Liberal commissions and constant corresp_Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, Part 1 of 2 With Notices of Its Chief Augmentors and Other Benefactors, 1570-1870.

to enrich the Towneley Gallery, from time to time, after the Collector

had made England his own usual place of abode. In 1786, Mr.

JENKINS—who had long established himself as the banker of the English

in Rome, and who continued to make considerable investments in works

of ancient art, with no small amount of mercantile profit—purchased

all the marbles of the Villa Montalto. From this source Mr. TOWNELEY

obtained his _Bacchus visiting Icarus_ (engraved by BARTOLI almost a

century before); his _Bacchus and Silenus_; the bust of _Hadrian_; the

sarcophagus decorated with a _Bacchanalian procession_ (_A. M._, part

x), and also that with a representation of the _Nine Muses_.

[Sidenote: AND FROM NEW EXCAVATIONS.] By means of the same keen agent

and explorer he heard, in or about the year 1790, that leave had been

given to make a new excavation under circumstances of peculiar

promise.

Our Collector was at Towneley when the letter of Mr. JENKINS came to

hand. He knew his correspondent, and the tenour of the letter induced

him to resolve upon an immediate journey to Rome. The grass did not

grow under his feet. He travelled as rapidly as though he had been

still a youngster, escaping from Douay, with all the allurements of

Paris in his view.

[Sidenote: THE JOURNEY TO ROME OF 1790?]

When he reached Rome, he learnt that the promising excavation was but

just begun upon. Without any preliminary visits, or announcement, he

quietly presented himself beside the diggers, and ere long had the

satisfaction of seeing a fine statue of Hercules displayed. Other fine

works afterwards came to light. But on visiting Mr. JENKINS, in order

to enjoy a more deliberate examination of ‘the find,’ and to settle

the preliminaries of purchase, his enjoyment was much diminished by

the absence of Hercules. JENKINS did not know that his friend had seen

it exhumed, and he carefully concealed it from his view. Eager

remonstrance, however, compelled him to produce the hidden treasure.

TOWNELEY, at length, left the banker’s house with the conviction that

the statue was his own, but it never charmed his sight again until he

saw it in the Collection of Lord LANSDOWNE. He had, however, really

secured the _Discobolus_ or Quoit-thrower,—perhaps, notwithstanding

its restored head, the finest of the known repetitions of MYRO’S

famous statue,—as well as some minor pieces of sculpture.

Other and very valuable acquisitions were made, occasionally, at the

dispersion of the Collections of several lovers of ancient art, some

of these Collections having been formed before his time, and others

contemporaneously with his own. [Sidenote: ACQUISITIONS MADE IN

ENGLAND AND IN FRANCE.] In this way he acquired whilst in England (1)

the bronze statue of _Hercules_ found, early in the eighteenth

century, at Jebel or Gebail (the ancient Byblos), carried by an

Armenian merchant to Constantinople, there sold to Dr. SWINNEY, a

chaplain to the English factory; by him brought into England, and

purchased by Mr. James MATTHEWS; (2) the Head of _Arminius_, also from

the Matthews Collection; (3) the _Libera_ found by Gavin HAMILTON, on

the road to Frascati, in 1776, and then purchased by Mr. GREVILLE; (4)

Heads of a _Muse_, an _Amazon_, and some other works, from the

Collection of Mr. Lyde BROWNE, of Wimbledon; (5) the _Monument of

Xanthippus_, from the Askew Collection; (6) the bust of a female

unknown (called by TOWNELEY ‘Athys’) found near Genzano, in the

grounds of the family of CESARINI, and obtained from the Collection of

the Duke of ST. ALBANS; (7) many urns, vases, and other antiquities,

partly from the Collection of that Duke and partly from Sir Charles

FREDERICK’S Collection at Esher. The bronze _Apollo_ was bought in

Paris, at the sale, in 1774, of the Museum formed by M. L’ALLEMAND DE

CHOISEUL.

Some other accessions came to Mr. TOWNELEY by gift. The _Tumbler and

Crocodile_, and the small statue of _Pan_ (_A. M._, pt. x, § 24), were

the gift of Lord CAWDOR. The _Oracle of Apollo_ was a present from the

Duke of BEDFORD. This accession—in 1804—was the last work which Mr.

TOWNELEY had the pleasure of seeing placed in his gallery. He died in

London, on the 3rd of January, 1805.

He had been made, in 1791, a Trustee of the British Museum, in the

progress of which he took a great interest. Family circumstances, as

it seems, occurred which at last dictated a change in the original

disposition which he had made of his Collection. [Sidenote: MR.

TOWNELEY’S WILL.] [Sidenote: Codicil of 22 Dec., 1804.] By a Codicil,

executed only twelve days before his death, he bequeathed the

Collection to his only brother Edward TOWNELEY-STANDISH, on condition

that a sum of at least four thousand five hundred pounds should be

expended for the erection of a suitable repository in which the

Collection should be arranged and exhibited. Failing such expenditure

by the brother, the Collection was to go to John TOWNELEY, uncle of

the Testator. Should he decline to fulfil the conditions, then the

Collection should go, according to the Testator’s first intent, to the

British Museum.

Eventually, it appeared, on an application from the Museum Trustees,

that the heirs were willing to transfer the Collection to the Public,

but that Mr. TOWNELEY had left his estate subject to a mortgage debt

of £36,500. [Sidenote: _Act of 45 Geo. III._] The Trustees, therefore,

resolved to apply to Parliament for a grant, and this noble Collection

was acquired for the Nation on the payment of the sum of £20,000, very

inadequate, it need scarcely be added, to its intrinsic worth.

Charles TOWNELEY possessed considerable skill, both as a draughtsman

and as an engraver. In authorship, his only public appearance was as

the writer of a dissertation on a relic of antiquity (the ‘Ribchester

Helmet’), printed in the _Vetusta Monumenta_.

He was a learned, genial, and benevolent man. His intense love of

ancient art did not blind his eyes to things beyond art, and above it.

The impulses of the collector did not obstruct the duties of the

citizen. He was a good landlord; a generous friend. It may be said of

him, with literal truth, that he restricted his personal indulgences

in order that he might the more abundantly minister to the wants of

others.

Charles TOWNELEY was buried at Burnley. The following inscription was

placed upon his monument:

M. S.

CAROLI TOWNELEII,

viri ornati, modesti,

nobilitate stirpis, amænitate ingenii, suavitate morum,

insignis;

qui omnium bonarum artium, præsertim Græcarum,

spectator elegantissimus, æstimator acerrimus, judex peritissimus,

earum reliquias, ex urbium veterum ruderibus effossas,

summo studio conquisivit, suâ pecuniâ redemit, in usum patriæ

reposuit,

eâ liberalitate animi, quâ, juvenis adhuc,

hæreditatem alteram, vix patrimonio minorem,

fratri spontè cesserat, dono dederat.

Vixit annos lxvii. menses iii. dies iii.

Mortem obiit Jan. iii. A.S. 1805.

Whilst the Trustees of the British Museum were preparing—in a way that

will be hereafter noticed—for the reception of this noble addition to

the public wealth of the Nation, another liberal-minded scholar and

patriot was considering in what way his collections in the wide field

of classical archæology might be made most contributive to the

progress of learning, of art, and of public education.

[Sidenote: LORD ELGIN AND HIS PURSUITS IN GREECE.]

Thomas BRUCE, eleventh Earl of Kincardine, and seventh Earl of Elgin,

was born on the 20th of July, 1766. He was a younger son, but

succeeded to his earldoms on the death, without issue, in 1771, of his

elder brother, William Robert, sixth Earl of Elgin, and tenth of

Kincardine. He was educated at Harrow, at St. Andrew’s, and at Paris;

entered the army in 1785; and in 1790 began his diplomatic career by a

mission to the Emperor Leopold. In subsequent years he was sent as

Commissioner to the armies of Prussia and Austria, successively, and

was present during active military operations, both in Germany and in

Flanders. In 1795 he went as envoy to Berlin.

Lord ELGIN was appointed to the embassy to the Ottoman Porte, with

which his name is now inseparably connected, in July, 1799. One of his

earliest reflections after receiving his appointment was that the

mission to Constantinople might possibly afford opportunities of

promoting the study and thorough examination of the remains of Grecian

art in the Turkish dominions. He consulted an early friend, Mr.

HARRISON—distinguished as an architect, who had spent many years of

study on the Continent with much profit—as to the methods by which any

such opportunities might be turned to fullest account. HARRISON’S

advice to his lordship was that he should seek permission to employ

artists to make casts, as well as drawings and careful admeasurements,

of the best remaining examples of Greek architecture and sculpture,

and more especially of those at Athens.

Before leaving England, Lord ELGIN brought this subject before the

Government. He suggested the public value of the object sought for,

and how worthy of the Nation it would be to give encouragement from

public sources for the employment of a staff of skilful and eminent

artists. But the suggestion was received with no favour or welcome. He

was still unwilling to relinquish his hopes, and endeavoured to

engage, at his own cost, some competent draughtsmen and modellers. But

the terms of remuneration proposed to him were beyond his available

means. He feared that he must give up his plans.

On reaching Palermo, however, Lord ELGIN opened the subject to Sir

William HAMILTON, who strongly recommended him to persevere, and told

him that if he could not afford to meet the terms of English artists,

he would find less difficulty in coming to an agreement with Italians,

whose time commonly bore a smaller commercial value. [Sidenote:

CONFERS WITH SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.] With Sir William’s assistance he

engaged, in Sicily, a distinguished painter and archæologist, John

Baptist LUSIERI (better known at Naples as ‘Don Tita’), and he

obtained several skilful modellers and draughtsmen from Rome. The

removal of the marbles themselves formed no part of Lord ELGIN’S

original design. That step was induced by causes which at this time

were unforeseen.

On his arrival at Constantinople Lord ELGIN applied to the Turkish

Ministers for leave to establish six artists at Athens to make

drawings and casts. He met with many difficulties and delays, but at

length succeeded. [Sidenote: SENDS ARTISTS TO ATHENS;] Mr. HAMILTON,

his Secretary, accompanied the Italians into Greece, to superintend

the commencement of their labours.

The difficulties at Constantinople proved to be almost trivial in

comparison with those which ensued at Athens. Every step was met, both

by the official persons and the people generally, with jealousy and

obstruction. If a scaffold was put up, the Turks were sure that it was

with a view to look into the harem of some neighbouring house. If a

fragment of sculpture was examined with any visible delight or

eagerness, they were equally sure that it must contain hidden gold.

When the artist left the specimen he had been drawing, or modelling,

he would find, not infrequently, that some Turk or other had laid

hands upon it and broken it to pieces. But the artists persevered, and

habit in some degree reconciled, at length, the people to their

presence.

When Lord ELGIN went himself to Athens the state in which he found

some of the temples suggested to him the desirableness of excavations

in the adjacent mounds. He purchased some houses, expressly to pull

them down and to dig beneath and around them. Sometimes the

exploration brought to light valuable sculpture. [Sidenote: AND MAKES

EXPLORATIONS BY DIGGING.] Sometimes, in situations of greatest

promise, nothing was found.

On one occasion, when the indication of buried sculpture seemed

conclusive, and yet the search for it fruitless, Lord ELGIN was

induced to ask the former owner of the ground if he remembered to have

seen any figures there. ‘If you had asked me that before,’ replied the

man, ‘I could have saved you all your trouble. I found the figures,

and pounded them to make mortar with, because they were of excellent

marble. A great part of the Citadel has been built with mortar made in

the same way. That marble makes capital lime.’

