The next augmentor of the Museum was one of its Trustees, Gustavus Brander, distinguished as a promoter of natural science, and more especially of mineralogy and palæontology in the early stages of their study in England. A remarkable collection of fossils found in Hampshire, in the London Clay, was given by Mr. Brander to the Public, after having been, at his cost, carefully examined and described by Dr. Solander. It was the first notable contribution to the grand series of specimens in palæontology which, in their combination, have made the British Museum the most important of all repositories in that department of science.
To the Zoological Collections, the additions made, whether by gift or by purchase—save as the result, more or less direct, of ‘Voyages of Discovery,’ which will be noticed presently—were for many years very unimportant. The first purchase worthy of record was a collection of stuffed birds, formed in Holland, and acquired, in 1769, for four hundred and sixty pounds. This purchase was made by the Trust.
The reign of George the Third is marked by very few characteristics which are more honourable, both to King and people, than is its long series of expeditions to remote countries made expressly, or mainly, for purposes of geographical and scientific discovery, and extending over almost the whole of the reign.
Scarcely one voyage of the long series failed to bring, directly or indirectly, some valuable accession or other to the Collection of Natural History. Sometimes such accessions came to the Museum as the gifts of the navigators and explorers themselves. In this class of donors the name of Captain James Cook,[56] and that of Archibald Menzies, occur both early and frequently. Sometimes they came as the gifts of the Board of Admiralty. Sometimes, again,—and not infrequently—as those of the King, who, in his best days, took a keen interest in enterprise of this kind, and delighted in talking with the captains of the discovery ships about their adventures, and about the marvels of the far-off lands they had been among the first to see. Nor did the King stand alone in his active encouragement of remote explorations. Many of the great and wealthy nobles gave generous furtherance to them, and were equally ready to make available for scientific study the new specimens which the ships brought home. In this way, for example, the Marquess of Rockingham gave to the Museum a curious collection of reptiles gathered in Surinam.
In the same manner was furnished that minor, but very popular and instructive, collection illustrating the rude arts and modes of life of the newly explored countries, which some yet among us can remember as occupying the ‘South Sea Room’ of the old house. In the course of years it came to be eclipsed by much better collections of the same kind elsewhere, and so to wear a meagre and somewhat obsolete aspect. But it had rendered good service in its day, and was the germ of what will become, it may be hoped, in due time, an ethnological collection worthy of a seafaring people.
As regards the Natural History Collections, the growth of the Museum may be said to have been mainly dependent on the Voyages of Discovery for more than forty years. That source of improvement seems to mark, distinctively, the first epoch in the history of those collections. Then came a second epoch, marked by some approach to systematic improvement, in all branches, by means of the purchase of entire private collections as opportunity offered. A third period may be dated from the acquisition of the botanical and other gatherings of Sir Joseph Banks in 1827. Sir Joseph’s splendid gift was soon followed by so many other gifts—sometimes as donations, more frequently as bequests—that for many years the liberality of benefactors quite eclipsed the liberality of Parliament. Only of late years can it be said that the public support of the Natural History Collections has been worthy, either of the Nation or of their own intrinsic importance to it. By degrees, statesmen have become convinced that such collections are much more than the implements of a knot of professed naturalists, and the toys of the public at large. Slowly, but surely, the economic and commercial value of a great museum of natural history, as well as its educational value, have come saliently into view. And a wise enlargement of the contributions from national funds has had the excellent result of stimulating, instead of checking, the benefactions of individuals.
Some of the particular steps by which so conspicuous an improvement has been gradually brought about will claim our notice hereafter, in their due order.
