(Vol. iii., P. 427.; Vol. iv., p. 69.)
I have delayed contradicting the stories told about the Royal Library in
the _Quarterly Review_ of last December, and repeated in the
_Illustrated Boswell_, and, I am sorry to say, still more gravely and
circumstantially reproduced by the Editor of "NOTES AND QUERIES." I have
delayed, I say, until I was enabled to satisfy myself more completely as
to one of the allegations of _your_ Note. I can now venture to assure
you that the whole story of the projected sale to Russia is absolutely
unfounded; and that the Princess Lieven, whose supposed agency is the
gist of the story, never heard a syllable about it, till my inquiry
brought it to her notice, and that she has given it the most absolute
contradiction. As there never was any such proposition, I need not say
that the interference against it attributed to Mr. Heber and Lord
Sidmouth is equally unfounded. The real history of the affair is
this:--Mr. Nash, the architect, had rendered himself very agreeable to
George IV. by his alterations and additions to the Pavilion at Brighton,
and he managed to obtain (somewhat irregularly, I believe) the job of
altering old Buckingham House, which was originally intended, or at
least proposed, to be only an extensive repair and more commodious
arrangement of the existing edifice. Under that notion, Mr. Nash had
little difficulty in persuading the king that the space occupied by so
large a library could not be spared for that purpose, if the house was
to be arranged as a _palace_ both for private residence and for purposes
of state; and as there was a very great jealousy in Parliament of the
expense of Buckingham House, he was afraid to propose the erection of an
additional building to receive the books. It was then that the scheme
was hit on, I know not exactly by whom (but I believe by Mr. Nash), of
giving the books to the British Museum. The principal part of the
library occupied three large rooms, two oblong and one an octagon. The
former were to have been absorbed into the living apartments, and the
octagon was to be preserved as a _chapel_, which it was proposed to
adorn with the seven _cartoons_ of Raphael from Hampton Court. All
these, and several other schemes, vanished before Mr. Nash's larger
views and increased favour, which led by degrees to the total
destruction of the old house, and the erection of an entirely new
palace, which however retains strong evidence of the occasional and
piecemeal principle on which it was begun. But in the meanwhile the
library was gone. _I know_ that some members of the government were very
averse to this disposal of the library: they thought, and _strongly
represented_, that a royal residence should, not be without a library;
and that this particular collection, made especially _ad hoc_, should
not have been, on any pretence, and above all on one so occasional and
trivial, diverted from its original destination. It is very possible
that Mr. Heber may have expressed this opinion; and I think I may say
that Lord Sidmouth certainly did so: but, on the other hand, some of the
king's advisers were not sorry to see the collection added to the Museum
_pro bono publico_; and so the affair concluded,--very unsatisfactorily,
as I thought and think, as regards the crown, to whom this library ought
to have been an heirloom; and indeed I doubt whether it was not so in
point of law. It is likely enough that the gift of the library may have
been _partly_ prompted by a hope of putting the public in better humour
as to the expenses of Buckingham House; but the idea of a _sale to
Russia_ never, I am sure, entered the head of any of the parties.