The following communications have reached us since the publication of
our remarks on the proposed MONUMENTARIUM ANGLICANUM (No. 73. p. 217.
et seq.). They serve to show how much interest the subject has excited
among those best qualified to judge of the great utility of some
well-organised plan for the preservation of a record of our still
existing monuments.
MR. DUNKIN'S letter (which was accompanied by a copy of the prospectus
issued by him in 1844) claims precedence, as showing the steps which
_that_ gentleman has already taken. It is a communication highly
creditable to his exertions in the cause, but does not alter our views
as to the practicability of any successful attempt to accomplish this
object by individual exertion.
In No. 73. Vol. iii. of "NOTES AND QUERIES" you have honoured me by an
allusion to the _Monumenta Anglicana_ I have in the press, as "a plan which
would have your hearty concurrence and recommendation, if it were at all
practicable; but which must fail from its very vastness." It may be so; but
the motto of my family is _Essayez_. Every "gigantic scheme" must have a
commencement, and this "scheme," I am perfectly aware, is one "that no
individual, however varied in attainments and abilities, could without
assistance hope to achieve." My father, upwards of half a century since,
commenced collecting mortuary memorials; many of the monuments from which
he copied the inscriptions have since been destroyed by time, and many,
very many, more by the ruthless innovations of beautifying churchwardens.
These "very vast" collections--the labour of a life--however, only form a
portion of the materials I now posses; for since I issued my prospectus in
1844, I have received many thousands of inscriptions and rubbings of
brasses from clergymen and others; and I trust I shall be favoured with
still further assistance, as in all cases where information is rendered,
the source whence derived shall be most thankfully and freely acknowledged.
{314}
The plan I have adopted with regard to arrangement is to folio each page
three times, viz., i. each parish by itself; ii. each county; iii.
alphabetically; so that each parish can be considered complete in itself;
each county can be bound up by itself; or the whole alphabetically,
gazetteer-wise.
The index will be also in three divisions,--i. general; ii. names of
places; iii. names of persons.
With regard to the number of volumes,--I need not say that that is entirely
_in nubibus_. My impression is limited to seventy-five copies, the same as
my father's _Oxfordshire_, with which it corresponds in size.
I should have preferred seeing the government performing the task of
preserving manuscripts of all existing monuments; but it is the fashion in
Britain for government to leave all apparently national undertakings to
individual exertion. I will here conclude with a quotation from the report
I have just published of the Transactions at the Congress of the British
Archaeological Association held in Worcester:
"Lamentation is, however, worse than useless: the spirit of the age
forbids all idle mourning. If we would awaken a sympathy and interest
in our pursuits, we must gird up our loins like men, and be doing, and
that right earnestly; for it is hopeless any longer waiting for the
government, as a 'Deus ex machina,' to help us to rescue our
antiquities from destruction."