If, for a long series of years, the degree of liberality with which these varied collections were shown to the Public at large scarcely accorded, either with their origin, or with the purpose for which they had been avowedly combined, it should be borne in mind that ‘the Public’ of 1759 was a very different body from the Public of a century later. It is only by degrees that indiscriminate admission to museums has come to be either very useful or quite feasible. There was a good deal of warrant in 1759 for the opinion recorded by one of the Trustees when the Rules were first under discussion. |MS. Addit., 6179, f. 61.| ‘A general liberty,’ said Dr. John Ward, the eminent Gresham Professor, ‘to ordinary people of all ranks and denominations, is not to be kept within bounds. Many irregularities will be committed that cannot be prevented by a few librarians who will soon be insulted by such people [as commit abuses], if they offer to control or contradict them.’ But, after all, the inadequate strength of the staff was the main cause of such of the restrictions as were chiefly complained of.
The original regulations, with but small change, remained in force for about forty-five years. How they worked will be best and most briefly shown by citing the experiences of two or three notable visitors, at various periods, during the last century.
In 1765, Peter John Grosley, an accomplished and keen-eyed Frenchman, familiar with the Museums of Italy as well as with those of his own country, visited the new Museum, and recorded his impressions of it. With the building he was charmed. He had already seen many parts of England, but nowhere any house that he thought worthy to be compared with Montagu House. He calls it ‘the largest, the most stately, the best arranged, and most richly decorated’ structure of its kind in all England. He made repeated visits. What chiefly arrested his attention in the Natural History rooms were the beauty of the papillonacea—comprising, he thought, ‘all that either the old world or the new can supply in this kind’—and the strangeness of some mineral specimens brought from the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. The Printed Books he thought to be ‘the weakest part of this vast collection.’ In one of the principal rooms, ‘I saw,’ he continues, ‘not without astonishment, a very fine bust of Oliver Cromwell, occupying a distinguished place!’ He praises the courtesy with which Drs. Maty and Morton discharged, by turns, the duty of exhibition. ‘They show,’ he says, ‘the most obliging readiness to explain things to the visitor, but,’ he adds, with obvious truth, ‘their very courtesy is wont to make a stranger content himself with hasty and unsatisfactory glances, that he may not trespass on their politeness.’ And then he makes a wise practical suggestion, which was carried into effect, almost half a century afterwards.
‘In order really to carry out the intentions of Parliament,’ writes Grosley, in 1765, ‘it is to be wished that the Public should be admitted more liberally, and more easily, by placing a warder in every room, to be continually present during the public hours.’
Ten years afterwards, the difficulty on this score had so increased that a notification to the following effect was circulated: ‘British Museum, 9th August, 1776. The Applicants of the middle of April are not yet satisfied. |MS. Addit., 10,555, fol. 14.| Persons applying are requested to send weekly to the porter to know how near they are upon the List.’
In 1782, the plan had so far improved that instead of waiting from April until August, a visitor could usually get admission within a fortnight or so after applying for a ticket. We have an intelligent and amusing account of a visit then made. This time the narrator is a German,—Charles Moritz, of Berlin. ‘In general,’ writes Moritz, ‘you must give in your name a fortnight before you can be admitted. But, by the kindness of Mr. Woide’—a countryman of the traveller, and, at that time, an Assistant-Librarian in the Museum,—‘I got admission earlier.... Yet, after all, I am sorry to say that it was the room, the glass-cases, the shelves, ... which I saw; not the Museum itself, so rapidly were we hurried on through the departments. The company who saw it when I did, and in like manner, was variously composed. They were of all sorts, and some, as I believe, of the very lowest classes of the people of both sexes, for, as it is, the property of the Nation, every one has the same ‘right’—I use the term of the country—to see it that another has. |Wendeborn’s Account of the Museum. 1780–90.| I had Mr. Wendeborn’s book in my pocket, and it, at least, enabled me to take more particular notice of some of the principal things.’
The book thus referred to by Moritz is the German original of that account of English society and institutions which Wendeborn himself translated, a few years afterwards, into English, and published at London, under the title of A View of England.
Its author had settled in London as the Minister of a German Congregation. He was himself a studious frequenter of the Museum, and says of it: ‘The whole is costly, worth seeing, and honourable to the Nation; when taken altogether it has not its equal. When considered in its separate branches, almost each of them singly may be surpassed by some other collection even in England itself.’ But the only collection which he specifies as, in this sense, superior, are the Hunterian Museum, and that which had been formed by Sir Ashton Lever, and which, when the View of England was written, belonged to Mr. Parkinson. |Wendeborn, A View of England, vol. i, 323–325.| Of the Museum Library, Wendeborn says, ‘though a numerous and valuable collection, it is yet, in many respects, very deficient, and as to its use, much circumscribed.’