The conversation was not lost upon Lord ELGIN. And the assertion made

in it was amply corroborated by facts which presently came under his

own eyes. He became convinced that when fine sculpture was found it

would be a duty to remove it, if possible, rather than expose it to

certain destruction—a little sooner or a little later—from Turkish

barbarity.

[Sidenote: THE EXPLORATIONS EXTENDED TO OTHER PARTS OF GREECE.]

At intervals the artists, whose head-quarters were at Athens, made

exploring trips to other parts of Greece. They visited Delphi,

Corinth, Epidaurus, Argos, Mycene, Cape Sigæum, Olympia, Æginæ,

Salamis, and Marathon.

But it was only by means of renewed efforts at Constantinople, and

after a long delay, that the artists and their assistant labourers

were enabled to act with freedom and to make thorough explorations. So

long as the French remained masters of Egypt Lord ELGIN had to win

every little concession piecemeal, and obtained it grudgingly. As soon

as it became apparent that the British Expedition would be finally

successful, the tone of the Turkish government was entirely altered.

They were now eager to satisfy the Ambassador, and to lay him under

obligation. [Sidenote: INFLUENCE OF THE BRITISH VICTORIES IN EGYPT.]

Firmauns were given, which empowered him, not only to make models, but

‘to take away any pieces of stone from the temples of the idols with

old inscriptions or figures thereon,’ at his pleasure. Instructions

were sent to Athens which had the effect of making the Acropolis

itself a scene of busy and well-rewarded labour. Theretofore a heavy

admission fee had been exacted at each visit of the draughtsmen or

modellers. Before the close of 1802, more than three hundred labourers

were at work under the direction of LUSIERI—with results which are

familiar to the world.

It is less widely known that, had NAPOLEON’S plans in Egypt been

carried to a prosperous issue, the ‘Elgin Marbles’ would, beyond all

doubt, have become French marbles. When Lord ELGIN’S operations began,

French agents were actually resident in Athens, awaiting the turn of

events and prepared to profit by it, in the way of resuming the

operations which M. DE CHOISEUL GOUFFIER had long previously

begun.[63]

[Sidenote: INSTANCES OF TURKISH DEVASTATION.]

[Sidenote: 1674.]

The efforts of the British Ambassador became the more timely and

imperative from the fact that no amount of experience or warning was

sufficient to deter the Turks from their favourite practice of

converting the finest of the Greek Temples into powder magazines.

Twenty of the metopes of the northern side of the Parthenon had been,

in consequence of this practice, destroyed by an explosion during the

Venetian siege of Athens in the seventeenth century. [Sidenote: 1800.]

The Temple of Neptune was found by Lord ELGIN devoted to the same use,

at the beginning of the nineteenth.

No methods of extending his researches, so as to make them as nearly

exhaustive as the circumstances would admit, were overlooked by the

ambassador. Through the friendship of the Capitan Pasha, Lord ELGIN

had already, whilst yet at the Dardanelles, obtained the famous

Boustrophedon inscription from Cape Sigæum. Through the friendship of

the Archbishop of Athens, he now procured leave to search the churches

and convents of Attica, and the search led to his possession of many

of the minor but very interesting works of sculpture and architecture

which came eventually to England along with the marbles of the

Parthenon.

Of the curious range and variety of the dangers to which the remains

of ancient art were exposed under Turkish rule, the Boustrophedon

inscription just mentioned affords an instance worth noting.

[Sidenote: _Memoranda on the Earl of Elgin’s Pursuits in Greece, &c._,

p. 35.] Lord ELGIN found it in use as a seat, or couch, at the door of

a Greek chapel, to which persons afflicted with ague or rheumatism

were in the habit of resorting, in order to recline on this marble,

which, in their eyes, possessed a mysterious and curative virtue. The

seat was so placed as to lift the patient into a much purer air than

that which he had been wont to breathe below, and it commanded a most

cheerful sea-view; but it was the ill fate of the inscription to have

a magical fame, instead of the atmosphere. Constant rubbing had

already half obliterated its contents. But for Lord ELGIN, the whole

would soon have disappeared. At Athens itself, the loftier of the

sculptures in the Acropolis enjoyed equal favour in the eyes of

Turkish marksmen, as affording excellent targets.

In the course of various excavations made, not only at Athens, but at

Æginæ, Argos, and Corinth, a large collection of vases was also

formed. It was the first collection which sufficed, incontestibly, to

vindicate the claim of the Greeks to the invention of that beautiful

ware, to which the name of ‘Etruscan’ was so long and so inaccurately

given.

[Sidenote: _Ibid._, 31.]

One of the most interesting of the many minor discoveries made in the

course of Lord ELGIN’S researches comprised a large marble vase, five

feet in circumference, which enclosed a bronze vase of thirteen inches

diameter. In this were found a lachrymatory of alabaster and a deposit

of burnt bones, with a myrtle-wreath finely wrought in gold. This

discovery was made in a tumulus on the road leading from Port Piræus

to the Salaminian Ferry and Eleusis.

Early in 1803, all the sculptured marbles from the Parthenon which it

was found practicable to remove were prepared for embarkation. Both of

those so prepared and of the few that were left, casts had been made,

together with a complete series of drawings to scale. That great

monument of art had been exhaustively studied, with the aid of all the

information that could be gathered from the drawings made by the

French artist, CARREY, in 1674, and those of the English architect,

STUART, in 1752. A general monumental survey of Athens and Attica was

also compiled and illustrated.

The original frieze, in low relief, of the _cella_ of the

Parthenon—representing the chief festive solemnity of Athens, the

Panathenaic procession—had extended, in the whole, to about five

hundred and twenty feet in length. That portion which eventually

reached England amounted to two hundred and fifty feet. And of this a

considerable part was obtained by excavations. Of a small portion of

the remainder casts were brought. But the bulk of it had been long

before destroyed. Of the statues which adorned the pediments a large

portion had also perished, yet enough survived to indicate the design

and character of the whole. Of statues and fragments of statues,

seventeen were brought to England. Of metopes in high relief, from the

frieze of the entablature, fourteen were brought.

[Sidenote: THE DIFFICULTIES OF TRANSPORT AND THE SHIPWRECK AT CERIGO.]

Thus far, an almost incredible amount of effort and toil had been

rewarded by a result large enough to dwarf all previous researches of

a like kind. But the difficulties and dangers of the task were very

far from being ended. The ponderous marbles had to be carried from

Athens to the Piræus. There was neither machinery for lifting, nor

appliances for haulage. There were no roads. The energy, however,

which had wrestled with so many previous obstacles triumphed over

these. But only to encounter new peril in the shape of a fierce storm

at sea.

Part of the Elgin Marbles had been at length embarked in the ship,

purchased at Lord ELGIN’S own cost, in which Mr. HAMILTON sailed for

England, carrying with him also his drawings and journals. The vessel

was wrecked near Cerigo. Seven cases of sculpture sunk with the ship.

Only four, out of the eleven embarked in the _Mentor_, were saved,

along with the papers and drawings. Meanwhile, Lord ELGIN himself, on

his homeward journey, was, upon the rupture of the Peace of Amiens,

arrested and ‘detained’ in France.

If the reader will now recall to mind, for an instant, the

mortifications and discouragements, as well as the incessant toils,

which had attended this attempt to give to the whole body of English

artists, archæologists, and students, advantages which theretofore

only a very small and exceptionally fortunate knot of them could

enjoy, or hope to enjoy, he will, perhaps, incline to think that

enough had been done for honour. The casts and drawings had been

saved. The removal of marbles had formed no part of Lord ELGIN’S first

design. It was only when proof had come—plain as the noonday sun—that

to remove was to preserve, and to preserve, not for England alone, but

for the civilised world, that leave to carry away was sought from the

Turkish authorities, and removal resolved upon.

Entreaty to the British Government that the thorough exploration of

the Peloponnesus, by the draughtsman and the modeller, should be made

a national object, had been but so much breath spent in vain. Private

resources had then been lavished, beyond the bounds of prudence, to

confer a public boon. Personal hardships and popular animosities had

been alike met by steady courage and quiet endurance. All kinds of

local obstacle had been conquered. And now some of the most precious

results of so much toil and outlay lay at the bottom of the sea. The

chief toiler was a prisoner in France.

But Lord ELGIN was not yet beaten. He came of a tough race. He was—

‘One of the few, the letter’d and the brave,

Bound to no clime, and victors o’er the grave.’

[Sidenote: LORD ELGIN BRANDED, IN ENGLAND, AS A ROBBER.] The buried

marbles were raised, at the cost of two more years of labour, and

after an expenditure, in the long effort, of nearly five thousand

pounds, in addition to the original loss of the ship. Then a storm of

another sort had to be faced in its turn. A burst of anger, classical

and poetical, declared the ambassador to be, not a benefactor, but a

thief. The gale blew upon him from many points. The author of the

_Classical Tour through Italy_ declared that Lord ELGIN’S ‘rapacity is

a crime against all ages and all generations; depriving the Past of

the trophies of their genius and the title-deeds of their fame, the

Present of the strongest inducements to exertion.’ [Sidenote: Eustace,

_Classical Tour_, p. 269.] The author of _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_

declared that, for all time, the spoiler’s name (the glorious name of

BRUCE)—

[Sidenote: Byron, _Curse of Minerva_, § 7.]

‘Link’d with the fool’s who fired th’ Ephesian dome—

Vengeance shall follow far beyond the tomb.

EROSTRATUS and ELGIN e’er shall shine

In many a branding page and burning line!

Alike condemn’d for aye to stand accurs’d—

Perchance the second viler than the first.

So let him stand, through ages yet unborn,

Fix’d statue on the pedestal of scorn!’

That the abuse might have variety, as well as vigour, a very learned

Theban broke in with the remark that there was no need, after all, to

make such a stir about the matter. The much-bruited marbles were of

little value, whether in England or in Greece. If Lord ELGIN was,

indeed, a spoiler, he was also an ignoramus. His bepraised sculptures,

instead of belonging to the age of PERICLES, belonged, at earliest, to

that of HADRIAN; far from bearing traces of the hand of PHIDIAS, they

were, at best, mere ‘architectonic sculptures, the work of many

different persons, some of whom would not have been entitled to the

rank of artists, even in a much less cultivated and fastidious age....

PHIDIAS did not work in marble at all.’ These oracular sentences, and

many more of a like cast, were given to the world under the sanction

of the ‘Society of Dilettanti.’

The equanimity which had stood so many severer tests did not desert

its possessor under a tempest of angry words. When set at liberty,

after a long detention in France, he resumed his journey. On his

eventual arrival in England, in 1806, he brought with him a valuable

collection of gems and medals, gathered at Constantinople. He also

brought some valuable counsels as to the mode in which he might best

make the Athenian Marbles useful to the progress of art, obtained in

Rome.

[Sidenote: LORD ELGIN’S CONFERENCE WITH CANOVA.]

For, at Rome, he had been enabled to show a sample of his acquisitions

to a man who was something more than a dilettante. ‘These,’ said

CANOVA, ‘are the works of the ablest artists the world has seen.’

