introduced or recommended by Mr._ PLANTA.—_His labours for
the enlargement of the Collections—and on the Museum Publications
and Catalogues.—The Museum Gardens and the Duke of_ BEDFORD.
Hitherto these pages have chiefly had to do with the history of the
integral parts of the British Museum, and with that of the men by whom
these integral parts, taken severally, were first founded or first
gathered. We have now to glance at the organic history of the whole,
after the primary Collections and the early additions to them came, by
aggregation, to be combined into the existing national establishment. It
may, at best, be only by glances that so wide a subject can (within the
limits of this one volume) be looked over, in retrospect. That necessity
of being brief suggests a connection of the successive epochs in the
story of the Museum, for seventy years, with the lives of the three
eminent men who have successively presided over the institution since
the beginning of the present century. Those three official lives, I
think, will be found to afford succinct divisions or breakings of the
subject, as well as to possess a distinctive personal interest of their
own. Our introductory chapters will therefore—in relation to the
chapters which follow them—be, in part, retrospective, and, in part,
prospective.
When Dr. Charles MORTON died (10 February, 1799), Joseph PLANTA was, by
the three principal Trustees, appointed to be his successor. The choice
soon commended itself to the Public by the introduction of some
important improvements into the internal economy of the institution. It
is the first librarianship which is distinctively marked as a reforming
one. In more than one of his personal qualities Mr. PLANTA was well
fitted for such a post as that of Principal Officer of the British
Museum. He had been for many years in the service of the Trustees. He
had won the respect of Englishmen by his literary attainments. He was
qualified, both by his knowledge of foreign languages and by his eminent
courtesy of manners, for that salient part of the duties of
librarianship which consists in the adequate reception and the genial
treatment of strangers.
Joseph PLANTA was of Swiss parentage. He was of a race and family which
had given to Switzerland several worthies who have left a mark in its
national history. He was born, on the twenty-first of February, 1744, at
Castasegna, where his father was the pastor of a reformed church. The
boy left Switzerland before he had completed the second year of his age.
[Sidenote: LIFE OF JOSEPH PLANTA, THIRD PRINCIPAL-LIBRARIAN.] He began
his education at Utrecht, and continued it, first at the University of
Göttingen, and afterwards by foreign travel—whilst yet open to the
formative influences of youthful experience upon character—both in
France and in Italy. It was thus his fortune to combine what there is of
good in the characteristics of the cosmopolite with what is better in
those of a patriotic son of the soil. It was Joseph PLANTA’S fortune
never to live in Switzerland, as a resident, after the days of early
infancy, but, for all that, he remained a true Swiss. And one of the
acts of his closing years in England was to make a most creditable
contribution to Helvetic history.
Andrew PLANTA, father of Joseph, came to London in 1752. He was a man of
good parts and of pleasing address. He established himself as pastor of
a German congregation, and was also made an Assistant-Librarian in the
British Museum. Afterwards, he was chosen to be a Fellow of the Royal
Society and a ‘reader’ to Queen CHARLOTTE. That appointment brought with
it, in course of time, a measure of Court influence by which young
PLANTA profited. His youthful ‘_Wanderjahre_’ had inspired the growing
man with a keen desire to see more of foreign countries. When the
father’s favour at Court put him in a position to represent at
head-quarters the youth’s fancy to see life abroad, and to state (as he
truthfully could) that neither talent nor industry were lacking in his
character, the statement obtained for Joseph PLANTA the secretaryship of
legation at Brussels. There, he felt himself to be in an element which
suited him; but his filial affection brought him back to England in
1773, in order that he might solace the last days, on earth, of his
father. In that year the elder PLANTA died.
It was also in 1773 that Joseph PLANTA became an Assistant-Librarian. In
the next year he was appointed to succeed Dr. MATY in both of his then
offices. At the Royal Society he succeeded him as Secretary; at the
Museum, he succeeded him as an Under-Librarian—when the Doctor was made
head of the establishment. His new post at the Museum brought to PLANTA
the special charge of the Department of MSS.
Joseph PLANTA had already made—immediately after his first appointment
as Assistant-Librarian—his outset in authorship by the publication of
his _Account of the Romansch Language_. [Sidenote: _Phil. Trans._, vol.
lxvi, pp. 129–160.] It is a scholarly production, though (it need hardly
be said) not what would be expected, on such a subject, after the
immense stride made in linguistical studies during the ninety-five years
which have elapsed since it was given to literature, in pages in which
nowadays such a treatise would hardly be looked for. Its first
appearance was in the _Philosophical Transactions_. In 1776 it was
translated into German and printed at Chamouni.