When the German visitor of 1782 pulled Mr. Wendeborn’s book from his pocket, as he was hurried through the Museum, the action attracted the attention of the other visitors. The more intelligent of them pressed round him to see if the book could be made to yield any information for their behoof also. And the stranger gratified their curiosity by translating a passage or two in explanation of the objects they were passing. Then came an exquisite bit of sub-officialism.
‘The gentleman who conducted us’ observes Moritz, ‘took little pains to conceal the contempt which he felt for my communications when he found it was only a German description of the British Museum which I had.’ ‘So rapid a passage,’ he continues, ‘through a vast suite of rooms, in little more than one hour of time, with opportunity to cast but one poor longing look of astonishment on all the vast treasures of nature, antiquity, and literature, in the examination of which one might profitably spend years, confuses, stuns, and overpowers the visitor.’
Two years later, we have a similar account of the experiences of an inquisitive Englishman, and of one who is much more outspoken in his complaint. |William Hutton’s Visit in 1784.| William Hutton, the historian of Birmingham, came to London in December, 1784. ‘I was unwilling to quit it,’ he writes, ‘without seeing what I had, many years, wished to see. But how to accomplish it was the question. I had not one relative in that vast metropolis to direct me.... By good fortune, I stumbled upon a person possessing a ticket for the next day, which he valued less than two shillings. We struck a bargain in a moment and were both pleased.... I was not likely to forget Tuesday, December 7th, at eleven.’ Hutton, shrewd as he was, did not suspect the real nature of his ‘bargain.’ He had met with a professional dealer in Museum tickets; one of several who, on a humbler scale, followed in the steps of Peter Leheup, but were lucky enough not to excite the anger of the House of Commons.
He was taken through the rooms in company with about ten other persons, at a very rapid rate. He asked their conductor for some information about the curiosities. The reply, he says, so humbled him that he could not utter another word. ‘The company seemed influenced. They made haste and were silent. No voice was heard but in whispers. If a man spends two minutes in a room, in which a thousand things demand his attention, he cannot bestow on them a glance apiece.... It grieved me to think how much I lost for want of a little information. In about thirty minutes we finished our silent journey through the princely mansion, which would well have taken thirty days.... I had laid more stress on the British Museum, than on anything else which I should see in London. It was the only sight which disgusted me.... |Hutton, A Journey to London, pp. 187–196.| Government purchased this rare collection at a vast expense, and exhibits it as a national honour.... How far it answers the end proposed this account will testify.’
Better days were at hand. But it was not until 1805 that the rules of admission were even so far effectively revised as to abolish the traffic in tickets. Nor was any ‘Synopsis’ of the contents of the Museum provided until 1808. In that year admission tickets were abolished wholly.
Straitened means of maintenance have, at all times, had far more to do with any inadequate provision for public usefulness of which (in days long past) there may have been well-grounded cause of complaint, than had neglect or oversight on the part of any officer.
The officers, too, were, for a very long period after the establishment of the Museum, engaged, and remunerated, only for an attendance, in rotation, for two hours daily, on alternate days. A largely increased provision by Parliament was the essential condition of any large increase in the accessibility of the institution.
As early as in 1776 the necessary expenditure in salaries and wages alone (at a very low scale of payment), exceeded the annual income (£900) accruing from the original endowment fund. After Parliament had made an additional provision—first introduced in a clause of what was then called a ‘hotch-potch Act’—averaging £1000 yearly, the total annual income was still but £2448, including the yearly three hundred pounds accruing from the ‘Edwards Fund,’ and the £248, paid, under the grant of George the Second, as the net yearly salary of the ‘King’s Librarian.’ For a considerable period, the sums expended in purchases—for all the departments collectively—had not amounted, in any one year, to one hundred pounds.
