Whilst the Trustees of the British Museum were preparing—in a way that will be hereafter noticed—for the reception of this noble addition to the public wealth of the Nation, another liberal-minded scholar and patriot was considering in what way his collections in the wide field of classical archæology might be made most contributive to the progress of learning, of art, and of public education.
Thomas Bruce, eleventh Earl of Kincardine, and seventh Earl of Elgin, was born on the 20th of July, 1766. He was a younger son, but succeeded to his earldoms on the death, without issue, in 1771, of his elder brother, William Robert, sixth Earl of Elgin, and tenth of Kincardine. He was educated at Harrow, at St. Andrew’s, and at Paris; entered the army in 1785; and in 1790 began his diplomatic career by a mission to the Emperor Leopold. In subsequent years he was sent as Commissioner to the armies of Prussia and Austria, successively, and was present during active military operations, both in Germany and in Flanders. In 1795 he went as envoy to Berlin.
Lord Elgin was appointed to the embassy to the Ottoman Porte, with which his name is now inseparably connected, in July, 1799. One of his earliest reflections after receiving his appointment was that the mission to Constantinople might possibly afford opportunities of promoting the study and thorough examination of the remains of Grecian art in the Turkish dominions. He consulted an early friend, Mr. Harrison—distinguished as an architect, who had spent many years of study on the Continent with much profit—as to the methods by which any such opportunities might be turned to fullest account. Harrison’s advice to his lordship was that he should seek permission to employ artists to make casts, as well as drawings and careful admeasurements, of the best remaining examples of Greek architecture and sculpture, and more especially of those at Athens.
Before leaving England, Lord Elgin brought this subject before the Government. He suggested the public value of the object sought for, and how worthy of the Nation it would be to give encouragement from public sources for the employment of a staff of skilful and eminent artists. But the suggestion was received with no favour or welcome. He was still unwilling to relinquish his hopes, and endeavoured to engage, at his own cost, some competent draughtsmen and modellers. But the terms of remuneration proposed to him were beyond his available means. He feared that he must give up his plans.
On reaching Palermo, however, Lord Elgin opened the subject to Sir William Hamilton, who strongly recommended him to persevere, and told him that if he could not afford to meet the terms of English artists, he would find less difficulty in coming to an agreement with Italians, whose time commonly bore a smaller commercial value. |Confers with Sir William Hamilton.| With Sir William’s assistance he engaged, in Sicily, a distinguished painter and archæologist, John Baptist Lusieri (better known at Naples as ‘Don Tita’), and he obtained several skilful modellers and draughtsmen from Rome. The removal of the marbles themselves formed no part of Lord Elgin’s original design. That step was induced by causes which at this time were unforeseen.
On his arrival at Constantinople Lord Elgin applied to the Turkish Ministers for leave to establish six artists at Athens to make drawings and casts. He met with many difficulties and delays, but at length succeeded. |Sends Artists to Athens;| Mr. Hamilton, his Secretary, accompanied the Italians into Greece, to superintend the commencement of their labours.
The difficulties at Constantinople proved to be almost trivial in comparison with those which ensued at Athens. Every step was met, both by the official persons and the people generally, with jealousy and obstruction. If a scaffold was put up, the Turks were sure that it was with a view to look into the harem of some neighbouring house. If a fragment of sculpture was examined with any visible delight or eagerness, they were equally sure that it must contain hidden gold. When the artist left the specimen he had been drawing, or modelling, he would find, not infrequently, that some Turk or other had laid hands upon it and broken it to pieces. But the artists persevered, and habit in some degree reconciled, at length, the people to their presence.
When Lord Elgin went himself to Athens the state in which he found some of the temples suggested to him the desirableness of excavations in the adjacent mounds. He purchased some houses, expressly to pull them down and to dig beneath and around them. Sometimes the exploration brought to light valuable sculpture. |and makes Explorations by digging.| Sometimes, in situations of greatest promise, nothing was found.