When consulted on the point whether restoration should, in any

instance, be attempted, the reply of the great Italian sculptor was in

these words: ‘The Parthenon Marbles have never been retouched. It

would be sacrilege in me—sacrilege in any man—to put a chisel on

them.’

Lord ELGIN came to England with the intention of offering his whole

Collection to the British Government, unconditionally. He was ready to

forget the short-sightedness with which his proposal of 1799 had been

met. He was prepared to trust to the liberality of Parliament, and to

the force of public opinion, for the reimbursement of his outlay, and

the fair reward of his toil. The ambassador was not in a position to

sacrifice the large sums of money he had spent. He could not afford

the proud joy of giving to Britain, entirely at his own cost, a boon

such as no man, before him, had had the power of giving. There were

conflicting duties lying upon him, such as are not to be put aside.

That British artists—in one way or another—should profit by the grand

exemplars of art which he had saved from Turkish musquetry and the

Turkish lime-kilns, was the one thing towards which his face was set.

When first imprisoned in France, Lord ELGIN did actually send a

direction to England that his Collection should be made over,

unconditionally, to the British Government. This order was sent, to

guard against the possible effect of any casualty that might happen

during his detention, the duration of which was then very

problematical. He reached England, however, before the instruction had

been carried into effect. In the mean time, the controversy about the

real value of the Marbles, as well as that which impugned the

Collector’s right to remove them from Athens, had arisen, and had

excited public attention. It became important to elicit an enlightened

opinion on those points, before raising the question how the sculpture

should be finally disposed of.

The ignorance of essential facts—which alone made such reproaches[64]

as those I have just quoted possible from a man devoid of malice, and

gifted with genius—was a far less stubborn obstacle in Lord ELGIN’S

intended path than was the one-sided learning (one-sided as far as

true art and its appreciation are concerned) which dictated the

sneering utterances of some among the ‘Dilettanti.’ A BYRON, by his

nature, is open to conviction, sooner or later, in his own despite. A

connoisseur, when narrow and scornful, is above reason. And he is

eminently reproductive.

[Sidenote: THE ACTION OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM ON THE

TOWNELEY BEQUEST. 1805–1806.]

But for this stumbling-block in the path, the time of Lord ELGIN’S

return to England would have been eminently favourable for realising

his plans in their fulness.

The two important accessions of antiquities to the British Museum

which had just accrued from the success of our arms in Egypt, and from

the almost life-long researches of Mr. TOWNELEY and his associates in

Italy, had led the way to an important enlargement of the Museum

building, and also to a great improvement in its internal

organization. The true importance, to the Public, of a series of the

best works of ancient art as a national possession was beginning to be

felt.

In June, 1805, the Trustees obtained from Parliament the purchase of

the Towneley Marbles. They had already (in the previous year) obtained

power to begin an additional building, the plan and design of which

were now enlarged, and made specially appropriate to the reception and

display of the Towneley Collection.

[Sidenote: ORGANIZATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES.]

Hitherto, the Antiquities in the Museum had been regarded as a mere

appendix of the Natural History Collections. They were now made a

separate department, in accordance with their intrinsic value. Mr.

Taylor COMBE, who had entered the service of the Trustees, in 1803, as

an assistant librarian, was made first Keeper of the new department.

He filled that office, with much efficiency, until his death in 1826.

The new building or ‘Towneley Gallery’ was opened by a royal visit on

the third of June, 1808. The Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of

Cumberland and Cambridge, came to the Museum with a considerable

retinue, and were received, with much ceremony, by a Committee of the

Trustees. The Queen had not visited the Museum for twenty years past.

The Towneley Gallery was erected from the designs of Mr. SAUNDERS, and

was admirably adapted to its purpose. Some of the sculptures have not

been seen to quite equal advantage since its replacement by the

existing building. The addition has now disappeared as entirely as has

old Montagu House itself, but the reader may see its form and style by

glancing at the small vignette on the title-page of this volume.

[Sidenote: OPENING OF THE ELGIN MARBLES AT BURLINGTON HOUSE.]

So favourable an opportunity, however, was for the present lost. The

self-conceit of the cognoscenti strengthened the too obvious parsimony

of Parliament. Lord ELGIN made no direct overture to the Government,

but appealed to the great body of artists, of students, and of art

lovers, for their verdict on his labours in Greece and their product.

He arranged his marbles first in his own house in Park Lane, and

afterwards—for the sake of better exhibition—at Burlington House, in

Piccadilly, and threw them open to public view. The voice of the

artists was as the voice of one man. Some, who were at the top of the

tree, acknowledged a wish that it were possible to begin their studies

over again. Others, who had but begun to climb, felt their ardour

redoubled and their ambition directed to nobler aims in art than had

before been thought of. Not a few careers, arduous and honourable,

took their life-long colour from what was then seen at Burlington

House. Some of the men most strongly influenced were not what the

world calls successful, but not one of them ended his career without

making England the richer by his work.

The eagerness of foreign artists to study the Elgin Marbles was equal

to that of Englishmen. CANOVA, when on his visit to London in 1815,

wrote: ‘I think that I can never see them often enough. Although my

stay must be extremely short, I dedicate every moment I can spare to

their contemplation. I admire in them the truth of nature, united to

the choice of the finest forms.... I should feel perfectly satisfied,

if I had come to London only to see them.’

The most accomplished of foreign archæologists were not less decisive

in their testimony. VISCONTI, after seeing and studying repeatedly a

small portion only of the Parthenon frieze, said of it: ‘This has

always seemed to me to be the most perfect production of the

sculptor’s art in its kind.’ When he saw the whole, his delight was

unbounded.

The Collector was not able to carry out his plan of exhibition, in any

part of it, to the full extent which he had contemplated.

He was anxious that casts of the whole of the extant sculptures of the

Parthenon should be exhibited, in the same relative situation to the

eye of the viewer which they had originally occupied in the Temple at

Athens. He was also desirous that a public competition of sculptors

should be provided for, in order to a series of comparative

restorations of the perfect work, based upon other casts of its

surviving portions, and wrought in presence of the remains of the

authentic sculpture itself.

[Sidenote: CONTINUANCE OF THE LABOURS OF LUSIERI AT ATHENS, UNTIL

1816.]

Meanwhile, the chief of the artists employed in the work of drawing

and modelling continued his labours at Athens, and in its vicinity,

for more than twelve years after Lord ELGIN’S departure from

Constantinople. Between the years 1811 and 1816, inclusive, eighty

cases containing sculpture, casts, drawings, and other works of art,

were added to the Elgin Collection in London.

In the year last named, when the question of artistic value had

already been very effectively determined by the cumulative force of

enlightened opinion, a Select Committee of the House of Commons was at

length appointed, to inquire whether it were expedient that Lord

ELGIN’S Collection ‘should be purchased on behalf of the Public, and,

if so, what price it may be reasonable to allow for the same.’

[Sidenote: _Report on Earl of Elgin’s Collection_ (1816), p. 8.]

By this Committee it was reported to the House that ‘several of the

most eminent artists in this kingdom rate these marbles in the very

first class of ancient art; ... speak of them with admiration and

enthusiasm; and, notwithstanding their manifold injuries, ... and

mutilations, ... consider them as among the finest models and most

exquisite monuments of antiquity.’ It was also reported that their

removal to England had been explicitly authorised by the Turkish

Government. [Sidenote: _Ib._, p. 16.] The Committee further

recommended their purchase for the Public at the sum of thirty-five

thousand pounds; and that the Earl of ELGIN and his heirs (being Earls

of Elgin) should be perpetual Trustees of the British Museum.

[Sidenote: _Ib._, p. 27.] And the Committee expressed, in conclusion,

its hope that the Elgin Marbles might long serve as models and

examples to those who, by knowing how to revere and appreciate them,

may first learn to imitate, and ultimately to rival them. On the 1st

of July, 1816, the Act for effecting the purchase was passed by the

Legislature. I do not know that any one member of the Society of

Dilettanti really regretted the fact. But it is certain that by a very

eminent connoisseur on the Continent it was much regretted. The King

of Bavaria had already lodged a sum of thirty thousand pounds in an

English banking house, by way of securing a pre-emption, should the

controversy amongst the connoisseurs on this side of the Channel, of

which so much had been heard, lead the British Parliament eventually

to decline the purchase.

The nearest estimate that could be formed in 1816 of Lord ELGIN’S

outlay, from first to last, amounted to upwards of fifty thousand

pounds. And the interest on that outlay, at subsisting rates, amounted

to about twenty-four thousand pounds. Upon merely commercial

principles, therefore, the mark of honour affixed by Parliament to the

Earldom of Elgin was abundantly earned. By every other estimate, Lord

ELGIN had done more than enough to keep his name, for ever, in the

roll of British worthies. And, as all men know, he had a worthy

successor in that honoured title. The name of ELGIN, instead of

ranking, according to BYRON’S prophecy, with that of EROSTRATUS, has

already become a name not less revered in the Indies, and in America,

than in Britain itself.

For nearly half a century, Lord ELGIN was one of the Representative

Peers of Scotland. After his great achievement was completed, he took

but little part in public life. The most curious incident of his later

years was his election as a Member of the Society of Dilettanti,

twenty-five years after his return from the Levant. The election was

made without his knowledge. When the fact was intimated to him, he

wrote to the Secretary to decline the honour. After a brief and

dignified allusion to his efforts in Greece, he went on to say:—‘Had

it been thought—twenty-five years ago, or at any reasonable time

afterwards—that the same energy would be considered useful to the

Dilettanti Society, most happy should I have been to contribute every

aid in my power; but such expectation has long since past. I do not

apprehend that I shall be thought fastidious, if I decline the honour

now proposed to me at this my eleventh hour.’

The Collector of the Elgin Marbles died in England on the fourteenth

of October, 1841.

[Sidenote: THE MARBLES OF PHIGALEIA.]

During the long period which had thus intervened between the first

exhibition to the Public of the sculptures from the Temple of Minerva

and their final acquisition for the national Museum, an inferior but

valuable series of Greek marbles was obtained from Phigaleia, in

Arcadia. They were the fruit of the joint researches, in 1812, of the

late eminent architect, Mr. Charles Robert COCKERELL, Mr. John FOSTER,

Mr. LEE, Mr. Charles HALLER VON HALLERSTEIN, and Mr. James LINKH, who,

in that year, had become fellow-travellers in Greece, and partners in

the work of exploration for antiquities.

The temple to which these marbles had belonged, and beneath the ruins

of which they were found, stands on a ridge clothed with oak trees on

one of the slopes of Mount Cotylium. The scenery which surrounds it is

of great beauty. The temple itself has long been a ruin. It was the

work of ICTINUS, the builder of the Parthenon. One portion of the

frieze of its _cella_ represents the battles of the Centaurs and the

Lapithæ—the subject of the metopes of the Parthenon entablature. The

remaining portion illustrates another series of mythic contests—that

of the Athenians and the Amazons.

The extent of this frieze, in its integrity, was about a hundred and

eight feet in length, by two feet one and a quarter inches in height.

About ninety-six lineal feet were found, broken into innumerable

fragments, but susceptible, as it proved—by dint of skill and of

marvellous patience—of almost entire reunion, so that no restoration

was needed to bring the subject of the sculpture into perfect

intelligibility.

[Sidenote: THE EXCAVATIONS ON MOUNT COTYLIUM.]

