Chapter 18

PRINTED BY J. E. ADLARD, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.

1.“Or must I, as a wit, with learned airLike Doctor Dibdin, to Tom Payne’s repair,Meet Cyril Jackson and mild Cracherode there?‘Hold!’ cries Tom Payne, ‘that margin let me measure,And rate the separate value of the treasure’Eager they gaze. ‘Well, Sirs, the feat is done.Cracherode’sPoetæ Principeshave won!’”Mathias,Pursuits of Literature.

“Or must I, as a wit, with learned airLike Doctor Dibdin, to Tom Payne’s repair,Meet Cyril Jackson and mild Cracherode there?‘Hold!’ cries Tom Payne, ‘that margin let me measure,And rate the separate value of the treasure’Eager they gaze. ‘Well, Sirs, the feat is done.Cracherode’sPoetæ Principeshave won!’”Mathias,Pursuits of Literature.

“Or must I, as a wit, with learned air

Like Doctor Dibdin, to Tom Payne’s repair,

Meet Cyril Jackson and mild Cracherode there?

‘Hold!’ cries Tom Payne, ‘that margin let me measure,

And rate the separate value of the treasure’

Eager they gaze. ‘Well, Sirs, the feat is done.

Cracherode’sPoetæ Principeshave won!’”

Mathias,Pursuits of Literature.

2. Loakes had been purchased from the last owner of the Archdall family by Henry, Earl of Shelburne. Earl William (first Marquess of Lansdowne) eventually sold it to the ancestor of the present Lord Carrington.

3. See, hereafter, in life of T. Grenville, Book III, c. 2.

4. This famous speech was delivered on the 5th of March, 1778. ‘Then,’ said Lord Shelburne, after denouncing measures which would sever the Colonies from the Kingdom, ‘the sun of Great Britain is set. We shall be no more a powerful or even a respectable people.’—Parliamentary Debates, vol. xix, col. 850.

5. More than one of Burney’s scholars was accustomed to speak feelingly on the topic of ancient school ‘discipline’ when any passing incident led the talk in that direction in after life.

6. This small fact in classical bibliography is remarkable enough to call for some particular exemplifications, beyond those given in the text, on a former page. Of the three greatest Greek dramatists, Burney had 315 editions against 75 in the Library of the British Museum. Of Homer he had 87 against 45; of Aristophanes, 74 against 23; of Demosthenes, 50 against 18; and of theAnthologia, 30 against 19.

7. It was also from the Edwards fund that the whole costs of the Oriental MSS. of Halhed, and of the Minerals of Hatchett, together with those of several other early and important acquisitions, were defrayed. That fund, in truth, was the mainstay of the Museum during the years of parliamentary parsimony.

8. Of these four thousand pounds, two thousand three hundred and forty-five pounds seem to have been expended in Printed Books; the remainder, probably, in Manuscripts.

9. To give but one example: Samuel Burder—the author of the excellent work, so illustrative of Biblical literature, entitledOriental Customs—states, in his MS. correspondence now before me, that theonlyeffective reward given to him, in the course of his long labours, was given by Lord Bridgewater. The book above mentioned was ‘successful,’ ‘but,’ he says, ‘the booksellers, as usual, reaped the harvest,’ not the author. It is—shall I say?—an amusing comment on this latter clause, to find that in one of his letters to Lord Bridgewater, Burder states that the person who took the most kindly notice of his literary labours, next after Lord Bridgewater himself, was—the Emperor of Russia (Alexander I).

10. These form the Egerton MSS. 215 to 262 inclusive.

11. Horace Walpole, at this sale, purchased the fine MS., with drawings by Julio Clovio, which was long an ornament of the villa at Strawberry Hill, and also a choice cameo of Jupiter Serapis, for which he gave a hundred and seventy-three pounds. He preferred, he said, either of them to the vase. So, at least, he fancied when he found it unattainable. ‘I am glad,’ he wrote to Conway (18 June, 1786), ‘that Sir Joshua saw no more excellence in theJupiterthan in the Clovio, or the Duke, I suppose, would have purchased it as he did the Vase—for £1000. I told Sir William and the late Duchess—when I never thought that it would be mine—that I would rather have the head than the vase.’