On the decease of the first Principal Librarian, Dr. Gowin Knight, in 1772, Dr. Matthew Maty was appointed to that office. He was born at, or in the neighbourhood of Utrecht, in 1718, and was educated in the University of Leyden, where he took his degrees in 1740, the subject of his inaugural dissertation, for that of M.A. and Doctor of Philosophy, being ‘custom,’ and its wide results and influence social and political. His essay was published (under the title Dissertatio philosophica inauguralis de Usu,) in 1740. For the degree of Doctor in Medicine, he treated of the effects of habit and custom upon the human frame (De Consuetudinis efficacia in corpus humanum). This medical dissertation was also published at Leyden, in the usual form, in the same year. Both essays showed much ability, along with many faults and crudities. Some of these became matters of conversation and correspondence between the author and his friends. The subject was less hacknied than that of the majority of academical essays, and Maty was induced to reconsider it. He republished the result of his thoughts, in a greatly improved form, in the following year at Utrecht, and, to gain a wider audience, wrote in French. The Essai sur l’Usage attracted much attention, and served to pave the way for the establishment by its author, eight years afterwards, of the periodical entitled, Journal Britannique, as editor of which he is now best remembered. He came to England in 1741, practised as a physician, attained considerable reputation, and distinguished himself more especially by following in the path of Sir Hans Sloane, and others, as an earnest supporter of the practice of inoculation. In this field he was able to render good service, both by his professional influence and by his pen. In the sharp controversies which soon, and for a time, impeded the new practice, he took a large share, and his publications on the subject are distinguished from many others by their union of moderation of tone with vigour of advocacy.
Maty’s predilections, however, pointed to a literary rather than to a medical career. He had early taken that ply, and it was not easily effaced. Within six years (1750–1756) he published eighteen volumes of the Journal Britannique—edited in London but printed at the Hague—in the toils of which he was, according to Gibbon, almost unaided. Gibbon, too, bears testimony to the amiability of the man, as well as to the industry of the writer. His own first and youthful achievement in literature had Maty’s encouragement and active aid. |Memoirs of Gibbon, p. 107.| When the Essai sur l’Etude de la Littérature was, after much filing and polishing, given to the Public, a preliminary letter from Maty’s pen accompanied it, and by him the essay was carried through the press.
When he succeeded Dr. Gowin Knight, as Principal Librarian in 1772, his health was already failing. He occupied the post during less than four years. To the last, his pen was busily employed. He was a contributor to several foreign journals, as well as to the Philosophical Transactions, some volumes of which he edited, or assisted to edit, in his capacity as one of the Secretaries of the Royal Society, to which office he had been appointed in 1765. Among his minor literary publications are a life of Boerhaave, in French, and one of Dr. Richard Mead, in English. At the time of his death he was working on the Life of Lord Chesterfield, afterwards prefixed to the collective edition of the Earl’s Miscellaneous Works. Dr. Maty died in 1776, and was succeeded in his Librarianship by his colleague, Dr. Charles Morton, who had had, from the beginning, the charge of the department of Manuscripts, and had also acted as Secretary to the Trustees.
Dr. Morton was a native of Westmoreland, and was born in 1716. Until the year 1750 he had practised as a physician at Kendal. In 1751 he became a Licentiate of the College of Physicians, and in the following year a Fellow of the Royal Society. His service in the British Museum lasted from 1756 to 1799. There are several testimonies to the courtesy with which he treated such visitors and students as came under his personal notice, but his long term of superior office was certainly not marked by any striking improvement in the public economy of the Museum. And how much room for improvement existed there the reader has seen. Dr. Morton, like his predecessor, was one of the Secretaries of the Royal Society. He filled that office from the year 1760 to 1774. He contributed several papers to the Philosophical Transactions, as well on antiquarian subjects as on topics of physical science, and he was the first editor of Bulstrode Whitelocke’s remarkable narrative of his embassy to Sweden during the Protectorate. Morton’s writings are not remarkable either for vigour or for originality, but, on more topics than one, they had the useful result of setting abler men awork. He was three times married: (1) to Mary Berkeley, the niece of Swift’s frequent correspondent Lady Elizabeth Germaine; (2) to Lady Savile; (3) to Mrs. Elizabeth Pratt. He died on the 10th February, 1799.