Mr. COCKERELL, one of the most active of the explorers of 1812, had to

proceed to Sicily whilst his fellows in the enterprise carried on the

toils of digging and removal. But it is from his pen that we have a

charming little notice of the progress of the work, and of the

amusements which enlivened it. ‘I regret’ wrote Mr. COCKERELL, ‘that I

was not of that delightful party at Phigaleia, which amounted to above

fifteen persons. They established themselves, for three months, on the

top of Mount Cotylium—where there is a grand prospect over nearly all

Arcadia—building, round the Temple, huts covered with boughs of trees,

until they had almost formed a village, which they called Francopolis.

They had frequently fifty or eighty men at work in the Temple, and a

band of Arcadian music was constantly playing to entertain this

numerous assemblage. When evening put an end to work, dances and songs

commenced; lambs were roasted whole on a long wooden spit; and the

whole scene in such a situation, at such an interesting time, when,

every day, some new and beautiful sculpture was brought to light, is

hardly to be imagined. Apollo must have wondered at the carousals

which disturbed his long repose, and have thought that his glorious

days of old were returned.’

[Sidenote: Cockerell to ...; printed by Hughes, _Travels in Greece_,

vol. i, p. 194.]

‘The success of our enterprise,’ continues Mr. COCKERELL, ‘astonished

every one, and in all circumstances connected with it good fortune

attended us.’ One of these circumstances, however—that of the mixed

nationality of the discoverers—put, it must be added, some difficulty

in the way towards accomplishing an earnest wish, on the part of the

English sharers in the adventure, that England should be made the

final home of the Phigaleian sculptures. Two Germans, as we have seen,

were active partners in the exploration. A third, Mr. GROPIUS, had

likewise some interest in it. And there was also a more formidable

sleeping partner in the rich digging. VELY Pasha had stipulated that

he was to have one half of the marbles discovered, as the price of his

licence to explore. But, very fortunately, one of the ordinary changes

in Turkish policy at Constantinople removed VELY from his government,

just at the critical moment; and so made him anxious to sell his

share, and to facilitate the removal of the spoil. The new Pasha had

heard of the discoveries, and was hastening to lay hands upon the

whole. But he was too late.

The marbles were removed to Zante. The German proprietors insisted on

a public sale by auction. There was not time to bring the matter

before Parliament. [Sidenote: THE TRANSFER OF THE MARBLES OF PHIGALEIA

TO ZANTE;] But the Prince Regent took an active interest in it. With

his sanction, and mainly by the exertions of Mr. W. R. HAMILTON

(afterwards a zealous Trustee of the British Museum), some members of

the Government authorised the despatch of Mr. Taylor COMBE to Zante.

By him the marbles were purchased, at the price of sixty thousand

dollars; but that sum was enhanced by an unfavourable exchange, so

that the actual payment amounted to nineteen thousand pounds.

[Sidenote: AND TO ENGLAND.] It was paid out of the Droits of the

Admiralty,—a fund of questionable origin, and one which had been many

times grossly abused, but which, on this occasion, subserved a great

national advantage.

The marbles thus obtained are confessedly inferior to those of the

Parthenon; but they possess great beauty, as well as great

archæological value. Both acquisitions, in their place, have

contributed to increase historic knowledge, not less conspicuously

than to develop artistic power, or to enlighten critical judgment,

both in art and in literature. It would not be an easy task to

estimate to what degree a mastery of the learning which is to be

acquired only from the marbles of Attica and of Arcadia, and their

like, has tended to make the study of Greek books a living and

life-giving study.

To the sculptures brought from Phigaleia into England in 1815, several

missing fragments have been added subsequently. A peasant living near

Paulizza had carried off a piece of the frieze to decorate, or to

hallow, his hut. This fragment was procured by Mr. Spencer STANHOPE in

1816. The Chevalier BRÖNDSTED added other fragments in 1824. Only one

entire slab of the original sculpture is wanting.

[Sidenote: PURCHASE OF THE SECOND TOWNELEY COLLECTION, 1814.]

Almost contemporaneously with the accessions which came to the Museum

as the result of the explorations in 1814 of Mr. COCKERELL and his

fellow-travellers in Arcadia, a considerable addition was made to the

Towneley Gallery by the purchase of a large series of bronzes, gems,

and drawings, and of a cabinet of coins and medals, both Greek and

Roman, all of which had been formed by the Collector of the Marbles.

These were purchased from Mr. TOWNELEY’S representatives for the sum

of eight thousand two hundred pounds. Among other conspicuous

additions, made from time to time, a few claim special mention. Among

these are the _Cupid_, acquired from the representatives of Edmund

BURKE; the _Jupiter_ and _Leda_, in low relief, bought of Colonel de

BOSSET; and the _Apollo_, bought in Paris, at the sale of the Choiseul

Collection.

[Sidenote: MINOR ANTIQUITIES OF THE ELGIN COLLECTION.]

Among the minor Greek antiquities which came to the British Museum in

1816, along with the sculptures of the Parthenon, are the fine

Caryatid figure, and the very beautiful Ionic capitals, bases, and

fragments of shafts, from the double temple of the Erectheium and

Pandrosos at Athens,—part of which, like the Temple of Neptune, was

used by the Turks, in Lord ELGIN’S time, as a powder-magazine.

Acquisitions still more valuable than these were the grand fragment of

the colossal _Bacchus_ in feminine attire, which Lord ELGIN brought

from the Choragic monument of Thrasyllus; the statue of _Icarus_

(identified by comparison with a well-known low-relief in rosso antico

formerly preserved in the Albani Collection); and the noble series of

casts from the frieze of the Theseium and from that of the Choragic

monument of Lysicrates. The Collection also included many statues’

heads and fragments of great archæological interest, but of which the

original localities are for the most part unknown, and a considerable

series of sepulchral urns.

After the Elgin Marbles, the next important acquisition in the

Department of Antiquities was that made by the purchase, in 1819, of

the famous ‘_Apotheosis of Homer_.’ This marble had been found, almost

two centuries before, at Frattocchi (the ancient ‘Bovillæ’), about ten

miles from Rome on the Appian road, and had long been counted among

the choicest ornaments of the Colonna Palace. It cost the Trustees one

thousand pounds. Then, in 1825, came the noble bequest of Mr. Richard

Payne KNIGHT.

When the treasures of Mr. Payne KNIGHT came to be added to the several

Collections made, during the preceding fifty years, by HAMILTON,

TOWNELEY, and ELGIN, as well as to those which the British army had

won in Egypt, or which were due, in the main, to the research and

energy of our travelling fellow-countrymen, the national storehouse

may fairly be said to have passed from its nonage into maturity. The

Elgin Collection had, of itself, sufficed to lift the British Museum

into the first rank among its peers. But the antiquarian treasures of

the Museum showed many gaps. Some important additions, indeed, had

been made, from time to time, to the class of Egyptian antiquities.

And a small foundation had been laid of what is now the superb

Assyrian Gallery. Rich in certain classes of archæology, it remained,

nevertheless, poor in certain others. In 1825, it came to the front in

all.

[Sidenote: THE LIFE, WRITINGS, AND COLLECTIONS, OF R. PAYNE KNIGHT.]

Richard Payne KNIGHT is one of the many men who, in all probability,

would have attained more eminent and enduring distinction had he been

less impetuous and more concentrated in its pursuit. He went in for

all the honours. He aimed to be conspicuous, at once, as archæologist

and philosopher, critic and poet, politician and dictator-general in

matters of art and of taste. He was ready to give judgment, at any

moment, and without appeal, whether the question at issue concerned

the decoration of a landscape, the summing-up of the achievement of a

HOMER, or a PHIDIAS, or the system of the universe.

Mr. KNIGHT was born in 1749, and was the son of a landed man, of good

property, whose estates were chiefly in Wiltshire, and who possessed a

borough ‘interest’ in Ludlow. His constitution was so weakly, and his

chance of attaining manhood seemed so doubtful, that his father would

not allow him to go to any school, or to be put to much study at home.

It was only after his father’s death, and when he had entered his

fourteenth year, that his education can be said to have begun. Within

three years of his first appearance in any sort of school, he went

into Italy; substituting for the university the grand tour. Only when

he was approaching eighteen years of age did he fairly set to work to

learn Greek. But he studied it with a will, and to good purpose.

After remaining on the Continent about six or seven years, Mr. Payne

KNIGHT removed to England, and went to live at Downton Castle. He took

delight in the management of his land, proved himself to be a kind

landlord as well as a skilful one, and convinced his neighbours that a

man might love Greek and yet ride well to hounds. When returned to

Parliament for the neighbouring borough, he attached himself to the

Whigs, and more particularly to that section of them who supported

BURKE in his demands for economical reform. When in London, he gave

constant attention to his parliamentary duty, and when in the country,

foxhunting, hospitality, and the improvement of his estate, had their

fair share of his time. But, at all periods of life, his love of

reading was insatiable. When there was no hunting and no urgent

business, he could read for ten hours at a stretch.

He had reached his thirty-sixth year before he made the first

beginning of his museum of antiquities. The primitive acquisition was

a head, unknown—probably of _Diomede_—which was discovered at Rome in

1785. It is in brass, of early Greek work, and was bought of JENKINS.

Despite the doubt which exists as to the personage, there are many

known copies of this fine head upon ancient pastes and gems. In the

following year, Mr. KNIGHT made his first appearance as an author.

[Sidenote: EARLY WRITINGS OF MR. PAYNE KNIGHT.]

The _Inquiry into the remains of the Worship of Priapus, as existing

at Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples_, treated of a subject which

scarcely any one will now think to have been well chosen, as the first

fruits or earnest of a scholarly career. When a French critic said of

it ‘a maiden-work, but little virgin-like (_peu virginal_)’ he

expressed, pithily, the usual opinion of the very small circle of

readers at home to whom the book became known. The author eventually

called in the impression, so far as lay in his power, and the book is

now one of the many ‘rarities’ which might well be still more rare

than they are.

In 1791, he gave to the world another work on a classical subject

which possessed real value, and, amongst scholars, attracted much

attention. The _Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet_ is a treatise

which, in its day, rendered good service to grammatical learning, and

led to more. It was followed, in 1794, by _The Landscape, a Poem_.

‘The Landscape’ is an elaborate protest against the then fashionable

modes of gardening, which sought to ‘improve’ nature, almost as much

by replacement as by selection. On many points the poem is marked by

good sense and just thought, as well as by vigour of expression, but

its reasoning is far superior to its poetry. What is said of the

choice and growth of trees shows thorough knowledge of the subject and

true taste. But it needs no poet to convict ‘Capability BROWN’ of

ignorance in his own pursuit when he insisted on ‘the careful removal

of every token of decay’ as a cardinal maxim in landscape-gardening.

Such topics may well be left to plain prose.

The one notable feature in the poem which has still an interest is its

curious indication of that peculiarity in Mr. KNIGHT’S creed which

asserted—in relation both to the works of nature and to those of

art—that beauty is absolutely inconsistent with vastness. The

excessive love of the minute and delicate led Mr. KNIGHT into the

greatest practical error of his public life, as will be seen

presently. At this time it merely led him to the bold assertion that

no mountain ought to dare to lift its head so high as to—

‘Shame the high-spreading oak, or lofty tower.’

