Chapter II (3)

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.

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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
V.

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.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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