Of his successors in the office of Principal Librarian some account will be found in the Introductory Chapter of Book III.
‘The Archæologist cannot, like the Scholar, carry on his researches in his own Library, independent of outward circumstances. For his work of reference and collation he must travel, excavate, collect, arrange, delineate, transcribe, before he can place his whole subject before his mind....
‘A Museum of Antiquities is to the Archæologist what a Botanic Garden is to the Botanist. It presents his subject compendiously, synoptically, suggestively, not in the desultory and accidental order in which he would otherwise be brought into contact with its details.’—
Sir William Hamilton and his Pursuits and Employments in Italy.—The Acquisitions of the French Institute of Egypt, and the capture of part of them at Alexandria.—Charles Towneley and his Collection of Antiquities.—The Researches of the Earl of Elgin in Greece.—The Collections and Writings of Richard Payne Knight.
To the comparatively small assemblage of antiquities which originally formed part of the Museum of Courten and of Sloane, several additions had been made—besides the coins, medals, and bronzes of Sir Robert Cotton—prior to the opening of the British Museum to the Public in 1759. Some of those additions were the gift, severally, of three members of the Lethieullier family. Others were the gift of Thomas Hollis, who became a constant benefactor to the Museum almost from the day of Sir Hans Sloane’s death to that of his own.
The Lethieullier antiquities had been chiefly gathered in Egypt. |The Egyptian Antiquities of the Lethieulliers.| The first gift was made by the Will of Colonel William Lethieullier, dated 23rd July, 1755. |MS. Addit., 6179, f. 29.| And the first catalogue of any kind which was prepared for the British Museum, after its acquisition by Parliament, was a list of these antiquities drawn up by Dr. John Ward, one of the Trustees. And here it may deserve remark that for many years after the foundation not a few of the Trustees took a large share in the actual work of preparing the Museum for public use, as well as in the ordinary duties of control and administration.
To the gift of Colonel William Lethieullier, his cousin, Smart Lethieullier, and his nephew, Pitt Lethieullier, made several additions between the years 1756 and 1770. The last-named of these gentlemen, when receiving, as executor of his uncle, the personal thanks of a Committee of the Trustees (February, 1756), for the bequest so made, took the opportunity of augmenting it by the gift of some antiquities which he had himself collected during his residence at Grand Cairo.
But the first large and comprehensive addition in the archæological department was that made in 1772 by the purchase, by means of a Parliamentary grant, of the Museum of Antiquities, which had been formed during seven years’ researches in Italy by Sir William Hamilton, our Ambassador at Naples.
Sir William Hamilton was among the earliest of British diplomatists who, by a voluntary choice, turned to good account, in the interests of learning and of the public, the opportunities which diplomatic life so frequently offers for amassing treasures of literature and science, and (in many cases) for saving them from peril of destruction. In that path Frenchmen had showed the way many generations earlier.
As far, indeed, as regards a public and national care for matters of the intellect, France is far better entitled to claim a priority in the proud distinction of ‘teaching the nations how to live,’ than is any other country in the world. It is to her immortal honour that from a very early period, and even in times of sore trouble, her sovereigns and her statesmen have known how to turn public resources to the promotion of public culture, as well as of national power. A man may read in French diplomatic letters of instruction of the sixteenth century orders to collect manuscripts and antiquities, as implements of public education, such as he would look for in vain in parallel British documents of any century at all,—inclusive of the present;—although it is certain that the omission has by no means arisen from the engrossment of our diplomatists in weightier concerns.
In Sir William Hamilton’s case the liberal tastes and the mental energy of the individual supplied the defect of his instructions. He set an example which not a few of our ambassadors have voluntarily followed with like public spirit, and with results not less conspicuous.