On one occasion, when the indication of buried sculpture seemed conclusive, and yet the search for it fruitless, Lord Elgin was induced to ask the former owner of the ground if he remembered to have seen any figures there. ‘If you had asked me that before,’ replied the man, ‘I could have saved you all your trouble. I found the figures, and pounded them to make mortar with, because they were of excellent marble. A great part of the Citadel has been built with mortar made in the same way. That marble makes capital lime.’
The conversation was not lost upon Lord Elgin. And the assertion made in it was amply corroborated by facts which presently came under his own eyes. He became convinced that when fine sculpture was found it would be a duty to remove it, if possible, rather than expose it to certain destruction—a little sooner or a little later—from Turkish barbarity.
At intervals the artists, whose head-quarters were at Athens, made exploring trips to other parts of Greece. They visited Delphi, Corinth, Epidaurus, Argos, Mycene, Cape Sigæum, Olympia, Æginæ, Salamis, and Marathon.
But it was only by means of renewed efforts at Constantinople, and after a long delay, that the artists and their assistant labourers were enabled to act with freedom and to make thorough explorations. So long as the French remained masters of Egypt Lord Elgin had to win every little concession piecemeal, and obtained it grudgingly. As soon as it became apparent that the British Expedition would be finally successful, the tone of the Turkish government was entirely altered. They were now eager to satisfy the Ambassador, and to lay him under obligation. |Influence of the British Victories in Egypt.| Firmauns were given, which empowered him, not only to make models, but ‘to take away any pieces of stone from the temples of the idols with old inscriptions or figures thereon,’ at his pleasure. Instructions were sent to Athens which had the effect of making the Acropolis itself a scene of busy and well-rewarded labour. Theretofore a heavy admission fee had been exacted at each visit of the draughtsmen or modellers. Before the close of 1802, more than three hundred labourers were at work under the direction of Lusieri—with results which are familiar to the world.
It is less widely known that, had Napoleon’s plans in Egypt been carried to a prosperous issue, the ‘Elgin Marbles’ would, beyond all doubt, have become French marbles. When Lord Elgin’s operations began, French agents were actually resident in Athens, awaiting the turn of events and prepared to profit by it, in the way of resuming the operations which M. de Choiseul Gouffier had long previously begun.[63]
The efforts of the British Ambassador became the more timely and imperative from the fact that no amount of experience or warning was sufficient to deter the Turks from their favourite practice of converting the finest of the Greek Temples into powder magazines. Twenty of the metopes of the northern side of the Parthenon had been, in consequence of this practice, destroyed by an explosion during the Venetian siege of Athens in the seventeenth century. |1800.| The Temple of Neptune was found by Lord Elgin devoted to the same use, at the beginning of the nineteenth.
No methods of extending his researches, so as to make them as nearly exhaustive as the circumstances would admit, were overlooked by the ambassador. Through the friendship of the Capitan Pasha, Lord Elgin had already, whilst yet at the Dardanelles, obtained the famous Boustrophedon inscription from Cape Sigæum. Through the friendship of the Archbishop of Athens, he now procured leave to search the churches and convents of Attica, and the search led to his possession of many of the minor but very interesting works of sculpture and architecture which came eventually to England along with the marbles of the Parthenon.
Of the curious range and variety of the dangers to which the remains of ancient art were exposed under Turkish rule, the Boustrophedon inscription just mentioned affords an instance worth noting. |Memoranda on the Earl of Elgin’s Pursuits in Greece, &c., p. 35.| Lord Elgin found it in use as a seat, or couch, at the door of a Greek chapel, to which persons afflicted with ague or rheumatism were in the habit of resorting, in order to recline on this marble, which, in their eyes, possessed a mysterious and curative virtue. The seat was so placed as to lift the patient into a much purer air than that which he had been wont to breathe below, and it commanded a most cheerful sea-view; but it was the ill fate of the inscription to have a magical fame, instead of the atmosphere. Constant rubbing had already half obliterated its contents. But for Lord Elgin, the whole would soon have disappeared. At Athens itself, the loftier of the sculptures in the Acropolis enjoyed equal favour in the eyes of Turkish marksmen, as affording excellent targets.