The lines which follow are, it will be seen, curiously prophetic of

that controversy about the Marbles of the Parthenon in which Mr. Payne

KNIGHT took so large a share:—

‘But as vain painters, destitute of skill,

Large sheets of canvas with large figures fill,

And think with shapes gigantic to supply

Grandeur of form, and grace of symmetry,

So the rude gazer ever thinks to find

The view sublime, when vast and undefined.

’Tis form, not magnitude, adorns the scene.

A hillock may be grand, and the vast Andes mean.

Oft have I heard the silly traveller boast

The grandeur of Ontario’s endless coast;

Where, far as he could dart his wandering eye,

He nought but boundless water could descry.

With equal reason, Keswick’s favoured pool

Is made the theme of every wondering fool.’

Within a few months, this poem—little as it is now remembered—went

through two editions. It was soon followed by a more ambitious flight.

In 1796, its author published ‘_The Progress of Civil Society; a

didactic poem_.’

The impression which had been made, in that day of feeble verse (as

far as the southern part of the realm is concerned), by _The

Landscape_, gained for _The Progress of Civil Society_ an amount of

attention of which it was intrinsically unworthy. The work deals with

social progress, and it treats the convictions dearest to Christian

men as being simply the conjectures of ‘presumptuous ignorance.’ It is

the work of a man who writes after nine generations of his ancestors

and countrymen have had a free and open Bible in their hands, and who

none the less puts the worship of Nature, and of her copyists, in the

place of the worship of Nature’s God. This ‘didactic poem’ is written

in the land of BACON, MILTON, and SHAKESPEARE, and it bases itself on

the ‘fifth book of LUCRETIUS.’

Not the least curious thing about the matter is the effect which was

wrought by Mr. KNIGHT’S poetic flight upon the mind of a brother

antiquarian. The work absolutely inspired Horace WALPOLE with a

serious and deep regret that he was consciously too near the grave to

undertake the defence of Christian philosophy against its new

assailant. Such a labour, from such a pen, would indeed have been a

curiosity of literature.

[Sidenote: HORACE WALPOLE ON THE ‘PROGRESS OF CIVIL SOCIETY,’ 1796.]

Feeling that for a man who was almost an octogenarian the tasks of

controversy would be too much, WALPOLE writes to MASON. He entreats

him to expose the daring poetaster. His earnestness in the matter

approaches passion. ‘I could not, without using too many words,’ he

says, ‘express to you how much I am offended and disgusted by Mr.

KNIGHT’S new, insolent, and self-conceited poem. Considering to what

height he dares to carry his insolent attack, it might be sufficient

to lump [together] all the rest of his impertinent sallies ... as

trifling peccadillos.... The vanity of supposing that his

authority—the authority of a trumpery prosaic poetaster—was sufficient

to re-establish the superannuated atheism of LUCRETIUS!... I cannot

engage in an open war with him.... Weak and broken as I am, tottering

to the grave at some months past seventy-eight, I have not spirits or

courage enough to tap a paper war.’

WALPOLE then adverts to a foregone thought, on MASON’S part, to have

taken up the foils on the appearance of _The Landscape_. ‘I ardently

wish,’ he says, ‘you had overturned and expelled out of gardens this

new Priapus, who is only fit to be erected in the Palais de

l’Egalité.’ [Sidenote: Horace Walpole to William Mason, March 22, 1796

(_Letters_; Coll. Edit., vol. ix, p. 462).] And he urges his

correspondent not to let the present occasion slip. Irony and

ridicule, he thinks, would be weapons quite sufficient to overthrow

this ‘Knight of the Brazen Milk-Pot.’

The last thrust was unkind indeed. It was hard that our Collector,

whatever his other demerits, should be reproached for his passion to

gather small bronzes, by the builder and furnisher of Strawberry-Hill.

For, amidst all his devotion to poetry and pantheism, Mr. KNIGHT

carried on the pursuits of connoisseurship with insatiable ardour.

[Sidenote: _Spec. of Ancient Sculp._, pl. 55 and 56.] Among the

choicer acquisitions which speedily followed the _Diomede_[?]

purchased in 1785, were the mystical _Bacchus_—a bronze of the

Macedonian period—found near Aquila in 1775; a colossal head of

_Minerva_, found near Rome by Gavin HAMILTON; and a figure of

_Mercury_ of great beauty. The last-named bronze had been found, in

1732, at Pierre-Luisit, in the Pays de Bugey and diocese of Lyons.

[Sidenote: _Ib._, 33, 34.] A dry rock had sheltered the little figure

from injury, so that it retained the perfection of its form, as if it

had but just left the sculptor’s hand. It passed through the hands of

three French owners in succession before it was sold to Mr. KNIGHT, by

the last of them, at the beginning of the Reign of Terror.

The year 1792, in which he acquired this much-prized ‘Mercury,’ is

also the date of a remarkable discovery of no less than nineteen

choice bronzes in one hoard, at Paramythia, in Epirus. They had, in

all probability, been buried during nearly two thousand years. The

story of the find is, in itself, curious. [Sidenote: THE HOARD OF

BRONZES FOUND AT PARAMYTHIA, IN EPIRUS.] It shows too, in relief, the

energy and perseverance which Mr. KNIGHT brought to his work of

collectorship, and in which he was so much better employed—both for

himself and for his country—than in philosophising upon human

progress, from the standpoint of LUCRETIUS.

Some incident or other of the weather had disclosed appearances which

led, fortuitously, to a search of the ground into which these bronzes

had been cast—perhaps during the invasion of Epirus, _B.C._ 167—and,

by the finder, they were looked upon as so much saleable metal.

Bought, as old brass, by a coppersmith of Joannina, they presently

caught the eye of a Greek merchant, who called to mind that he had

seen similar figures shown as treasures in a museum at Moscow. He made

the purchase, and sent part of it, on speculation, to St. Petersburgh.

The receiver brought them to the knowledge of the Empress CATHERINE,

who intimated that she would buy, but died before the acquisition was

paid for. They were then shared, it seems, between a Polish

connoisseur and a Russian dealer. One bronze was brought to London by

a Greek dragoman and shown to Mr. KNIGHT, who eagerly secured it,

heard the story of the discovery, and sent an agent into Russia, who

succeeded in obtaining nine or ten of the sculptures found at

Paramythia. Two others were given to Mr. KNIGHT by Lord ABERDEEN, who

had met with them in his travels. They were all of early Greek work.

Amongst them are figures of _Serapis_, of _Apollo Didymæus_, of

_Jupiter_, and of one of the _Sons of Leda_. All these have been

engraved among the _Specimens of Ancient Sculpture_, published by the

Society of Dilettanti.

Few sources of acquisition within the limits which he had laid down

for himself escaped Mr. Payne KNIGHT’S research. He kept up an active

correspondence with explorers and dealers. He watched Continental

sales, and explored the shops of London brokers, with like assiduity.

Coins, medals, and gems, shared with bronzes, and with the original

drawings of the great masters of painting, in his affectionate

pursuit.

In his search for bronzes he welcomed choice and characteristic works

from Egypt and from Etruria, as well as the consummate works of Greek

genius. His numismatic cabinet was also comprehensive, but its Greek

coins were pre-eminent. For works in marble he had so little relish

that he actually persuaded himself, by degrees, that the greatest

artists of antiquity rarely ‘condescended’ to touch marble. But he

collected a small number of busts in that material.

For one volume of drawings by CLAUDE, Mr. KNIGHT gave the sum of

sixteen hundred pounds.

Among his later acquisitions of sculpture in brass was the very

beautiful _Mars_ in Homeric armour. This figure was brought to England

by Major BLAGRAVE in 1813. The _Bacchic Mask_ (No. 35, in the second

volume of the _Specimens_) was found, in the year 1674, near Nimeguen,

in a stone coffin. It was preserved by the Jesuits of Lyons, in their

Collegiate Museum, until their dissolution. From them it passed into

the possession of Mr. Roger WILBRAHAM, from whom Mr. KNIGHT obtained

it.

[Sidenote: THE INQUIRY INTO THE SYMBOLISM OF GREEK ART AND MYTHOLOGY.]

On the thorough study of the fine Collection which had been gathered

from so many sources—here indicated by but a scanty sample—and on that

of other choice Collections both at home and abroad, Mr. KNIGHT based

the most elaborate—perhaps the most valuable—work of his life, next to

his Museum itself. The _Inquiry into the Symbolism of Greek Art and

Mythology_ bears, indeed, too many traces of the narrowness of the

author’s range of thought, whenever he leaves the purely artistic

criticism of which he was, despite his limitations, a master, in order

to dissertate on the interdependence or on the ‘priestcraft’ of the

religions of the world. But his genuine lore cannot be concealed by

his flimsy philosophy. The student will gain from the _Inquiry_ real

knowledge about ancient art. He will find, indeed, not a few

statements which the author himself would be the first to modify in

the light of the new information of the last fifty years. But he will

also find much which, in its time, proved to be suggestive and

fruitful to other minds, and which prepared the way for wider and

deeper studies. It may do so yet. The book is one which the student of

archæology cannot afford to overlook. Whilst he may well afford a

passing smile at the philosophic insight which prompted our author’s

eulogies (1) upon the ‘liberal and humane spirit which still prevails

among those nations whose religion is founded upon the principle of

emanations;’ (2) upon the wisdom of the ‘Siamese, who shun disputes,

and believe that almost all religions are good;’ [Sidenote: _Inquiry_,

&c., p. 19.] (3) on the supreme fitness of the idolatries of India ‘to

call forth the ideal perfections of art, by expanding and exalting the

imagination of the artist;’ or (4) upon the exceptional and

pre-eminent capacity of the Hindoos to become ‘the most virtuous and

happy of the human race,’ but for that one solitary misfortune which

cursed them with a priesthood.[65]

[Sidenote: THE DISSERTATION ON ANCIENT SCULPTURE.]

The _Inquiry into Symbolism_ was, at first, printed only for private

circulation, in 1818. It was afterwards reprinted in the _Classical

Journal_, with some corrections by the author. It was again reprinted,

after his death, as an appendix to the second volume of the _Specimens

of Ancient Sculpture_.

To the first volume of that work Mr. Payne KNIGHT had already prefixed

his _Preliminary Dissertation on the Progress of Ancient Sculpture_.

After showing that of Phœnician art we have no real knowledge other

than that which is to be derived from the study of coins, and that

thence it may be learnt that the Phœnicians had artisans, but not

artists, he goes on to survey Greek art in its successive phases. That

art, at its best, finds, he thinks, a typical expression, or summary,

in the saying ascribed to LYSIPPUS: ‘It is for the sculptor to

represent men as they seem to be, not as they really are.’ He dates

the culmination of Greek sculpture as ranging between the years _B.C._

450 and 400, and as due to the national pride and energy which were

excited by the defeat of XERXES and the events which followed. He

thinks that what was gained, by the artists of the next half-century,

in ideal grace, and in the fluent refinements of workmanship, was

obtained only by a loss of energy, of characteristic expression, and

of originality—the εθος of art. In the works of LYSIPPUS and his

school (_B.C._ 350–300), he sees a brief resuscitation of the vigour

of the former period, combined with much more than the grace of the

latter, to be followed only too swiftly by those desolating wars ‘in

which the temples were destroyed, their treasures of art pillaged, and

artists, for the first time, saw their works perish before

themselves.’

