It will not be necessary to solicit your good-will by any formal preface,
when I have informed you, that I have long been known as the most
laborious and zealous virtuoso that the present age has had the honour
of producing, and that inconveniencies have been brought upon me by an
unextinguishable ardour of curiosity, and an unshaken perseverance in the
acquisition of the productions of art and nature.
It was observed, from my entrance into the world, that I had something
uncommon in my disposition, and that there appeared in me very early
tokens of superior genius. I was always an enemy to trifles; the
playthings which my mother bestowed upon me I immediately broke, that
I might discover the method of their structure, and the causes of their
motions; of all the toys with which children are delighted I valued only
my coral, and as soon as I could speak, asked, like Peiresc, innumerable
questions which the maids about me could not resolve. As I grew older
I was more thoughtful and serious, and instead of amusing myself with
puerile diversions, made collections of natural rarities, and never
walked into the fields without bringing home stones of remarkable forms,
or insects of some uncommon species. I never entered an old house, from
which I did not take away the painted glass, and often lamented that
I was not one of that happy generation who demolished the convents and
monasteries, and broke windows by law.
Being thus early possessed by a taste for solid knowledge, I passed my
youth with very little disturbance from passions and appetites; and
having no pleasure in the company of boys and girls, who talked of plays,
politicks, fashions, or love, I carried on my inquiries with incessant
diligence, and had amassed more stones, mosses, and shells, than are to
be found in many celebrated collections, at an age in which the greatest
part of young men are studying under tutors, or endeavouring to recommend
themselves to notice by their dress, their air, and their levities.
When I was two and twenty years old, I became, by the death of my father,
possessed of a small estate in land, with a very large sum of money in
the publick funds, and must confess that I did not much lament him, for
he was a man of mean parts, bent rather upon growing rich than wise.
He once fretted at the expense of only ten shillings, which he happened
to overhear me offering for the sting of a hornet, though it was a
cold moist summer, in which very few hornets had been seen. He often
recommended to me the study of physick, in which, said he, you may at
once gratify your curiosity after natural history, and increase your
fortune by benefiting mankind. I heard him, Mr. Rambler, with pity, and
as there was no prospect of elevating a mind formed to grovel, suffered
him to please himself with hoping that I should some time follow his
advice. For you know that there are men, with whom, when they have once
settled a notion in their head, is to very little purpose to dispute.
Being now left wholly to my own inclinations, I very soon enlarged the
bounds of my curiosity, and contented myself no longer with such rarities
as required only judgment and industry, and when once found might be
had for nothing. I now turned my thoughts to exoticks and antiques, and
became so well known for my generous patronage of ingenious men, that
my levee was crowded with visitants, some to see my museum, and others
to increase its treasures, by selling me whatever they had brought from
other countries.
I had always a contempt for that narrowness of conception, which contents
itself with cultivating some single corner of the field of science; I
took the whole region into my view, and wished it of yet greater extent.
But no man's power can be equal to his will. I was forced to proceed
by slow degrees, and to purchase what chance or kindness happened to
present. I did not, however, proceed without some design, or imitate
the indiscretion of those, who begin a thousand collections, and finish
none. Having been always a lover of geography, I determined to collect the
maps drawn in the rude and barbarous times, before any regular surveys,
or just observations; and have, at a great expense, brought together a
volume, in which, perhaps, not a single country is laid down according
to its true situation, and by which he that desires to know the errours
of the ancient geographers may be amply informed.
But my ruling passion is patriotism: my chief care has been to procure
the products of our own country; and as Alfred received the tribute
of the Welsh in wolves' heads, I allowed my tenants to pay their rents
in butterflies, till I had exhausted the papilionaceous tribe. I then
directed them to the pursuit of other animals, and obtained, by this easy
method, most of the grubs and insects, which land, air, or water, can
supply. I have three species of earth-worms not known to the naturalists,
have discovered a new ephemera, and can show four wasps that were taken
torpid in their winter quarters. I have, from my own ground, the longest
blade of grass upon record, and once accepted, as a half-year's rent for
a field of wheat, an ear containing more grains than had been seen before
upon a single stem.