In the course of various excavations made, not only at Athens, but at Æginæ, Argos, and Corinth, a large collection of vases was also formed. It was the first collection which sufficed, incontestibly, to vindicate the claim of the Greeks to the invention of that beautiful ware, to which the name of ‘Etruscan’ was so long and so inaccurately given.
One of the most interesting of the many minor discoveries made in the course of Lord Elgin’s researches comprised a large marble vase, five feet in circumference, which enclosed a bronze vase of thirteen inches diameter. In this were found a lachrymatory of alabaster and a deposit of burnt bones, with a myrtle-wreath finely wrought in gold. This discovery was made in a tumulus on the road leading from Port Piræus to the Salaminian Ferry and Eleusis.
Early in 1803, all the sculptured marbles from the Parthenon which it was found practicable to remove were prepared for embarkation. Both of those so prepared and of the few that were left, casts had been made, together with a complete series of drawings to scale. That great monument of art had been exhaustively studied, with the aid of all the information that could be gathered from the drawings made by the French artist, Carrey, in 1674, and those of the English architect, Stuart, in 1752. A general monumental survey of Athens and Attica was also compiled and illustrated.
The original frieze, in low relief, of the cella of the Parthenon—representing the chief festive solemnity of Athens, the Panathenaic procession—had extended, in the whole, to about five hundred and twenty feet in length. That portion which eventually reached England amounted to two hundred and fifty feet. And of this a considerable part was obtained by excavations. Of a small portion of the remainder casts were brought. But the bulk of it had been long before destroyed. Of the statues which adorned the pediments a large portion had also perished, yet enough survived to indicate the design and character of the whole. Of statues and fragments of statues, seventeen were brought to England. Of metopes in high relief, from the frieze of the entablature, fourteen were brought.
Thus far, an almost incredible amount of effort and toil had been rewarded by a result large enough to dwarf all previous researches of a like kind. But the difficulties and dangers of the task were very far from being ended. The ponderous marbles had to be carried from Athens to the Piræus. There was neither machinery for lifting, nor appliances for haulage. There were no roads. The energy, however, which had wrestled with so many previous obstacles triumphed over these. But only to encounter new peril in the shape of a fierce storm at sea.
Part of the Elgin Marbles had been at length embarked in the ship, purchased at Lord Elgin’s own cost, in which Mr. Hamilton sailed for England, carrying with him also his drawings and journals. The vessel was wrecked near Cerigo. Seven cases of sculpture sunk with the ship. Only four, out of the eleven embarked in the Mentor, were saved, along with the papers and drawings. Meanwhile, Lord Elgin himself, on his homeward journey, was, upon the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, arrested and ‘detained’ in France.
If the reader will now recall to mind, for an instant, the mortifications and discouragements, as well as the incessant toils, which had attended this attempt to give to the whole body of English artists, archæologists, and students, advantages which theretofore only a very small and exceptionally fortunate knot of them could enjoy, or hope to enjoy, he will, perhaps, incline to think that enough had been done for honour. The casts and drawings had been saved. The removal of marbles had formed no part of Lord Elgin’s first design. It was only when proof had come—plain as the noonday sun—that to remove was to preserve, and to preserve, not for England alone, but for the civilised world, that leave to carry away was sought from the Turkish authorities, and removal resolved upon.
Entreaty to the British Government that the thorough exploration of the Peloponnesus, by the draughtsman and the modeller, should be made a national object, had been but so much breath spent in vain. Private resources had then been lavished, beyond the bounds of prudence, to confer a public boon. Personal hardships and popular animosities had been alike met by steady courage and quiet endurance. All kinds of local obstacle had been conquered. And now some of the most precious results of so much toil and outlay lay at the bottom of the sea. The chief toiler was a prisoner in France.