In the ‘_Dissertation_,’ as in the ‘_Inquiry_,’ there are many

statements and many reasonings to which subsequent discoveries have

brought a tacit correction. [Sidenote: MR. PAYNE KNIGHT AND THE ELGIN

MARBLES.] The passage in the former about the Elgin Marbles had to be

corrected by the evidence of the author’s own eyesight. His

examination before the Commons’ Committee of 1816 was an amusing

scene. The key-note was struck by the witness’s first words. To the

question ‘Have you seen the marbles brought to England by Lord ELGIN?’

he replied, ‘Yes. I have looked them over.’ But on this point, enough

has been said already in a previous page.

Both to the _Edinburgh Review_ and to the _Classical Journal_ Mr.

KNIGHT was a frequent and valuable contributor. It was in the latter

periodical that his Prolegomena to HOMER were first given to the

world, although he had printed a small edition (limited to fifty

copies) for private circulation, as early as in the year 1808.[66] His

latest poetical work, the Romance of _Alfred_, I have never had the

opportunity of reading.

Richard Payne KNIGHT died on the twenty-fourth of April, 1824, in the

75th year of his age. He bequeathed his whole Collections to the

British Museum, of which he had long been a zealous and faithful

Trustee. He made no conditions, other than that his gift should be

commemorated by the addition to the Trust of a perpetual KNIGHT

‘Family Trustee.’

For this purpose a Bill was introduced into Parliament by Lord

COLCHESTER on the eighth of June. It received the royal assent on the

seventeenth.

The addition of Mr. KNIGHT’S Greek Coins made the British Museum

superior, in that department, to the Royal Museum of Paris; the

addition of his bronzes raised it above the famous Museum of Naples.

By the most competent judges it has been estimated that, if the

Collection had been sold by public auction, Mr. KNIGHT’S

representatives would probably have obtained for it the sum of sixty

thousand pounds.

-----

Footnote 1:

Sir Robert’s father was the fourth ‘Thomas Cotton of Conington,’ and

fifth Lord of that manor of the Cotton family. The marriage of

William Cotton with the eventual heiress of the Huntingdonshire

Bruces was contracted about the year 1450.

Footnote 2:

‘By this woman the Earldom of Huntingdon and the Lordship of

Conington came to the Crown of Scotland.’-_MS. Note by Sir R.

Cotton_, in ‘Harl. 807.’

Footnote 3:

From the COTTON ROLL XIV, 6 [by SEGAR, CAMDEN, and ST. GEORGE];

compared with MS. Harl. 807, fol. 95, and with MS. LANSD., 863,

containing the Heraldic Collections of R. ST. GEORGE, Norroy, Vol.

III, fol. 82 verso.

Footnote 4:

Here, if we accepted Cotton’s authorship of the _Twenty-four

Arguments, whether it be more expedient to suppress Popish

Practices, &c._, published in the _Cottoni Posthuma_, by James

Howell, we should have to add that ‘he travelled on the Continent

and passed many months in Italy.’ But that tract is _not_

Cotton’s—though ascribed to him by so able and careful an historian

as Mr. S. R. Gardiner (_Archæologia_, vol. xli. Comp. _Prince

Charles and the Spanish Marriage, &c._, vol. i, p. 32). That its

real author was in Italy is plain, from his own statement ‘I

remember that in Italy it was often told me,’ &c.; and, again: ‘In

Rome itself I have heard the English fugitive taxed,’ &c.,

_Posthuma_, pp. 126, seqq. Dr. Thomas Smith put a question as to

this implied visit of Sir Robert to Italy to his grandson, Sir John

Cotton, who assured him that no such visit was known to any of the

family; by all of whom it was believed that their eminent antiquary

never set foot out of Britain. Smith’s words are these:—

... ‘D. Joannes Cottonus hac de re a me literis consultus, se de

isthoc avi sui itinere Italico ne verbum quidem a Patre suo edoctum

fuisse respondit.... Cottonum usum et cognitionem linguæ Italicæ a

Joanne Florio ... anno 1610 addidicisse ex ejusdem literis ad

Cottonum scriptis, mihi certo constat.’ _Vita_, p. xvii.

Footnote 5:

The story which, has been told—on the authority of one of John

Chamberlain’s letters to Carleton (April, 1612) that ‘Sir Robert

Cotton was sent out of the way’ at a time when certain claims of the

Baronets were to be definitively heard at the Council Board, ‘in

order that he might not produce records in their favour,’ rests on

mere rumour. Charles, Lancaster Herald, wrote to Cotton immediately

before the hearing in these terms: ‘On Saturday next the final

determination is expected, if some troublesome spirit do not hinder;

which end I wish were well made, and am glad that you are not seen

in it at this time.’—Cotton MS., Julius, C. iii, f. 86.

Footnote 6:

‘Tambien me dijo que el Conde de Somerset havia puesto todo su resto

en este negocio, y ganado el Duque de Lenox, ... aventurandose el

Conde ... a ganarse y asegurarse si se hazia, o a perderse si no se

hacia; concluyendo esta platica el Coton con decirme que el estava

loco de contento de ver esto en este estado, porque no pretendia ni

desseava otra cosa mas que vivir y morir publicamente Catolico, como

sus padres y abuelos lo havian sido.’—_Gardiner Transcripts of MSS.

at Simancas_, vol. i, p. 102 (MS.).

Footnote 7:

Mr. S. R. Gardiner. His account is contained in the able paper

entitled _On Certain Letters of the Count of Gondomar giving an

Account of the Affair of the Earl of Somerset_, read to the Society

of Antiquaries in 1867. Comp. the same historian’s _Prince Charles

and the Spanish Marriage_ (Vol. I, c. 1, and especially the passage

beginning ‘Sarmiento was _surprised by a visit from Sir Robert

Cotton_,’ and so on). In these pages I use Sarmiento’s subsequent

title of ‘Gondomar,’ simply because English readers are more

familiar with it than with the Spaniard’s family name. Mr. Gardiner

needlessly deepens the stain on Cotton’s memory, arising—all

allowance duly made—out of this intercourse with Gondomar, by the

remark that ‘twenty months before’ the interview occurred, Sir

Robert had ‘argued his case’ [_i. e._ a tract on the question of the

right treatment, by the State, of Romanist priests and recusants]

‘from a decidedly Protestant point of view, and had taken care to

put himself forward as a thorough, if not an extreme, Protestant.’

But, unfortunately for Mr. Gardiner’s trenchant conclusion on that

point, the pamphlet he refers to—by whomsoever written—was certainly

_not_ written by Sir Robert Cotton.

Footnote 8:

‘[Then the Duke] came to the Relation of Sir Robert Cotton [of the

intercourse] that he had with the Spanish Ambassador in 1614 [O.S.].

The Spanish Ambassador came to his house pretending [a desire] to

see his rarities. On the 10th of February he acquainted His Majesty

with it. Somerset [had] warrant then to sound the life of the

intention. [Gondomar] told him he doubted he had no warrant to set

any such thing on foot. [On the] 16th of March the Spanish

Ambassador dealt with him and endeavoured to make Somerset Spanish,

and to further this match. [He] answered him that there were divers

rubs and difficulties in it. [On the] 9th of April he gave

[Gondomar] a pill in a paper—viz. three reasons: If the King of

Spain would not urge unreasonable things in Religion, then,’ &c. [as

in Gondomar’s letter, which I have already quoted]. ‘Afterwards Sir

Robert Cotton was questioned [for shewing] to the Ambassador of

Spain a packet [received] from Spain.... [In the year] 1616, His

Majesty told Sir Robert Cotton that Gondomar had counterfeited those

letters, and that he was a “juggling jack.”’ Here Sir Edward Coke

interposed. He was one of the Managers of the Conference for the

Commons. He spoke thus: ‘This matter has a little relation to me. I

committed Sir Robert Cotton, when I was Chief Justice. For I

understood he had intelligence with the Spanish Ambassador, and

questioned him for it. _For no subject ought to converse with

Ambassadors without the King’s leave._ For the offence [for which] I

committed him [Sir Robert had] afterwards his general pardon from

the King.’ _Journals of the House of Commons_, 4 March, 1624. Vol.

I, pp. 727, 728.

Footnote 9:

‘... Por diferentes vias le confirmado que contra el Conde

[Somerset] no se averigua cosa de sustancia en lo de la muerte del

Ovarberi; y de la del Principe [Henry, Prince of Wales,] no ha

permetido el Rey que se hable en ella; y todo lo demas probado hasta

agora viene a parar en que dio un decreto antes que le prendiesen,

para recojer unos papeles, diziendo que era orden del Rey, sin

haverla tenido para ello. Fue lo que causo su prision, y el aver

entregado despues todos los papeles que tenia de importancia, con

algunas joyas, a un amigo suyo [Sir Robert Cotton], para que lo

guardase que se coxieron. _Y el Rey ha sentido infinito que se ayan

visto algunos papeles que havia suyos para el Conde, ... y assi

carga agora toda la yra sobre el Conde_,’ &c. Gondomar to Philip

III,—Simancas MS. 2595, f. 23; and in _Archæologia_ (by Gardiner),

vol. xli, p. 29.

Footnote 10:

On this point, it is my wish to leave the reader to form his own

estimate of probabilities. _Probabilities_, only, are attainable;

and I have no side to take, in any attempt to weigh them. But it may

be well to ask the reader’s attention to a passage in the Diary of a

contemporary of Sir R. Cotton, a man of high character, and one who

sat by Cotton’s side in Parliament, fighting with him for the

liberties of England, during many years; one who is also remarkable

for speaking about the faults of his friends with abundant candour.

‘Sir Robert Cotton, being highly esteemed by the Earl of

Somerset, ... _was acquainted with this murder [of Overbury] by him,

a little before it now came to light_, and had advised him what he

took to be the best course for his safety.’ This passage occurs in

the private diary of Sir Symonds D’Ewes—‘a man,’ says a great

writer, ‘of somewhat Grandisonian ways,’ a man of ‘scrupulous

Puritan integrity, of high flown conscientiousness, ... ambitious to

be the pink of Christian country gentlemen,’ (Carlyle’s _Essays_,

iv, 297.) This ‘scrupulous Puritan’ knew all that was current about

the terrible ‘Great Oyer of Poisoning,’ as Sir Edward Coke called

it. He lived in familiar intercourse with Cotton, and regarded their

long acquaintance as an honour to himself; whilst speaking freely

about certain social habits and limitations—neither Grandisonian or

Puritanic—on Cotton’s part, as precluding their intercourse from

ripening into that close friendship which such a man as D’Ewes could

form only with men likeminded with himself on the highest interests

of humanity. Is it not easy to infer—and is not the inference also

inevitable—that by the fact of Somerset ‘acquainting Cotton with the

murder of Overbury a little before’ it became public, and advising

him as to ‘the course for his safety,’ D’Ewes understood such a

communication and such advice as are entirely compatible with

Somerset’s innocence of his wife’s crime?

Footnote 11:

Such is the title in _Cottoni Posthuma_. In MS. Harl. 180—apparently

given by Cotton himself to Sir S. D’Ewes—the title is ‘_A

Declaration against the Matche_,’ &c. In that copy, this note occurs

at the end, in Sir Symonds’ hand:—‘Thus far only, as Sir Robert

Cotton himself told me, he proceeded; leaving the rest to be

added ... according to the relation ... declared before the greater

part of both Houses by ... the Duke of Buckingham.’—_MS. Harl._ 180,

fol. 169.