William Hamilton was the fourth son of Lord Archibald Hamilton, youngest son of James, third Duke of Hamilton, K.G. His mother, Lady Jane Hamilton, was of that illustrious family by birth, as well as by marriage, being the daughter of James, sixth Earl of Abercorn. He was born in the year 1730.
Towards the close of his career, Sir William would sometimes say to his intimates, when conversation turned upon the battle of life: ‘I had to begin the world with a great name, and one thousand pounds for all my fortune.’ But the world never used him very roughly. Whilst still a young man (1755) he married Miss Barlow, the wealthy heiress of Hugh Barlow, of Laurenny Hall, in Pembrokeshire. She brought him an estate, in the neighbourhood of Swansea, worth nearly five thousand pounds a year; but it was his happy lot to have married a true wife, not a bag of money. Duclos, who saw much of the Hamiltons in their family circle at Naples in after years, was wont to say, ‘They are the happiest couple I ever saw.’
Mr. Hamilton was sent to the Court of Naples in 1764. The post, in that day, was not overburdened with business. And for some years to come the new Ambassador found the Neapolitan society little to his taste. He was intellectual, and, in the truest sense, an English gentleman. The tone of society at that time in Naples was both frivolous and dissolute. He had to form, by slow degrees, a circle in which a man of cultivated tastes might enjoy social life. The public duties of the embassy could employ but a small portion of his time, and the temper of the man made employment to him a necessary of life. He threw his energies into hard study. And he possessed that happiest of mental characteristics, an equal love of the natural sciences, and of the world of art and of books. He could pore, with like enjoyment, on the deep things of Nature, and on the secrets of ‘the antiquary times.’ And in both paths, he knew how to make his personal enjoyments teem with public good.
His first labours were given to the exhaustive research of volcanic phenomena. He amazed the fine gentlemen of Naples by setting to work as though he had to win his bread by the sweat of his brow. He laboured harder on the slopes of Vesuvius than an exceptionally diligent craftsman would labour in a factory—had Naples possessed any. Within four years he ascended the famous mountain twenty-two times. More than one of these ascents was made at the risk of his life. He made, and caused to be made, innumerable drawings of all the phenomena that he observed, showing the volcanic eruption in all its stages, and under every kind of meteorological condition. He formed too a complete collection of volcanic products, and of the earths and minerals of the volcanic district. When he had studied Vesuvius under every possible aspect, he went to Etna.
The results of these elaborate investigations were sent, from time to time, to the Royal Society (of which Mr. Hamilton was made a Fellow, after the reading of the first of his papers in 1766), and they were published in the Philosophical Transactions, between the years 1766 and 1780. They were afterwards collected, and improved, in the two beautiful volumes entitled Campi Phlegræi, and were lavishly illustrated from the drawings of F. A. Fabris, who had been trained by Hamilton to the work.[57] The collection of volcanic geology and products was given to the British Museum in 1767.
These geological labours had been diversified, at intervals, by the collection of a rich archæological museum, and by the establishment of a systematic correspondence on antiquarian subjects with men of learning in various parts of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This correspondence had for its object, not merely the enrichment of his own Museum, but the awakening of local attention throughout the country to its antiquities and history; matters which had theretofore been but too much neglected—in the Neapolitan fashion.
One of the earliest and choicest acquisitions made by Hamilton in the early years of his residence at Naples was a collection of vases belonging to the senatorial family of Porcinari, many of which had been gathered from sepulchres and excavations in Magna Græcia. This purchase, made in 1766 and afterwards largely increased, may be regarded as the substantial beginning of the noble series of vases now so prominent a part of our National Museum.