But Lord Elgin was not yet beaten. He came of a tough race. He was—
|Lord Elgin branded, in England, as a Robber.| The buried marbles were raised, at the cost of two more years of labour, and after an expenditure, in the long effort, of nearly five thousand pounds, in addition to the original loss of the ship. Then a storm of another sort had to be faced in its turn. A burst of anger, classical and poetical, declared the ambassador to be, not a benefactor, but a thief. The gale blew upon him from many points. The author of the Classical Tour through Italy declared that Lord Elgin’s ‘rapacity is a crime against all ages and all generations; depriving the Past of the trophies of their genius and the title-deeds of their fame, the Present of the strongest inducements to exertion.’ |Eustace, Classical Tour, p. 269.| The author of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage declared that, for all time, the spoiler’s name (the glorious name of Bruce)—
That the abuse might have variety, as well as vigour, a very learned Theban broke in with the remark that there was no need, after all, to make such a stir about the matter. The much-bruited marbles were of little value, whether in England or in Greece. If Lord Elgin was, indeed, a spoiler, he was also an ignoramus. His bepraised sculptures, instead of belonging to the age of Pericles, belonged, at earliest, to that of Hadrian; far from bearing traces of the hand of Phidias, they were, at best, mere ‘architectonic sculptures, the work of many different persons, some of whom would not have been entitled to the rank of artists, even in a much less cultivated and fastidious age.... Phidias did not work in marble at all.’ These oracular sentences, and many more of a like cast, were given to the world under the sanction of the ‘Society of Dilettanti.’
The equanimity which had stood so many severer tests did not desert its possessor under a tempest of angry words. When set at liberty, after a long detention in France, he resumed his journey. On his eventual arrival in England, in 1806, he brought with him a valuable collection of gems and medals, gathered at Constantinople. He also brought some valuable counsels as to the mode in which he might best make the Athenian Marbles useful to the progress of art, obtained in Rome.
For, at Rome, he had been enabled to show a sample of his acquisitions to a man who was something more than a dilettante. ‘These,’ said Canova, ‘are the works of the ablest artists the world has seen.’
When consulted on the point whether restoration should, in any instance, be attempted, the reply of the great Italian sculptor was in these words: ‘The Parthenon Marbles have never been retouched. It would be sacrilege in me—sacrilege in any man—to put a chisel on them.’
Lord Elgin came to England with the intention of offering his whole Collection to the British Government, unconditionally. He was ready to forget the short-sightedness with which his proposal of 1799 had been met. He was prepared to trust to the liberality of Parliament, and to the force of public opinion, for the reimbursement of his outlay, and the fair reward of his toil. The ambassador was not in a position to sacrifice the large sums of money he had spent. He could not afford the proud joy of giving to Britain, entirely at his own cost, a boon such as no man, before him, had had the power of giving. There were conflicting duties lying upon him, such as are not to be put aside. That British artists—in one way or another—should profit by the grand exemplars of art which he had saved from Turkish musquetry and the Turkish lime-kilns, was the one thing towards which his face was set.
When first imprisoned in France, Lord Elgin did actually send a direction to England that his Collection should be made over, unconditionally, to the British Government. This order was sent, to guard against the possible effect of any casualty that might happen during his detention, the duration of which was then very problematical. He reached England, however, before the instruction had been carried into effect. In the mean time, the controversy about the real value of the Marbles, as well as that which impugned the Collector’s right to remove them from Athens, had arisen, and had excited public attention. It became important to elicit an enlightened opinion on those points, before raising the question how the sculpture should be finally disposed of.
The ignorance of essential facts—which alone made such reproaches[64] as those I have just quoted possible from a man devoid of malice, and gifted with genius—was a far less stubborn obstacle in Lord Elgin’s intended path than was the one-sided learning (one-sided as far as true art and its appreciation are concerned) which dictated the sneering utterances of some among the ‘Dilettanti.’ A Byron, by his nature, is open to conviction, sooner or later, in his own despite. A connoisseur, when narrow and scornful, is above reason. And he is eminently reproductive.
But for this stumbling-block in the path, the time of Lord Elgin’s return to England would have been eminently favourable for realising his plans in their fulness.
The two important accessions of antiquities to the British Museum which had just accrued from the success of our arms in Egypt, and from the almost life-long researches of Mr. Towneley and his associates in Italy, had led the way to an important enlargement of the Museum building, and also to a great improvement in its internal organization. The true importance, to the Public, of a series of the best works of ancient art as a national possession was beginning to be felt.