12. Lord Harcourt resigned his office of Governor to the Prince at the beginning of December, 1752. Scott, then the Prince’s tutor, was recommended to his office by Bolingbroke. The Bishop of Peterborough’s appointment as Preceptor was made in January, 1753. Among the books complained of, theHistoire de la Grande Bretagneof Father Orléans, and theIntroduction à la vie du Roi Henri IVof another Jesuit, Father Péréfixe, are said to have been included. Another and more famous book, which was much in Prince George’s hands in his early years, was also obnoxious to the Whigs—Bolingbroke’sIdea of a Patriot King. But it would scarcely have been prudent in the malcontents to have put a work which (whatever its faults) ranks, to some extent, among our English classics, in the same expurgatory, or prohibitory, index with the books of Orléans and of Péréfixe. If George the Third got some harm out of Lord Bolingbroke’s book, he probably obtained also some good. Pure Whiggism—pure but not simple—has never been noted for any discriminating tolerance of spirit. And, in 1752, it was furious at the prospect that the continuance of its long domination was imperilled.

13. The mansion for which the Trustees of the British Museum had been asked to give £30,000 was sold, five years afterwards, to the King for £20,000. It was purchased for the Queen as a jointure-house in lieu of her proper mansion, Somerset House, then devoted to public purposes. All the royal princes and princesses were born in Buckingham House, except George IV, and one, perhaps, of the younger children.

14. The story, I observe, has been endorsed in Mr. Blades’ excellentLife of Caxton(see part 2, p. 268), but it is undoubtedly a distortion or exaggeration of some chance occurrence. No such series could have been formed otherwise than, in the main, by systematic research.

15.Edinburgh Weekly Journal, Feb. 1820. The article is reprinted inMiscellaneous Prose Works, Edition of 1841, vol. ii, p. 184.

16. ‘Ralph Robinson’ is the name signed to the communications to theAnnals of Agriculture, but they are dated from Windsor. (SeeAnnals, vol. vii, 1787.)

17. Curiously enough, three volumes of the Georgian MSS. had belonged to Sir Hans Sloane, and had, in some unexplained way, come to be separated from the bulk of his Collection. They now rejoined their old companions in Great Russell Street.

18. See, before, p. 339.

19. John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1729–1792).

20. Solander, who was afterwards to be so intimately connected with the Banksian Collections, had been for some years in this country when he was selected by Banks to be one of his companions in the voyage ofThe Endeavour. He was born in Sweden, in the year 1736. He came to England in July, 1760. He succeeded Dr. Maty, as Under-Librarian of the British Museum, in 1773, when Maty was made Principal-Librarian. At that date he had already served the Trustees for many years as one of their Assistant-Librarians.

21. See Book I, c. 6.

22. Bishop Horsley certainly forgot the ever-memorable words which he had so often read—Matt. v, 44—when he, a prelate, signed himself ‘Misogallus.’

23. Morton died at eighty-three; Planta, at eighty-four; Ellis, at ninety-two. Morton, as we have seen, was known to Sir Hans Sloane. Sloane was already a noted man in the days of Charles the Second; and he also lived to be ninety-two. The joint lives of Sloane, Morton, and Ellis extended over nearly two hundred and ten years.

24. I do not make this statement without ample warrant. When preparing, under Lord Romilly’s direction, my humble contribution of the lostLiber de Hydato the series ofChronicles and Memorials, I had competent occasion to test theMonasticonof 1813–1824, and found it to teem with errors and oversights in that part of it which I had then to do with. I had had other occasions to study it somewhat closely twenty years before, and with like result. At the interval of twenty years, one could hardly stumble twice upon exceptionally ill-edited portions of such a book. For the new ‘Dugdale,’ thus truthfully characterised, subscribers paid a hundred and thirty pounds for small paper, two hundred and sixty pounds for large paper, copies; and the number of subscribers was considerable. So much for the ‘We must retrench’ of the publishers.