Footnote 12:

There is another MS. of this speech, _in Sir John Eliot’s hand_, in

the library at Port Eliot. See Forster’s _Life of Eliot_, Vol. I, p.

413.

Footnote 13:

It has been printed by Howell in the _Cottoni Posthuma_ of 1651, pp.

283–294; and is followed by _The Answer of the Committees appointed

by Your Lordships to the Propositions delivered by some Officers of

the Mint for inhauncing His Majesties monies of gold and silver_.

The ‘_Answer_’ as well as the speech, appears to be from Sir

Robert’s pen.

Footnote 14:

_Registers of the Privy Council_, James I, vol. v, pp. 484, 485,

489; Nov. 3–5, 1629. (C. O.) _Domestic Correspondence_, James I,

vol. cli, § 24, § 69, _seqq._, and vol. clii, § 78, _seqq._ In this

last-named document the following passage occurs. The writer is

Richard James, who for very many years was Librarian to Sir Robert

Cotton, and he is writing to Secretary Lord Dorchester.—‘About July

last, I was willed by Sir Robert Cotton to carry him [Mr. Oliver

Saint John] into the Upper Study and there let him make search among

some bundles of papers for business of the Sewers.... If he (St.

John) did make any mention of a projecting pamphlet there pretended

to be found, so God save me as I entered into no further

conversation of it. Neither can I believe that any such as this now

questioned was ever in keeping with us, or ever seen by Sir R.

Cotton until, of late, he received it from my Lord of Clare. For

myself, let not God be merciful unto me if, before that time, I ever

saw, heard, or thought of it’ (R. James to Dorchester, vol. 152, §

78). (R. H.) There is also some further information on the subject

in MS. Harl. 7000, ff. 267, _seqq._ (B. M.) A considerable number of

the letters of Richard James to Sir Robert Cotton, his friend and

benefactor, are preserved in MS. Harl. 7002. But these throw no

satisfactory light on the incident of 1629. I believe, however, that

to an observant reader they will be likely to suggest the idea that

Richard James knew more than he was willing that Sir Robert should

know. The letters are without dates, after the fashion of the times,

and this adds to their obscurity. But one thing is plain. The writer

ran away from London, either when he knew that the first inquiry was

imminent or thought it probable that a renewed inquiry would be set

on foot. In one of these letters, after many professions of

attachment, he writes thus: ‘From you, at this time, I should not

have parted, _if the exigence and penurie of my life had not forc’d

a silent retreat into myself, and my owne home at Corpus Christi

College_;’ and then, a fit of poesy—such as it was—coming over him,

he ends his letter metrically, as thus:

‘The poore young Russian youth, that slave

Was to the Prince, and trustie knave

To my deere Harrie Wilde, when wee

Forsooke that Northern Barbarie,

Loe bending at my feete did saye

Thancks for my love, and kindely praye,

His evills that I would not beare

In minde,—the which none, truely, were.

This youth I well remember, and

In neere, loe, manner kisse your hand;

Hoping, of gentle courtesie,

You will no worse remember me.’

—MS. Harl. 7002, f. 118.

Footnote 15:

And as, it must be remembered, Cotton himself believed.

Footnote 16:

Curiously enough, part of these documents, so carefully brought

together by Sir Robert Cotton, remained with the Cottonian MSS., and

part of them were severed from that collection for more than two

centuries. Their recovery is one of the smallest of the innumerable

obligations which the Department of MSS. owes to the care and

far-spread researches of the late Keeper, Sir Frederick Madden.

Footnote 17:

It is COTTONIAN MS., Vitellius, c. 17, ff. 380, _seqq._

Footnote 18:

Verses entitled _Sir Philip Sydney lying on his Deathbed_; in MS.

Chetham 8012 (Chetham Library, Manchester).

Footnote 19:

I had noted some of these as worthy, by way of sample, to be

printed. But the reduced limits of my book (as compared with its

plan) have compelled the omission of much illustrative matter which

had been carefully prepared for insertion, and which, as I hope,

would have been found to merit the attention of the reader. I will

find room, however, to mention one little fact connected with the

famous Evangeliary marked ‘Nero D. vi.’ The reader probably

remembers Sir Robert COTTON’S fruitless perambulation of the aisle

of Westminster Abbey, with that splendid MS. in his hands, on the

day of the Coronation of Charles the First. It seems likely that the

anecdote was told to Charles the Second when, at length, a like

ceremony was to take place for him. Be that as it may, he

sent—before he had been many days in England—a confidential servant

to borrow the book from Sir Thomas. And the fact of the loan stands

recorded on a fly-leaf, by the King’s intermediary, in honour ‘of

the most noble Sir Thomas COTTON, the starre of learning and

honestie.’ The MS., I may add, is one of those which came to Sir

Robert from Dethick (Garter). It bears Dethick’s autograph with the

date ‘1603’ and Cotton’s, ‘1608.’ Besides the Four Gospels it

contains _Processus factus ad Coronationem Regis Ricardi Secundi_,

and _Modus tenendi Parliamentum_. For some momentary fancy or other

Sir Robert took out of another superb MS. of his—the _Psalter_ of

King Henry the Sixth—a small but beautiful miniature, and made of it

a vignette for this Ethelstan volume. So it continued to remain for

two hundred and forty years, when Sir Frederick Madden restored the

miniature to its more legitimate place (Domitian A. xvii, fol. 96*.)

Had this Nero volume chanced to have been scrutinized at the moment

when it was Sir Robert’s fate to be stigmatized as ‘an embezzler of

records,’ it is very possible that it might have been called to bear

witness for the charge. For it is undeniable that the ‘RO. COTTON

BRUCEUS’ is written _over an erasure_. (The signature occurs on the

beautiful dedicatory page—‘_Beatissimo Papæ Damaso Hieronymus_.’)

But, fortunately, the descent of the book can be traced clearly.

Footnote 20:

Take, for example, these few lines: ‘Sweete Sainte whome I soley

addore,—at whooes srine I offer myself; I reseived your loving

lines.... Without them, I could not live at all;—being deprived of

your blessed sight, ... I live yet, but most miserably. Use means,

if it be possible, that we may come to the speech of one another;

and the Heavens of Hope may be yet auspitious unto us.... Those

deviles have again been writing letters unto my mother.’ In 1679, it

would seem, the two ardent lovers were kept in a sort of honourable

imprisonment. On COTTON’S coming to Cotton House, in the spring of

that year, an upper servant of the family writes thus to a

correspondent: ‘I advised him to call for money; take a coach and go

about to take the air, and to visit his friends that are in or about

the town; and not to be mewed up in a room, without money or

company.’—John SQUIRES, to a person unnamed; in _Appendix to Cotton

MSS._ ‘16, 1.’ (B. M.)

Footnote 21:

By this William HANBURY, son-in-law of John COTTON (great grandson

of the Founder), many COTTON MSS. were alienated—partly by sale and

partly by gift—to Robert, Earl of OXFORD. _See_ hereafter, Chapter

Footnote 22:

Stukeley’s _Itinerary of Great Britain_ (2nd edit. 1776).

Footnote 23:

Some of the burnt MSS., regarded, until Mr. Forshall’s time, as

hopelessly illegible, have been found very helpful to the

preparation of the volume now in the reader’s hands.

Footnote 24:

I have dwelt, somewhat protractedly, on this one interesting point

in Cotton’s history,—pressing as are the limits prescribed to this

volume,—under the belief that many readers will bear in mind that

Sir Robert’s misfortune beneath the recent disinterment of

ambassadorial despatches, written to foreign courts, is _not_ an

exceptional misfortune. Sir Walter Ralegh has fared still worse, in

Mr. Gardiner’s able hands, by being held up to public scorn as a

knavish liar, upon the uncorroborated testimony of certain avowed

and bitter enemies of England. See _Prince Charles and the Spanish

Marriage_ (1869), vol. i, Chaps. 1 and 2, _passim_. Readers of the

admirable _History of England_ by Mr. Froude—and who has not read

that history?—will easily call to mind several not dissimilar

instances. Nor is it at all surprising that it should be so. The

most warily judicial of intellects can never be quite independent of

that factitious charm which there will always be—over and above the

legitimate charm—in telling an old story from an entirely new point

of view. If, besides the attraction of mere novelty, there should

chance to have been a keen burst of search over a difficult country,

before the eager searcher could succeed in running down his quarry,

he would be more than human if, in the moment of victory, he could

weigh and balance with exact precision the real value of the

hard-won spoil. At present, historians are too keenly chasing after

new evidence to be able to estimate quite fairly its relative

importance or net result. The most part both of writers and of

readers are far too busy over newly-discovered materials to adjust

with any approach to impartial fairness the vital question of

comparative credibility. But the time for doing _that_ must needs

come, by and bye. Meanwhile, the fame of not a few of our old and

true worthies will—in all probability—suffer some degree of

momentary eclipse; just as that of Ralegh and Cotton has suffered.

Footnote 25:

The word ‘hope’ or some like expression, seems here to have been

intended, but omitted. The repetition of the word ‘shortlie’ will

sufficiently indicate to the reader the haste with which this

effusion was written,—just as the King was about to mount for the

long looked-for journey southwards. The letter has been printed by

Birch, but with amendments.

Footnote 26:

It was not strictly a ‘launch.’ The vessel had been built expressly

for the Prince, at Chatham, and was brought thence to London to be

named with the usual ceremonies.

Footnote 27:

He was removed to the Fleet Prison ten days afterwards.

Footnote 28:

In dealing with royal letters it is, of course, necessary to keep in

mind how largely the vicarious element is apt to enter into their

composition. Those, however, that are quoted in the text seem to

have a plain stamp of individuality upon them.

Footnote 29:

That Llanthony, in Monmouthshire, the purchase of which in the

present century gave rise to so singular a chapter in the history of

Landor, and whose charms, in retrospect, prompted the lines—

‘Llanthony! an ungenial clime,

And the broad wing of restless Time,

Have rudely swept thy massy walls,

And rockt thy Abbots in their palls.

I loved thee, by thy streams of yore;

By distant streams, I love thee more.’

Footnote 30:

Part of Lord Northampton’s large estates came eventually to Lord

Arundel by bequest. He also inherited Northampton’s house at

Greenwich, and occasionally resided there, until its destruction by

fire in January, 1616. Chamberlain’s account of the incident, given

to Sir Dudley Carleton, is worth quotation for the comment with

which it ends: ‘There fell a great mischance to the Earl of Arundel

by the burning of his house ... at Greenwich, where he lost a great

deal of household stuff and rich furniture; the fury of the fire

being such that nothing could be saved. No doubt the Papists will

ascribe and publish it as a punishment for his deserting or falling

from them.’ Ten days before the fire, Arundel had testified,

publicly, his conformity with the Church of England. But he had

shewn long before that his religious views and convictions differed

widely from those in which he had been brought up.

Footnote 31:

The question was complicated by opposition offered by the Lord

Keeper Williams to the terms in which Lord Arundel’s patent was

originally drawn. The relations between Arundel and Buckingham were

never cordial, and the Lord Keeper seems to have profited by that

circumstance to make his opposition to the pension effectual. It is

probable that he had good grounds for so much of his objection as

related to certain powers proposed to be vested in the Earl

Marshal’s court. But on that point Arundel’s views eventually

prevailed—until the time of the Long Parliament. The Lord Keeper’s

letter is printed in _Cabala_, p. 285.