The subsequent years were devoted, almost exclusively, to the proper
duties of his Museum office—on the days of service—and to those of the
Paymastership of Exchequer Bills, a function to which Mr. PLANTA was
appointed in 1788, and the duties of which he discharged, with
efficiency and honour, for twenty-three years. Authorship had but little
of his time until a much later period of life.
A little before his appointment in the administrative service of the
country, PLANTA had married Miss Elizabeth ATWOOD. For him, marriage did
just the opposite of what it has, now and then, been said to do for some
other men. It took off the edge of his liking for foreign travel. For it
gave him a very happy home. Their union endured for twenty-four years.
PLANTA was not a man of the gushing sort. [Sidenote: Falkenstein,
_Zeitgenossen_, &c., Dritte Reihe, Bd. ii, pp. 3, seqq.] But, to
intimates, he would say—in the lonely years; there were to be but few of
them—‘She was an angel in spirit and in heart.’ Mrs. PLANTA died in
1821.
On the death of Charles MORTON, Mr. PLANTA, as we have seen already, was
made Principal-Librarian. He found the Museum still in its infancy,
although no less than forty-six years had passed since the bequest of
Sir Hans SLOANE was made to the British Public, and more than forty
years since that Public had entered upon its inheritance. The
collections had kept pace with the growth of science only in one or two
departments. In others the arrear was enormous. The accessibility was
hampered with restrictions. The building was in pressing need of
enlargement, gradual as had been the growth of some sections, and
glaring as was the deficiency of other sections.
PLANTA put his shoulders to the wheel, and met with support and
encouragement from several of the Trustees. But the feeling still ran
strongly against any approach to indiscriminate publicity in any
department of the Museum. Men did not carry that restrictive view quite
so far in 1800, as it had been expressed by Dr. John WARD—an able and
good man—in 1760, and earlier; but they still looked with apprehension
upon the combined ideas of a crowd of visitors, and irreplaceable
treasures of learning and of art. A good many of the men of 1800
possessed, it must in candour be remembered, living recollections of the
sights and the deeds of 1780. Residents in Bloomsbury were likely, on
that score, to have particularly good memories. They had seen with their
eyes precious manuscripts, which treasured up the life-long lore of a
MANSFIELD, given by the populace to the flames.
Under the influence of such memories as these, Mr. PLANTA had to propose
abolition of restrictions, with a gentle and very gradual hand. He began
by improving the practice, without at first greatly altering the rules.
By and by he brought, from time to time, before the Trust, suggestions
for relaxations in the rules themselves.
[Sidenote: IMPROVEMENTS INTRODUCED, OR RECOMMENDED, BY JOSEPH PLANTA, IN
THE INTERNAL ECONOMY OF THE MUSEUM.]
From the outset he administered the Reading-Room itself with much
liberality. When he became Principal-Librarian the yearly admissions
were much under two hundred. In 1816, they had increased to two hundred
and ninety-two. In 1820, to five hundred and fifteen. As respects the
Department of Antiquities, the students admitted to draw were in 1809
less than twenty; in 1818 two hundred and twenty-three were admitted. In
1814 he recommended the Trustees to make provision for the exhibition
every Thursday, ‘to persons applying to see them,’ the Engravings and
Prints;—the persons admitted not exceeding six at any one time, and
others being admitted in due succession. He also recommended a somewhat
similar system of exhibition for adoption in the Department of Coins and
Medals. And the Trustees gave effect to both recommendations. Eventually
Mr. PLANTA proposed, for the _general_ show Collections of the Museum, a
system of entirely free admission at the instant of application,
abolishing all the hamper of preliminary forms.
[Sidenote: HIS RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE VARIOUS
COLLECTIONS.]
It was also, I believe, at Mr. PLANTA’S instance, or partly so, that the
Trustees applied to Parliament, in 1812, for special grants to enable
them to improve the Collection of Printed Books, with reference more
particularly to the endeavour to perfect the National Library in the
National History—to that very limited extent to which the monuments and
memorials of our history are to be found in print. Virtually, the grants
on behalf of the Manuscript Department, not those on behalf of the
Printed Book Department, were, in 1812, as they still are in 1870, the
grants which mainly tend to make the British Museum what, most
obviously, it ought to become, the main storehouse of British History
and Archæology, both in literature and in art.