Thus had been formed, by degrees, at Naples, a museum which, at the beginning of the year 1772, included seven hundred and thirty fictile vases; a hundred and seventy-five terra-cottas; about three hundred specimens of ancient glass (including three of the most perfect cinerary urns known, at that time, to have been discovered); six hundred and twenty-seven bronzes, of which nearly one-half illustrated the arms and armour of the ancients; more than two hundred specimens of sacrificial, domestic, and architectonic, instruments and implements; fourteen bassi-relievi, busts, masques, and inscribed tablets; about a hundred and fifty miscellaneous pieces of ancient ivory, including a curious series of tessaræ; a hundred and forty-nine gems, chiefly scarabæi; a hundred and forty-three personal ornaments, of various kinds, in gold; a hundred and fifty-two fibulæ in various materials; and more than six thousand coins and medals, comprising a considerable series from the towns of Magna Græcia.
The first fruits of this noble collection was the publication, commenced in the year 1766, of the work entitled Antiquités Etrusques, &c., with admirable illustrations, and with a descriptive text, written in French by D’Hancarville. |Publication of the ‘Antiquités Etrusques.’| The first edition of this costly book was issued at Naples. It naturally attracted great attention. No such collection of fictile vases—in their combination of number and beauty—had been theretofore known.
The two volumes published at Sir William’s cost in 1766, were followed by two other volumes in 1767. All of them were executed with great care and with lavish expenditure. But the later edition, printed at Florence—long afterwards—is in many points superior.[58]
Whilst the volumes were still incomplete, Mr. Hamilton circulated proof plates of the work with great liberality. Some of these proofs were lent to our famous English potter, Josiah Wedgwood, and gave a strong impulse to his taste and artistic zeal. |Meteyard, Life of Josiah Wedgwood, vol. ii, p. 72.| But they excited an eager longing for access to the vases themselves, as the only satisfactory models.
When Wedgwood wrote to his friend and partner, Bentley;—‘Mr. Hambleton, you know, has flattered the old pot-painters very much,’ one feels that for the moment that excellent man’s prepossessions had been rubbed a little, against the grain. But he shows directly that there is no real intent to impeach the Editor’s honesty in the matter. ‘He has, no doubt,’ adds Wedgwood, ‘taken his designs from the very best vases extant,’ which was precisely what it was his duty to do, since selection was the task in hand, not the publication of seven hundred specimens.
This Collection—far more remarkable than any, of its kind, which had yet come to England—was brought over in 1772, and offered to the Trustees of the British Museum. An appeal was made to Parliament, and the first grant of public money, worthy of mention, was now made in order to its acquisition. The sum given to Mr. Hamilton was eight thousand four hundred pounds.
How soon one of the incidental results of the acquisition returned to the Public much more than its cost—leaving out of account altogether the best returns which accrue from such Collections—is among the familiar annals of our commerce. Josiah Wedgwood told a Committee of the House of Commons that, within two years, he had himself brought into England, by his imitations of the Hamilton vases in his manufactory at Etruria, about three times the sum which the Collection had cost to the country.
At the beginning of the year 1772 Mr. Hamilton was made a Knight of the Bath. He returned to Naples soon after the transfer of his antiquities to the Museum, and ere long he was busily engaged in new explorations at Pompeii and at Herculaneum. He sent to the Society of Antiquaries, in 1777, an interesting account of the discoveries at Pompeii, which is printed in the fourth volume of the Archæologia. At Herculaneum he employed, during many years, Father Antonio Piaggi to superintend excavations and make drawings, and gave him an annual salary equal to a hundred pounds sterling, after vainly endeavouring—at that time—to urge on the Neapolitan Government its own duty to carry on the task in an adequate manner for the honour of the nation, and to publish the results of the explorations for the general benefit of learning.
Sir William’s services as an ambassador were rendered with zeal and with credit, as opportunity offered. But the opportunity, in his earlier period, was comparatively rare. It was, perhaps, despite the proverb, not altogether a happy thing for Naples that its annals were tiresome. The rust of inactivity showed itself there, as so often elsewhere, to be much more fatal than the exhaustion of strife. Certainly, to the ambassador, it was a personal misfortune that, when the affairs of Naples became really momentous to Englishmen, the vigour and the will of earlier days were then departing from the man whose energies were at length to be put to the test in the proper sphere of his profession. Meanwhile, and in his prime, he had but—from time to time—to make routine memorials as to matters of individual wrong; to heal breaches between one Bourbon and another; and to secure the neutrality of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies during the war which grew out of the struggle in America. Such matters made no great inroad upon the pursuits of the naturalist and the antiquarian.