In June, 1805, the Trustees obtained from Parliament the purchase of the Towneley Marbles. They had already (in the previous year) obtained power to begin an additional building, the plan and design of which were now enlarged, and made specially appropriate to the reception and display of the Towneley Collection.
Hitherto, the Antiquities in the Museum had been regarded as a mere appendix of the Natural History Collections. They were now made a separate department, in accordance with their intrinsic value. Mr. Taylor Combe, who had entered the service of the Trustees, in 1803, as an assistant librarian, was made first Keeper of the new department. He filled that office, with much efficiency, until his death in 1826.
The new building or ‘Towneley Gallery’ was opened by a royal visit on the third of June, 1808. The Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of Cumberland and Cambridge, came to the Museum with a considerable retinue, and were received, with much ceremony, by a Committee of the Trustees. The Queen had not visited the Museum for twenty years past.
The Towneley Gallery was erected from the designs of Mr. Saunders, and was admirably adapted to its purpose. Some of the sculptures have not been seen to quite equal advantage since its replacement by the existing building. The addition has now disappeared as entirely as has old Montagu House itself, but the reader may see its form and style by glancing at the small vignette on the title-page of this volume.
So favourable an opportunity, however, was for the present lost. The self-conceit of the cognoscenti strengthened the too obvious parsimony of Parliament. Lord Elgin made no direct overture to the Government, but appealed to the great body of artists, of students, and of art lovers, for their verdict on his labours in Greece and their product. He arranged his marbles first in his own house in Park Lane, and afterwards—for the sake of better exhibition—at Burlington House, in Piccadilly, and threw them open to public view. The voice of the artists was as the voice of one man. Some, who were at the top of the tree, acknowledged a wish that it were possible to begin their studies over again. Others, who had but begun to climb, felt their ardour redoubled and their ambition directed to nobler aims in art than had before been thought of. Not a few careers, arduous and honourable, took their life-long colour from what was then seen at Burlington House. Some of the men most strongly influenced were not what the world calls successful, but not one of them ended his career without making England the richer by his work.
The eagerness of foreign artists to study the Elgin Marbles was equal to that of Englishmen. Canova, when on his visit to London in 1815, wrote: ‘I think that I can never see them often enough. Although my stay must be extremely short, I dedicate every moment I can spare to their contemplation. I admire in them the truth of nature, united to the choice of the finest forms.... I should feel perfectly satisfied, if I had come to London only to see them.’
The most accomplished of foreign archæologists were not less decisive in their testimony. Visconti, after seeing and studying repeatedly a small portion only of the Parthenon frieze, said of it: ‘This has always seemed to me to be the most perfect production of the sculptor’s art in its kind.’ When he saw the whole, his delight was unbounded.
The Collector was not able to carry out his plan of exhibition, in any part of it, to the full extent which he had contemplated.
He was anxious that casts of the whole of the extant sculptures of the Parthenon should be exhibited, in the same relative situation to the eye of the viewer which they had originally occupied in the Temple at Athens. He was also desirous that a public competition of sculptors should be provided for, in order to a series of comparative restorations of the perfect work, based upon other casts of its surviving portions, and wrought in presence of the remains of the authentic sculpture itself.
Meanwhile, the chief of the artists employed in the work of drawing and modelling continued his labours at Athens, and in its vicinity, for more than twelve years after Lord Elgin’s departure from Constantinople. Between the years 1811 and 1816, inclusive, eighty cases containing sculpture, casts, drawings, and other works of art, were added to the Elgin Collection in London.
In the year last named, when the question of artistic value had already been very effectively determined by the cumulative force of enlightened opinion, a Select Committee of the House of Commons was at length appointed, to inquire whether it were expedient that Lord Elgin’s Collection ‘should be purchased on behalf of the Public, and, if so, what price it may be reasonable to allow for the same.’