The magnificent additions made by private donors to every section of the
British Museum during the administration of PLANTA, have been
sufficiently passed under review in the closing chapters of Book II.
Several of them, it has been seen, were the fruits of the public spirit
of individual Trustees. Such gifts amply vindicated the wisdom both of
Sir Hans SLOANE and of Parliament, when both Founder and Legislature
gave to men of exalted position a preference as peculiarly fit, in the
judgment of each, for the general guardianship of the Museum.
[Sidenote: HIS CATHOLICITY OF TASTES AND SYMPATHIES.]
But private gifts—munificent as they were—left large gaps in the
National Collections. It is one of Mr. PLANTA’S distinctive merits that
his tastes and sympathies embraced the Natural History Department, as
well as those literary departments with which, as a man of letters, he
had a more direct personal connection. He supported, with his influence,
the wise recommendation to Parliament—made in 1810—for the purchase of
the GREVILLE Collection of Minerals. He recommended, in 1822, the
purchase, from the representatives of the naturalist MONTICELLI, of a
like, though minor Collection, which had been formed at Naples. The
Cavaliero MONTICELLI’S Collection was, in the main, one that had been
undertaken in imitation of an earlier assemblage of volcanic products
which had been also gathered at Naples by Sir William HAMILTON, and by
the Collector given (as I have already recorded) to the Trustees. In a
similar spirit he promoted the acquisitions which were made from time to
time, by the instrumentality of Claudius RICH, of Henry SALT, and of
several other workers in the fruitful field of Classical, Assyrian, and
Egyptian archæological exploration. Both in the literary and scientific
departments of the Museum he also gave some special attention to the due
continuance and completion of the various collections bestowed on the
Public by the munificence of Sir Joseph BANKS.
Another conspicuous merit belongs to Joseph PLANTA. He supported the
Trustees in that wise and large-minded policy which induced them to
regard _publication_, as well as accumulation, to be one of the chief
duties of their Trust for the Nation. He thought it not enough, for
example, to show to groups of Londoners, from time to time, and to
occasional foreign visitants, in almost solitary state, the wealth of
Nature and of Art in the Museum Collections. He saw it to be no less the
duty of the faithful trustees of such treasures to show them to the
world at large by the combined labours of the painter, the draughtsman,
the engraver, and the printer. [Sidenote: PLANTA’S LABOURS ON THE
MUSEUM’S PUBLICATIONS;] It will ever be an honourable distinction—in the
briefest record of his Museum labours—that he promoted the publication
of the beautiful volumes entitled _Description of the Ancient Marbles in
the British Museum_; of the _Catalogue of the Anglo-Gallic Coins_; of
the _Mausoleum and Cinerary Urns_; of the _Description of Terra Cottas_;
and other like works. The first-named work in particular is an especial
honour to the Trustees of the Museum, and to all who were concerned in
its production. Beautifully engraved, and ably edited, it made the
archæological treasures of the Nation widely known even to such
foreigners, interested in the study of antiquity, as circumstances
precluded from ever seeing the marbles themselves. When watching—in the
bygone years—the late Henry CORBOULD busy at the work into which he
threw so much of his love, as well as of his skill in drawing, I have
been tempted, now and then, to envy the craft which, in its results,
made our national possessions familiarly known, in the far parts of the
world, to students who could never hope to see the wonderful handicraft
of the old Greek sculptors, otherwise than as it is reflected and
transmitted by the handicraft of the skilled modern draughtsman.
CORBOULD had the eye to see artistic beauty and the soul to enjoy it. He
was not one of the artists who are artisans, in everything but the name.
In the ‘_Ancient Marbles in the British Museum_,’ published under the
active encouragement of the Trustees and of their Principal-Librarians,
during a long series of years, CORBOULD, as draughtsman, had just the
work for which Nature had pre-eminently fitted him.
[Sidenote: AND, PARTICULARLY, ON THE CATALOGUES.]
Joseph PLANTA also took his share in the compilation of the Catalogues
both of Printed Books and of Manuscripts. In this department, as in the
archæological one, he extended the benefits of his zealous labour to the
scholar abroad as well as to the scholar at home. What was carefully
prepared was liberally _printed_ and liberally circulated. PLANTA wrote
with his own hand part of the published _Catalogue of the Printed
Books_, and much of the _Catalogue of the Cottonian Manuscripts_. To the
latter he prefixed a brief life of the Founder, by which I have gladly
and thankfully profited in my own more extended labour at the beginning
of this volume.