Labour on the mountains, in the excavations, and in the study, had been, now for many years, relieved by congenial friendships. There had been an improvement in the tone of Neapolitan Society since Hamilton’s first appearance. And all that was best in Naples had gathered round him. To English travellers his hospitalities were splendid and unremitting. But in 1782 the circle lost its mistress. Seven years before, Sir William and Lady Hamilton had been bereaved of a daughter—their only child. In 1783 occurred the dreadful earthquake in Calabria, the greatest calamity of the century save that at Lisbon.
Among the scientific correspondents in England with whom Sir William Hamilton kept up an intercourse was Sir Joseph Banks, then the President of the Royal Society. To him was sent the fullest account that was attainable of the sad event of 1783.
It had chanced that just before the news reached Naples, Sir Joseph had written to Hamilton about some experiments and discoveries on the composition and transmutation of water. He had said, jestingly: ‘In future we philosophers shall rejoice when an eruption, which may swallow up a few towns, affords subsistence for as many nations of animals and vegetables.’ This letter Hamilton was about to answer when he received the intelligence from Calabria.
‘We have had here,’ he writes, ‘some shocks of an earthquake which, in Calabria Ultra, has swallowed up or destroyed almost every town, together with some towns in Sicily.... Every hour brings in accounts of fresh disasters. |1783. Feb. 18.| Some thousands of people will perish with hunger before the provisions sent from hence can reach them. This, I believe, will prove to have been the greatest calamity that has happened in this century. An end is put to the Carnival. |Hamilton to Banks, MS. Addit., 8967, ff. 34, seqq.| The theatres are shut. I suppose Saint Januarius will be brought out.’ There had been no exaggeration in these first reports. It was found that at Terranova, not only were all the buildings destroyed, but the very ground on which they stood sunk to such a depth as to form a sort of gulf. In that district alone 3043 people lost their lives. At Seminara 1328 persons were buried beneath the ruins. In other and adjacent districts more than 3300 persons perished.
In 1784 the ambassador visited England. His stay was brief. But an incident which occurred during this visit gave its colour to the rest of his life.
In 1791 Sir William Hamilton was made a Privy Councillor, and in the same year (nine years after the death of his first wife) he married Emma Harte, whom he had first met in the house of his nephew, Colonel Greville, in 1784. In September, 1793, his eventful acquaintance with Nelson was formed.
In that month, Nelson had been sent to Naples with despatches from Admiral Lord Hood, in which Sir William Hamilton was pressed to procure the sending of some Neapolitan troops to Toulon. After his first interview with Lord Hood’s messenger, he is said to have remarked to his wife: ‘I have a little man to introduce to you who will become one of the greatest men England has ever had.’ The favourable impression was reciprocal, it seems. The ambassador gave such good furtherance to the object of Nelson’s mission, that the messenger, we are told, said to him, ‘You are a man after my heart. |Clarke and McArthur, Life, &c., of Nelson, vol. i, p. 133; and Nicolas, vol. i, p. 326.| I’m only a captain, but, if I live, I shall get to the top of the tree;’ while, of the too-fascinating lady into whose social circle he was presently brought, Nelson wrote to his wife, ‘She is a young woman of amiable manners, who does honour to the station to which she is raised.’ Several years, however, were yet to intervene before the events of the naval war and the political circumstances of Naples itself brought about a close connexion in public transactions between the great seaman and the British ambassador, whose long diplomatic career was drawing to its close.
Hamilton, after the manner of Collectors, had scarcely parted with the fine Museum, which he had sold to the Public in 1772, before he began to form another. The explorations of the buried cities gave some favourable opportunities near home, and his researches were spread far and wide. In amassing vases he was especially fortunate. And, in that particular, his second Collection came to surpass the first. He became anxious to ensure its preservation in integrity. With that view he offered it to the King of Prussia.