By this Committee it was reported to the House that ‘several of the most eminent artists in this kingdom rate these marbles in the very first class of ancient art; ... speak of them with admiration and enthusiasm; and, notwithstanding their manifold injuries, ... and mutilations, ... consider them as among the finest models and most exquisite monuments of antiquity.’ It was also reported that their removal to England had been explicitly authorised by the Turkish Government. |Ib., p. 16.| The Committee further recommended their purchase for the Public at the sum of thirty-five thousand pounds; and that the Earl of Elgin and his heirs (being Earls of Elgin) should be perpetual Trustees of the British Museum. |Ib., p. 27.| And the Committee expressed, in conclusion, its hope that the Elgin Marbles might long serve as models and examples to those who, by knowing how to revere and appreciate them, may first learn to imitate, and ultimately to rival them. On the 1st of July, 1816, the Act for effecting the purchase was passed by the Legislature. I do not know that any one member of the Society of Dilettanti really regretted the fact. But it is certain that by a very eminent connoisseur on the Continent it was much regretted. The King of Bavaria had already lodged a sum of thirty thousand pounds in an English banking house, by way of securing a pre-emption, should the controversy amongst the connoisseurs on this side of the Channel, of which so much had been heard, lead the British Parliament eventually to decline the purchase.
The nearest estimate that could be formed in 1816 of Lord Elgin’s outlay, from first to last, amounted to upwards of fifty thousand pounds. And the interest on that outlay, at subsisting rates, amounted to about twenty-four thousand pounds. Upon merely commercial principles, therefore, the mark of honour affixed by Parliament to the Earldom of Elgin was abundantly earned. By every other estimate, Lord Elgin had done more than enough to keep his name, for ever, in the roll of British worthies. And, as all men know, he had a worthy successor in that honoured title. The name of Elgin, instead of ranking, according to Byron’s prophecy, with that of Erostratus, has already become a name not less revered in the Indies, and in America, than in Britain itself.
For nearly half a century, Lord Elgin was one of the Representative Peers of Scotland. After his great achievement was completed, he took but little part in public life. The most curious incident of his later years was his election as a Member of the Society of Dilettanti, twenty-five years after his return from the Levant. The election was made without his knowledge. When the fact was intimated to him, he wrote to the Secretary to decline the honour. After a brief and dignified allusion to his efforts in Greece, he went on to say:—‘Had it been thought—twenty-five years ago, or at any reasonable time afterwards—that the same energy would be considered useful to the Dilettanti Society, most happy should I have been to contribute every aid in my power; but such expectation has long since past. I do not apprehend that I shall be thought fastidious, if I decline the honour now proposed to me at this my eleventh hour.’
The Collector of the Elgin Marbles died in England on the fourteenth of October, 1841.
During the long period which had thus intervened between the first exhibition to the Public of the sculptures from the Temple of Minerva and their final acquisition for the national Museum, an inferior but valuable series of Greek marbles was obtained from Phigaleia, in Arcadia. They were the fruit of the joint researches, in 1812, of the late eminent architect, Mr. Charles Robert Cockerell, Mr. John Foster, Mr. Lee, Mr. Charles Haller von Hallerstein, and Mr. James Linkh, who, in that year, had become fellow-travellers in Greece, and partners in the work of exploration for antiquities.
The temple to which these marbles had belonged, and beneath the ruins of which they were found, stands on a ridge clothed with oak trees on one of the slopes of Mount Cotylium. The scenery which surrounds it is of great beauty. The temple itself has long been a ruin. It was the work of Ictinus, the builder of the Parthenon. One portion of the frieze of its cella represents the battles of the Centaurs and the Lapithæ—the subject of the metopes of the Parthenon entablature. The remaining portion illustrates another series of mythic contests—that of the Athenians and the Amazons.
The extent of this frieze, in its integrity, was about a hundred and eight feet in length, by two feet one and a quarter inches in height. About ninety-six lineal feet were found, broken into innumerable fragments, but susceptible, as it proved—by dint of skill and of marvellous patience—of almost entire reunion, so that no restoration was needed to bring the subject of the sculpture into perfect intelligibility.