One incidental employment which Mr. PLANTA’S office entailed upon him—as
Principal-Librarian—was of a less grateful kind. It merits notice on
more than one account, very trivial as is the incident of Museum history
that occasioned it, when looked at intrinsically.
In 1821, the then Duke of BEDFORD (John, ninth Duke) filed in Chancery
an injunction against the Trustees to restrain them from building on the
garden-ground of the Museum. [Sidenote: THE GARDENS OF THE BRITISH
MUSEUM AND THE DUKE OF BEDFORD.] To build was—at that time—an undoubted
injury to the Bloomsburians, and, consequently, a not less undoubted
depreciation of the Duke’s estate. It is hard, nowadays, to realise to
one’s fancy what the former Museum gardens were in the olden time. They
not only adorned every house that looked over them, but were—in
practice, and by the indulgence of the Trustees and officers—a sort of
small public park for the refreshment of the vicinity at large. Their
neighbourhood made houses more valuable in the market.
Almost seventy years before the filing of the Chancery injunctions of
1820–21, a predecessor of the Duke (John, seventh Duke) had compelled
Parliament—and with great reason—to enact that the ‘New Road’ should
be made a broad road; not a narrow lane. He had carried a proviso for
the construction of gardens in front of all the houses along the road.
Were public property, and public enjoyments, protected by English law
with one tenth part of the efficiency with which private property and
private enjoyments are protected, that clause in the ‘New Road Act’ of
1750 would have proved, in our own present day, a measure advantageous
to public health. But public easements are unknown, or nearly unknown,
to English law. And the Duke’s clause has come, in course of time, to
teem with public nuisance, instead of public benefit. Englishmen build
at the national cost magnificent cathedrals, and then permit
railway-jobbers to defile them, at pleasure, with railway
‘architecture.’ They construct, by dint of large taxation, magnificent
river-embankments, and permit every sort of smoke-belching chimney and
eye-killing corrugated-iron-monstrosity to spoil the view. What the
old Duke of BEDFORD intended to make a metropolitan improvement, as
well as a defence to his own property, has come to be a cause of
public detriment,—simply because our legislation, in the year of Grace
1870, affords protection to no kind of public property that is
insusceptible, by its nature, of direct valuation in pounds and pence.
The action of the ninth Duke of BEDFORD was in contrast with that of his
predecessor. It was not altogether selfish, since there was an actual
abatement of public enjoyment in that step which he was opposing. The
Trustees of the British Museum were really compelled to take something
from the Public with one hand;—but, with the other, they gave a tenfold
equivalent. Their contention, of course, prevailed against the Duke’s
opposition.
It may not be intrusive here to mention that it is known that by the
present Duke of BEDFORD very generous and liberal furtherance would be
given to new schemes of extension for the Museum, were Parliament, on
full consideration, to think enlargement at Bloomsbury the right course
to be taken in pending matters. But this subject will demand a few words
hereafter.
PLANTA’S energies seem for several years to have been given, almost
exclusively, to his Museum duties, in combination (as was perfectly
practicable and befitting, under the then circumstances) with his
Exchequer Paymastership. But in the closing years of his
Under-Librarianship many months were (not less fitly) given to a worthy
literary undertaking. He wrote his _History of the Helvetic Confederacy_
towards the end of the last century, and published it soon after his
appointment to the Principal-Librarianship. In the next year he
published a supplement to it, under the title of _A View of the
Restoration of the Helvetic Confederacy_. The _History_ reached its
second edition in 1807.
Based primarily on the great work of Johannes VON MÜLLER, PLANTA’S
_History of the Helvetic Confederacy_ is both a very able production and
one that is animated by a spirit of patriotism which is wise as well as
strong. It was an enduring contribution to the literature of the
author’s fatherland. After its appearance, his official duties mainly
engrossed his attention. He died, full of years and honours, in the year
1827, leaving a son, who, like his father and his grandfather,
distinguished himself in the civil service of their adopted country.
Joseph PLANTA, in his fifty-three years of service, had seen the British
Museum pass from its infancy into the early stages of its maturity. But
it still, at the time of his death, was too much regarded, both by the
general Public and by Parliament, as, in the main, a place of popular
amusement. His next successor saw the beginning of further improvements,
such as lifted the Museum upon a level with the best of its
fellow-institutions in all Europe. His second successor saw it lifted
far above them, in several points of view. And what he witnessed of
augmented improvement—when leaving office three or four years ago—was,
in a very large measure, the result of his own zealous labours and of
his eminent ability.