The Inquiry into the remains of the Worship of Priapus, as existing at Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples, treated of a subject which scarcely any one will now think to have been well chosen, as the first fruits or earnest of a scholarly career. When a French critic said of it ‘a maiden-work, but little virgin-like (peu virginal)’ he expressed, pithily, the usual opinion of the very small circle of readers at home to whom the book became known. The author eventually called in the impression, so far as lay in his power, and the book is now one of the many ‘rarities’ which might well be still more rare than they are.
In 1791, he gave to the world another work on a classical subject which possessed real value, and, amongst scholars, attracted much attention. The Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet is a treatise which, in its day, rendered good service to grammatical learning, and led to more. It was followed, in 1794, by The Landscape, a Poem.
‘The Landscape’ is an elaborate protest against the then fashionable modes of gardening, which sought to ‘improve’ nature, almost as much by replacement as by selection. On many points the poem is marked by good sense and just thought, as well as by vigour of expression, but its reasoning is far superior to its poetry. What is said of the choice and growth of trees shows thorough knowledge of the subject and true taste. But it needs no poet to convict ‘Capability Brown’ of ignorance in his own pursuit when he insisted on ‘the careful removal of every token of decay’ as a cardinal maxim in landscape-gardening. Such topics may well be left to plain prose.
The one notable feature in the poem which has still an interest is its curious indication of that peculiarity in Mr. Knight’s creed which asserted—in relation both to the works of nature and to those of art—that beauty is absolutely inconsistent with vastness. The excessive love of the minute and delicate led Mr. Knight into the greatest practical error of his public life, as will be seen presently. At this time it merely led him to the bold assertion that no mountain ought to dare to lift its head so high as to—
The lines which follow are, it will be seen, curiously prophetic of that controversy about the Marbles of the Parthenon in which Mr. Payne Knight took so large a share:—
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.
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.’ |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. |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. |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. |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.
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;’ |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]
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. |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.
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.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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:
15. And as, it must be remembered, Cotton himself believed.
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.
17. It is Cottonian MS., Vitellius, c. 17, ff. 380, seqq.
18. Verses entitled Sir Philip Sydney lying on his Deathbed; in MS. Chetham 8012 (Chetham Library, Manchester).
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.
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.)
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.
22. Stukeley’s Itinerary of Great Britain (2nd edit. 1776).
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.
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.
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.
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.
27. He was removed to the Fleet Prison ten days afterwards.
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.
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—
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.
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.