Mr. Cockerell, one of the most active of the explorers of 1812, had to proceed to Sicily whilst his fellows in the enterprise carried on the toils of digging and removal. But it is from his pen that we have a charming little notice of the progress of the work, and of the amusements which enlivened it. ‘I regret’ wrote Mr. Cockerell, ‘that I was not of that delightful party at Phigaleia, which amounted to above fifteen persons. They established themselves, for three months, on the top of Mount Cotylium—where there is a grand prospect over nearly all Arcadia—building, round the Temple, huts covered with boughs of trees, until they had almost formed a village, which they called Francopolis. They had frequently fifty or eighty men at work in the Temple, and a band of Arcadian music was constantly playing to entertain this numerous assemblage. When evening put an end to work, dances and songs commenced; lambs were roasted whole on a long wooden spit; and the whole scene in such a situation, at such an interesting time, when, every day, some new and beautiful sculpture was brought to light, is hardly to be imagined. Apollo must have wondered at the carousals which disturbed his long repose, and have thought that his glorious days of old were returned.’
‘The success of our enterprise,’ continues Mr. Cockerell, ‘astonished every one, and in all circumstances connected with it good fortune attended us.’ One of these circumstances, however—that of the mixed nationality of the discoverers—put, it must be added, some difficulty in the way towards accomplishing an earnest wish, on the part of the English sharers in the adventure, that England should be made the final home of the Phigaleian sculptures. Two Germans, as we have seen, were active partners in the exploration. A third, Mr. Gropius, had likewise some interest in it. And there was also a more formidable sleeping partner in the rich digging. Vely Pasha had stipulated that he was to have one half of the marbles discovered, as the price of his licence to explore. But, very fortunately, one of the ordinary changes in Turkish policy at Constantinople removed Vely from his government, just at the critical moment; and so made him anxious to sell his share, and to facilitate the removal of the spoil. The new Pasha had heard of the discoveries, and was hastening to lay hands upon the whole. But he was too late.
The marbles were removed to Zante. The German proprietors insisted on a public sale by auction. There was not time to bring the matter before Parliament. |The Transfer of the Marbles of Phigaleia to Zante;| But the Prince Regent took an active interest in it. With his sanction, and mainly by the exertions of Mr. W. R. Hamilton (afterwards a zealous Trustee of the British Museum), some members of the Government authorised the despatch of Mr. Taylor Combe to Zante. By him the marbles were purchased, at the price of sixty thousand dollars; but that sum was enhanced by an unfavourable exchange, so that the actual payment amounted to nineteen thousand pounds. |and to England.| It was paid out of the Droits of the Admiralty,—a fund of questionable origin, and one which had been many times grossly abused, but which, on this occasion, subserved a great national advantage.
The marbles thus obtained are confessedly inferior to those of the Parthenon; but they possess great beauty, as well as great archæological value. Both acquisitions, in their place, have contributed to increase historic knowledge, not less conspicuously than to develop artistic power, or to enlighten critical judgment, both in art and in literature. It would not be an easy task to estimate to what degree a mastery of the learning which is to be acquired only from the marbles of Attica and of Arcadia, and their like, has tended to make the study of Greek books a living and life-giving study.
To the sculptures brought from Phigaleia into England in 1815, several missing fragments have been added subsequently. A peasant living near Paulizza had carried off a piece of the frieze to decorate, or to hallow, his hut. This fragment was procured by Mr. Spencer Stanhope in 1816. The Chevalier Bröndsted added other fragments in 1824. Only one entire slab of the original sculpture is wanting.
Almost contemporaneously with the accessions which came to the Museum as the result of the explorations in 1814 of Mr. Cockerell and his fellow-travellers in Arcadia, a considerable addition was made to the Towneley Gallery by the purchase of a large series of bronzes, gems, and drawings, and of a cabinet of coins and medals, both Greek and Roman, all of which had been formed by the Collector of the Marbles. These were purchased from Mr. Towneley’s representatives for the sum of eight thousand two hundred pounds. Among other conspicuous additions, made from time to time, a few claim special mention. Among these are the Cupid, acquired from the representatives of Edmund Burke; the Jupiter and Leda, in low relief, bought of Colonel de Bosset; and the Apollo, bought in Paris, at the sale of the Choiseul Collection.