Footnote 32:

‘In my deare lorde I long since placed my true affection and

love.... Had I manie lives I would have adventured them all.’ _Lady

Maltravers to the Earl of Arundel_, 6 Feb., 1626 (MS. Harl., 1581,

f. 390).

Footnote 33:

It has been estimated, on competent evidence, that for every one

thousand pounds which the Earl’s estates in England contributed

towards his personal and household expenditure, in exile,

twenty-seven thousand pounds were so contributed towards the

maintenance, in one form or other, of the royalist cause. Such an

estimate can, of course, only be approximative. But it has obvious

significance and value.

Footnote 34:

See the details in Lords’ Report on Gregg’s case; reprinted in

_State Trials_, vol. xiv, cols. 1378 seqq.

Footnote 35:

In the interval between June, 1707 (after the Union with Scotland),

and February, 1708, the following entries occur in the Council

Books:—

‘1 July, 1707. The Rt. Hon. Robert Harley, one of Her Majesty’s

principal Secretaries of State, delivered up the old signet of

office—which was thereupon broken before Her Majesty—and received a

new one by the Queen’s command.’ The entry is followed by the

note:—‘This order was thus drawn by Mr. Harley’s particular

direction.’ (_Register of Privy Council_, Anne, vol. iii, p. 395.)

‘8 January, 170⅞. The Rt. Hon. R. Harley, ... having this day

presented to Her Majesty in her Privy Council a new signet with

supporters, Her Majesty was pleased to deliver it back to him,

whereupon he returned to Her Majesty the old signet, which was

immediately defaced,’ &c. (Ib., p. 485.)

Footnote 36:

Swift’s account of their first interview after Harley’s partial

recovery merits quotation:—‘I went in the evening,’ he notes on the

5th of April, ‘to see Mr. Harley. Mr. Secretary was just going out

of the door, but I made him come back; and there was the old

Saturday club, Lord Keeper [Harcourt], Lord Rivers, Mr. Secretary,

Mr. Harley, and I; the first time since his stabbing. Mr. Secretary

went away, but I stayed till nine, and made Mr. Harley show me his

breast and tell all his story.... I measured and found that the

penknife would have killed him, if it had gone but half the breadth

of my thumb-nail lower; so near was he to death. I was so curious as

to ask him what were his thoughts while they were carrying him home

in the chair. He said he concluded himself a dead man.’—_Journal to

Stella_, as before, pp. 255, 256.

Footnote 37:

The original letters of the Elector to Harley are in Lansdowne MS.

1236, ff. 272–294. They range, in date, from 15 December, 1710, to

15 June, 1714. There also are several letters (in autograph) of the

Electress Sophia. The earliest of these bears date 26 May, 1707. The

latest is undated, but was written in May, 1714, very few days

before the writer’s death.

Footnote 38:

The chief passages in the Stuart Correspondence upon which a

confident assertion has been based of his ultimate complicity in the

Jacobite conspiracies are given, textually, in a note at the end of

this chapter.

Footnote 39:

Thus, for example, at one stage of the proceedings before the Privy

Council about Barbadoes, we find the Lord Keeper Coventry reporting

to the Board upon an order of reference: ‘I am of opinion that

Barbadoes is not one of the Caribbee Islands.... But ... I am also

of opinion that the proof on Lord Carlisle’s part that Barbadoes was

intended to be passed in his Patent is very strong.’—_Colonial

Papers_, April 18, 1629, vol. v, § 11. See also The King to

Wolverton, _Ib._, § 13.

Footnote 40:

His eldest son, Peter Courten, had married a daughter of Lord

Stanhope of Harrington, and died without issue. Sir William Courten

bought the widow’s jointure of £1200 a year by the present payment

of £10,000, according to a statement in MS. Sloane, 3515.

Footnote 41:

‘Hoc excepto quod scilicet qui se jacturam passos dicunt in duabus

navibus ... poterunt litem inceptam prosequi.’—_Treaty of Commerce_

of 1662.

Footnote 42:

After elaborate inquiries in the Admiralty Court the losses were

certified as amounting to £151,612; and that assessment was adopted

in a subsequent Commission under the Great Seal.

Footnote 43:

This, of course, is the statement, _ex parte_, of the claimants.

Footnote 44:

This allusion I am unable to explain. It is quite an exceptional

phrase in the Courten correspondence. But, possibly, ‘station’ may

be understood as meaning merely place of residence.

Footnote 45:

This volume undoubtedly passed into the Sloane Collection, but is

not so described as to be identified quite satisfactorily.

Footnote 46:

The fact is unquestionably so, although upon his tomb it is said

that his age was sixty-two years, eleven months, and twenty-eight

days. The same inaccurate statement occurs also—and more than

once—in papers written by Sir Hans Sloane. Courten was born on the

28th March, 1642. There is an entry of his baptism in the Register

of St. Gabriel, Fenchurch, on the 31st of the same month; and a copy

of it in MS. Sloane, 3515, fol. 53.

Footnote 47:

Staphorst was, by birth, a German. He is known in English literature

as the translator of Rauwolf’s _Travels in Asia_. This task he

undertook upon Sloane’s recommendation.

Footnote 48:

As, for example, under the words ‘_Lapathum_;’ _Poonnacai

Malabarorum_; ‘_Ricinus_;’ ‘_Salix_;’ and several others. See

_Almagesti Botanici Mantissa_, pp. 113; 143; 161; 165, &c.

Footnote 49:

Dr. Arthur Charlett’s long and intimate correspondence with Sir Hans

Sloane began in this year (1696), and continued without interruption

until 1720. It has much interest, and fills MS. Sloane 4040, from f.

193 to f. 285. That with John Chamberlayne was of nearly equal

duration, and is preserved in the same volume (ff. 100–167). The

correspondence with James Bobart contains much valuable material for

the history of botanical study in England, and is preserved in MS.

Sloane, 4037 (ff. 158–185). It began in 1685, and was continued

until Bobart’s death, in 1716. Still more curious is the

correspondence with John Burnet (1722–1738), who was originally a

surgeon in the service of the East India Company, and afterwards

Surgeon to the King of Spain. Burnet’s letters to Sloane, written

from Madrid, contain valuable illustrations of Spanish society and

manners as they were in the first half of the Eighteenth Century.

This correspondence is in MS. Sloane, 4039.

Footnote 50:

_History of Europe_ [the precursor of the _Annual Register_], for

1712.

Footnote 51:

‘Here are great designs on foot for uniting the Queen’s Library, the

Cotton, and the Royal Society’s, together. How soon they may be put

in practice time must discover.’—_Sloane to Dr. Charlett, Master of

University College_, April, 1707.

Footnote 52:

Besides those distinctions which I have noted already, he had been

requested, in 1730, by the University of Oxford, to allow his

portrait to be placed in the University Gallery. In 1733 his statue,

by Rysbraeck, was placed in the Botanic Garden at Chelsea.

Footnote 53:

‘Walpole is your tyrant to-day; and any man His Majesty pleases to

name—Horace or Leheup—may be so to-morrow.’—_Bolingbroke to

Marchmont_, 22 July, 1739.

Footnote 54:

‘Our House of Commons—mere poachers—are piddling with the torture of

Leheup, who extracted so much money out of the Lottery.’—_Horace

Walpole to Richard Bentley_, 19 December, 1753.

Footnote 55:

The term ‘Librarian,’ as used at the British Museum, has never

implied any _special_ connection with the Books, printed or

manuscript. All the Keepers of Departments were, originally, called

‘Under Librarian.’ The General Superintendent or Warden has always

been called ‘Principal Librarian.’

Footnote 56:

One of Cook’s many individual gifts was the first Kangaroo ever

brought into Europe.

Footnote 57:

In a copy of this work now before me, the original drawings are

bound up with the engravings, and later drawings are added. They

serve to show that Sir William’s scientific interest in the subject

lasted as long as his life.

Footnote 58:

That superiority, however, is only partial. The original Naples

edition, along with many errors, contains much valuable matter

omitted in the reprint.

Footnote 59:

I find that in this statement—made twenty-four years after the date

of the transaction referred to—Sir William’s memory misled him. The

amount of the Parliamentary vote was (as I have stated it, on a

previous page) eight thousand four hundred pounds.

Footnote 60:

This John Towneley was sent first to Chester Castle, then to the

Marshalsea in Southwark, then to York Castle, and to a block-house

in Hull. From Yorkshire he was sent to the Gatehouse at Westminster,

and thence to a jail in Manchester. From his Lancashire prison he

was presently hustled into Oxfordshire, and sent thence to another

prison at Ely. The gallant old recusant survived it all, to die at

Towneley at last.

Footnote 61:

Lancastrian for ‘throw open.’

Footnote 62:

_Specimens of Ancient Sculpture._ Published by the Society of

Dilettanti, Preface, § 61.

Footnote 63:

One of the metopes from the south side of the Parthenon, removed by

the Count de Choiseul, during his embassy at the eve of the

Revolution, was captured by an English ship when on its way to

France, and had been purchased by Lord Elgin at a Custom House sale

in London. By him it was returned to Choiseul, with a liberality too

rare in such matters. When this metope came, after Choiseul’s death,

to be sold at Paris, by auction, the Trustees of the British Museum

sent a commission for its purchase. The commissioner went so far as

to offer a thousand pounds, but was overbidden by the French

Government.

Footnote 64:

_Curse of Minerva_, passim.

Footnote 65:

That my needful abridgment, in the text, of Mr. Payne Knight’s words

may not misrepresent his meaning, I subjoin the whole of the

passage:—‘Had this powerful engine of influence’ [namely, loss of

caste] ‘been employed in favour of pure morality and efficient

virtue, the Hindoos might have been the most virtuous and happy of

the human race. But the ambition of a hierarchy has, as usual,

employed it to serve its own particular interests instead of those

of the community in general.... Should the pious labours of our

missionaries succeed in diffusing among them a more pure and more

moral, but less uniform and less energetic system of religion, they

may improve and exalt the character of individual men, but they will

for ever destroy the repose and tranquillity of the mass.... The

prevalence of European religion will be the fall of European

domination.... The incarnations which form the principal subject of

sculpture in all the temples of India, Tibet, Tartary, and China,

are, above all others, calculated to call forth the ideal

perfections of the art, by expanding and exalting the imagination of

the artist, and exciting his ambition to surpass the simple

imitation of ordinary forms, in order to produce a model of

excellence, worthy to be the corporeal habitation of the Deity. But

this no nation of the East, nor indeed of the Earth, except the

Greeks and those who copied them, ever attempted.’—_Analytical

Inquiry_, &c., p. 80.]

Footnote 66:

_Carmina Homerica Ilias et Odyssea a rapsidorum interpolationibus

repurgata, et in pristinam formam ... redacta; cum notis ac

prolegomenis, ... opera et studio_ Richardi Payne Knight. 1808, 8vo.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in

spelling.

2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as

printed.

3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.

5. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript

character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in

curly braces, e. g. M^r. or M^{ister}.

6. Subscripts are denoted by an underscore before a series of

subscripted characters enclosed in curly braces, e. g. H_{2}O.

Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, Part 1 of 2 With Notices of Its Chief Augmentors and Other Benefactors, 1570-1870. · 第 13 / 13 章

Liberal commissions and constant correspondence with Italy continued