One of my tenants so much neglected his own interest, as to supply me, in
a whole summer, with only two horse-flies, and those of little more than
the common size; and I was upon the brink of seizing for arrears, when
his good fortune threw a white mole in his way, for which he was not only
forgiven, but rewarded.
These, however, were petty acquisitions, and made at small expense; nor
should I have ventured to rank myself among the virtuosi without better
claims. I have suffered nothing worthy the regard of a wise man to escape
my notice. I have ransacked the old and the new world, and been equally
attentive to past ages and the present. For the illustration of ancient
history, I can show a marble, of which the inscription, though it is not
now legible, appears, from some broken remains of the letters, to have
been Tuscan, and, therefore, probably engraved before the foundation of
Rome. I have two pieces of porphyry found among the ruins of Ephesus,
and three letters broken off by a learned traveller from the monuments
of Persepolis; a piece of stone which paved the Areopagus of Athens,
and a plate without figures or characters, which was found at Corinth,
and which I, therefore, believe to be that metal which was once valued
before gold. I have sand gathered out of the Granicus; a fragment of
Trajan's bridge over the Danube; some of the mortar which cemented the
watercourse of Tarquin; a horseshoe broken on the Flaminian way; and
a turf with five daisies dug from the field of Pharsalia.
I do not wish to raise the envy of unsuccessful collectors, by too pompous
a display of my scientifick wealth, but cannot forbear to observe, that
there are few regions of the globe which are not honoured with some
memorial in my cabinets. The Persian monarchs are said to have boasted
the greatness of their empire, by being served at their tables with drink
from the Ganges and the Danube. I can show one vial, of which the water
was formerly an icicle on the crags of Caucasus, and another that contains
what once was snow on the top of Atlas; in a third is dew brushed from a
banana in the gardens of Ispahan; and, in another, brine that has rolled
in the Pacifick ocean. I flatter myself that I am writing to a man who
will rejoice at the honour which my labours have procured to my country;
and therefore I shall tell you that Britain can, by my care, boast of a
snail that has crawled upon the wall of China; a humming bird which an
American princess wore in her ear; the tooth of an elephant which carried
the queen of Siam; the skin of an ape that was kept in the palace of the
great mogul; a riband that adorned one of the maids of a Turkish sultana;
and a cimeter once wielded by a soldier of Abas the great.
In collecting antiquities of every country, I have been careful to choose
only by intrinsick worth, and real usefulness, without regard to party or
opinions. I have therefore a lock of Cromwell's hair in a box turned from
a piece of the royal oak; and keep in the same drawers, sand scraped from
the coffin of king Richard, and a commission signed by Henry the Seventh.
I have equal veneration for the ruff of Elizabeth and the shoe of Mary of
Scotland; and should lose, with like regret, a tobacco-pipe of Raleigh,
and a stirrup of king James. I have paid the same price for a glove of
Lewis, and a thimble of queen Mary; for a fur cap of the Czar, and a boot
of Charles of Sweden.
You will easily imagine that these accumulations were not made without
some diminution of my fortune, for I was so well known to spare no
cost, that at every sale some bid against me for hire, some for sport,
and some for malice; and if I asked the price of any thing, it was
sufficient to double the demand. For curiosity, trafficking thus with
avarice, the wealth of India had not been enough; and I, by little and
little, transferred all my money from the funds to my closet: here I was
inclined to stop, and live upon my estate in literary leisure, but the
sale of the Harleian collection shook my resolution: I mortgaged my land,
and purchased thirty medals, which I could never find before. I have at
length bought till I can buy no longer, and the cruelty of my creditors
has seized my repository; I am therefore condemned to disperse what the
labour of an age will not re-assemble. I submit to that which cannot be
opposed, and shall, in a short time, declare a sale. I have, while it is
yet in my power, sent you a pebble, picked up by Tavernier on the banks
of the Ganges; for which I desire no other recompense than that you will
recommend my catalogue to the publick.