25. After stating that Mr. Ellis had made needless proclamation at Paris of the object of his journey, Sir Harris Nicolas proceeds thus:—‘Not contented with this injudicious and useless development of the objects in view, the learned gentleman himself pompously announced wherever he went that he was the “Chief Librarian of the British Museum,” sent specially to treat for these manuscripts, thus making a public affair of what should have been kept private. The effect of this folly may easily be imagined. Long before the “Chief Librarian” reached Pomard, the French newspapers expressed their indignation that historical muniments should be sold to the British Government, inferring that England must be anxious to possess the records in question, when the purchase of them was made an official business.‘The effect of all this parade upon the owner of the manuscripts was a natural one; he fancied he had erred in his estimate of their value, and that, as they seemed to be objects of national importance to another Government, he resolved to make that Government pay at a much higher rate, for what they manifested such extraordinary anxiety to obtain, than a private individual. On the “Chief Librarian’s” arrival at Pomard, he discovered that the Baron could speak little English; and the Baron, as he has since asserted, discovered that the “Chief Librarian” could speak less French; hence it was with great difficulty that the latter could understand that the Baron had become so enlightened about his treasures as to expect, not merely double the price he originally asked for them, but as our Government had interfered on the subject, he wished it to advance one step further, by inducing his Most Christian Majesty to raise his Barony into a Comté. Such terms were out of the question; and after spending two or three hours only in examining the Collection, but which required at least as many weeks, the “Chief Librarian” returned to Englandre infecta, and made his report to the Trustees, who refused to purchase the Collection, but offered to buy a few documents, which the owner, of course, declined. Thus, highly valuable documents are lost to the Museum and to the country, in consequence, solely and entirely, of the absurd measures adopted for their acquisition.’—Nicolas,Observations on the State of Historical Literature in England, pp. 78–80. My long and observant acquaintance with Sir H. Nicolas justifies me in adding to this extract—in which there are such obvious exaggerations of statement—that I am convinced he was writing from insufficient and inaccurate information. He was incapable of wilful misstatement.

‘The effect of all this parade upon the owner of the manuscripts was a natural one; he fancied he had erred in his estimate of their value, and that, as they seemed to be objects of national importance to another Government, he resolved to make that Government pay at a much higher rate, for what they manifested such extraordinary anxiety to obtain, than a private individual. On the “Chief Librarian’s” arrival at Pomard, he discovered that the Baron could speak little English; and the Baron, as he has since asserted, discovered that the “Chief Librarian” could speak less French; hence it was with great difficulty that the latter could understand that the Baron had become so enlightened about his treasures as to expect, not merely double the price he originally asked for them, but as our Government had interfered on the subject, he wished it to advance one step further, by inducing his Most Christian Majesty to raise his Barony into a Comté. Such terms were out of the question; and after spending two or three hours only in examining the Collection, but which required at least as many weeks, the “Chief Librarian” returned to Englandre infecta, and made his report to the Trustees, who refused to purchase the Collection, but offered to buy a few documents, which the owner, of course, declined. Thus, highly valuable documents are lost to the Museum and to the country, in consequence, solely and entirely, of the absurd measures adopted for their acquisition.’—Nicolas,Observations on the State of Historical Literature in England, pp. 78–80. My long and observant acquaintance with Sir H. Nicolas justifies me in adding to this extract—in which there are such obvious exaggerations of statement—that I am convinced he was writing from insufficient and inaccurate information. He was incapable of wilful misstatement.