Among the minor Greek antiquities which came to the British Museum in 1816, along with the sculptures of the Parthenon, are the fine Caryatid figure, and the very beautiful Ionic capitals, bases, and fragments of shafts, from the double temple of the Erectheium and Pandrosos at Athens,—part of which, like the Temple of Neptune, was used by the Turks, in Lord Elgin’s time, as a powder-magazine. Acquisitions still more valuable than these were the grand fragment of the colossal Bacchus in feminine attire, which Lord Elgin brought from the Choragic monument of Thrasyllus; the statue of Icarus (identified by comparison with a well-known low-relief in rosso antico formerly preserved in the Albani Collection); and the noble series of casts from the frieze of the Theseium and from that of the Choragic monument of Lysicrates. The Collection also included many statues’ heads and fragments of great archæological interest, but of which the original localities are for the most part unknown, and a considerable series of sepulchral urns.
After the Elgin Marbles, the next important acquisition in the Department of Antiquities was that made by the purchase, in 1819, of the famous ‘Apotheosis of Homer.’ This marble had been found, almost two centuries before, at Frattocchi (the ancient ‘Bovillæ’), about ten miles from Rome on the Appian road, and had long been counted among the choicest ornaments of the Colonna Palace. It cost the Trustees one thousand pounds. Then, in 1825, came the noble bequest of Mr. Richard Payne Knight.
When the treasures of Mr. Payne Knight came to be added to the several Collections made, during the preceding fifty years, by Hamilton, Towneley, and Elgin, as well as to those which the British army had won in Egypt, or which were due, in the main, to the research and energy of our travelling fellow-countrymen, the national storehouse may fairly be said to have passed from its nonage into maturity. The Elgin Collection had, of itself, sufficed to lift the British Museum into the first rank among its peers. But the antiquarian treasures of the Museum showed many gaps. Some important additions, indeed, had been made, from time to time, to the class of Egyptian antiquities. And a small foundation had been laid of what is now the superb Assyrian Gallery. Rich in certain classes of archæology, it remained, nevertheless, poor in certain others. In 1825, it came to the front in all.
Richard Payne Knight is one of the many men who, in all probability, would have attained more eminent and enduring distinction had he been less impetuous and more concentrated in its pursuit. He went in for all the honours. He aimed to be conspicuous, at once, as archæologist and philosopher, critic and poet, politician and dictator-general in matters of art and of taste. He was ready to give judgment, at any moment, and without appeal, whether the question at issue concerned the decoration of a landscape, the summing-up of the achievement of a Homer, or a Phidias, or the system of the universe.
Mr. Knight was born in 1749, and was the son of a landed man, of good property, whose estates were chiefly in Wiltshire, and who possessed a borough ‘interest’ in Ludlow. His constitution was so weakly, and his chance of attaining manhood seemed so doubtful, that his father would not allow him to go to any school, or to be put to much study at home. It was only after his father’s death, and when he had entered his fourteenth year, that his education can be said to have begun. Within three years of his first appearance in any sort of school, he went into Italy; substituting for the university the grand tour. Only when he was approaching eighteen years of age did he fairly set to work to learn Greek. But he studied it with a will, and to good purpose.
After remaining on the Continent about six or seven years, Mr. Payne Knight removed to England, and went to live at Downton Castle. He took delight in the management of his land, proved himself to be a kind landlord as well as a skilful one, and convinced his neighbours that a man might love Greek and yet ride well to hounds. When returned to Parliament for the neighbouring borough, he attached himself to the Whigs, and more particularly to that section of them who supported Burke in his demands for economical reform. When in London, he gave constant attention to his parliamentary duty, and when in the country, foxhunting, hospitality, and the improvement of his estate, had their fair share of his time. But, at all periods of life, his love of reading was insatiable. When there was no hunting and no urgent business, he could read for ten hours at a stretch.
He had reached his thirty-sixth year before he made the first beginning of his museum of antiquities. The primitive acquisition was a head, unknown—probably of Diomede—which was discovered at Rome in 1785. It is in brass, of early Greek work, and was bought of Jenkins. Despite the doubt which exists as to the personage, there are many known copies of this fine head upon ancient pastes and gems. In the following year, Mr. Knight made his first appearance as an author.