26. I was myself present at an interview (in Lambeth), when the most urgent influence was used with Mr. Hawes to induce him to attack Mr. Panizzi’s original appointment as an ‘Assistant-Librarian’; and I heard him express a strong approval of it, on the ground of the obvious qualifications and abilities of the individual officer—though himself sharing the opinion that in such appointments Englishmen should have the preference.

27. It was in the old rooms in the Court-yard of Montagu House that Charles Lamb enjoyed the last, I think, of his ‘dinings-out.’ A few days after his final visit (November, 1834) the hand of Death was already upon him. Cary, before writing the well-known epitaph, wrote some other graceful and touching lines on his old friend. They were occasioned by finding, in a volume lent to Lamb by Cary, Lamb’s bookmark, against a page which told of the death of Sydney. They begin thus:—‘So should it be, my gentle friend,Thy leaf last closed at Sydney’s end;Thou too, like Sydney, wouldst have givenThe water, thirsting, and near Heaven.’

‘So should it be, my gentle friend,Thy leaf last closed at Sydney’s end;Thou too, like Sydney, wouldst have givenThe water, thirsting, and near Heaven.’

‘So should it be, my gentle friend,

Thy leaf last closed at Sydney’s end;

Thou too, like Sydney, wouldst have given

The water, thirsting, and near Heaven.’

28. It is necessary that I should state, with precision, the sources of the information conveyed in the text. I rely, chiefly, on three several sources, one of which is publicly accessible. My main knowledge of the matter rests (first) upon theMinutes of Evidencetaken by Lord Ellesmere’s Commission of 1848–1850; (secondly) upon conversations with the late Mr. Edward Hawkins, held in July and August, 1837, not long after the appearance of Mr. Cary’s letter inThe Times; (thirdly) upon a conversation, on the same subject, with which I was honoured by Sir Henry Ellis in 1839.

29. I believe that his earliest contribution consisted of some articles entitled ‘Notes of a Reader,’ published in 1830, in a periodical (long since defunct) calledThe Spirit of Literature. These were written and printed long before Mr. Watts became a correspondent of theMechanics’ Magazine, as mentioned in the text.

30. InMinutes of Evidence(page 596) printed erroneously ‘reasonable.’ To the brief extract, for which alone I can here afford space, were appended, in the original Report, many pertinent amplifications and illustrations. Some of these are given in theMinutes of Evidenceabove referred to.

31. The ‘successor’ referred to is Mr. Winter Jones, then Keeper of Printed Books, now Principal-Librarian of the British Museum.

32. Birch,Ancient Pottery, vol. i, pp. 209, 210.

33. If the question of mere hints and analogies in construction were to be followed out to its issues, the result, I feel assured, would in no degree tend to strengthen the contention of Mr. Hosking’s pamphlet. Something like a first germ of the mere ground-plan of the new Reading-Room may, perhaps, be found in M. Benjamin Delessert’sProjet d’une Bibliothèque circulaire, printed, at Paris, as far back as the year 1835, when the question of reconstructing the then ‘Royal,’ now ‘Imperial Library,’ was under discussion in the French Chambers. ‘I propose,’ says Delessert, ‘to place the officers and the readers in the centre of a vast rotunda, whence branch off eight principal galleries, the walls of which form diverging radii ... andhave book-cases on both sides,’ &c. His plan may be thus shown, in small. The differences, it will be seen, between this sketch and Mr. Panizzi’s sketch of 1854, are greater than are the resemblances.

34. Namely, two millions five hundred and twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixteen visits, whichincludedseventy-eight thousand two hundred and eleven visits to the Reading-Room for study.

35. In—unless a memory more than thirty years old deceive me—that noble masterpiece of English prose, the ‘Citation of Shakespeare for Deer-stealing’ (1835).

36. The Oriental Translation Fund.

37. Comp. ‘Asshur builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, andCalah.’—Gen.x, 11. Mr. Layard quotes this passage, inNineveh and its Remains(vol. i, p. 4, edit. 1849), and seems to identify ‘Kalah Sherghat’ as retaining its ancient name.

38. Nor was there any petty or unworthy jealousy in the distinguished French explorer. ‘During the entire period of his excavations,’ writes Mr. Layard, ‘M. Botta regularly sent me, not only his [own] descriptions, but copies of the inscriptions, without exacting any promise as to the use I might make of them. That there are few who would have acted thus liberally, those who have been engaged in a search after Antiquities in the East will not be inclined to deny.’—Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i, p. 14.

39. It is a slight blemish in Mr. Layard’s otherwise admirable books that they are loose in the handling of dates. It is sometimes necessary to turn over hundreds of pages in order to be sure of the year in which a particular excavation was made, or in which an interesting incident occurred. Sometimes, again, there is an actual conflict of dates,e. g.Discoveries in the Ruins, &c. (1853), p. 3, ‘After my departure from Mósul in 1847,’ and again, p. 66, ‘On my return to Europe in 1847;’ but at p. 162, we read: ‘Having been carefully covered up with earth, previous to my departure in 1848, they [the lions] had been preserved,’ &c. I mention this simply because it is possible that error may thus, once or twice, have crept into the marginal dates given above, though pains has been taken about these.

40. The Berodach-Baladan of 2 Kings, xx, 12, who ‘sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah, when he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick.’

41. And in which not a few readers will be sure to feel all the more interest, because of its sacred associations, when they call to mind those first-century travels of certain famous travellers who, ‘after they had passed throughout Pisidia, came to Pamphylia, and ... when they had gone through Phrygia, ... and were come to Mysia, assayed to go into Bythinia, but the Spirit suffered them not;’—having work for them to do in another quarter.

42. I shall not, I trust, be suspected of a want of gratitude for the eminent and most praiseworthy efforts of Mr. Davis—one of the many Americans who have returned, with liberal profuseness, the reciprocal obligations whichallAmericans owe to Britain (for their ancestry, and also for the noble interchange of benefits between parent and offspring, prior to 1776; if for nought else), if I venture to remark that the above-written passage in the text has been inserted somewhat hesitatingly, as far as it concerns thedateof the Carthaginian explorations. No index; no summary; no marginal dates; conflicting and obscure dates, when any dates appear anywhere; no introduction, which introduces anything; scarcely any divarication of personal knowledge and experiences, from borrowed knowledge and experiences; such are some of the difficulties which await the student ofCarthage and her Remains. Yet the book is full of deep interest; its author is, none the less, a benefactor to Britain, and to the world.

43. These were given to the Museum by Lord Russell, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Lord Russell was one of the earliest of the Foreign Secretaries who began a new epoch, in this department of public duty, by setting new official precedents of regard and forethought for the augmentation of the national collections.

44. Meaning Lord Shelburne. See, heretofore, pp. 431–433.

45. ‘A Handy-Book of the British Museum, for Every-day Readers.’ 1870 (Cassell and Co.).

46. See the notice, hereafter, of the Christy Museum.

47. This, I think, has been clearly shown by the correspondence laid before Parliament. The reader is referred to the papers of the session of 1867, entitledCorrespondence as to the Woodhouse Collection of Antiquities, printed by order of Lord Derby, as Foreign Secretary.

48. In the accompanying Plan (of the Parliamentary Report, 1860), pilasters of unnecessary size have been inadvertently introduced into this gallery, reducing both the extent of the wall-cases, and the breadth of the gangway, in a manner never intended.

49. Printed by oversight ‘general’ in theMinutes of Evidence.

50. Printed ‘object’ inMinutes of Evidence, as above.

51. It is to this Report of 1862 that the accompanying lithographic fac-similes of the original illustrative plans belong. Two of them show the then existing arrangements of the principal floors; the other two show the then proposed alterations and re-arrangements.

52. Parliamentary Return, No. 456, of the Session 1858.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESThe Table of Contents is in PartI.Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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