In addition to these many liberal benefactions made during the earlier years of the present century, a smaller gift (virtually a gift, though in name a ‘deposit’) of the same period claims brief notice, on account both of its artistic value and of its curious history. I refer to that exquisite monument of ancient art known, for many years, as the ‘Barberini Vase,’ but now more commonly as the ‘Portland Vase,’ from the name of its last individual possessor.

This vase is one of the innumerable acquisitions which the country owes to the intelligent research and cultivated taste of Sir William Hamilton. It had been found more than a century before his time (probably in the year 1640), beneath the Monte del Grano, about three miles from Rome, on the road to Tusculum. The place of the discovery was a sepulchral chamber, within which was found a sarcophagus containing the vase, and bearing an inscription to the memory of the Emperor Alexander Severus (A.D. 222–235) and to his mother. About this sarcophagus and its inscription there have been dissertations and rejoinders, essays and commentaries, illustrative and obscurative, in sufficient number to immortalise half a dozen Jonathan Oldbucks and ‘Antigonus’ Mac-Cribbs. And the controversy is still undetermined.

After having been long a conspicuous ornament of the Barberini Palace, the ‘Barberini Vase’ was bought by Hamilton. When, in December, 1784, he paid one of his visits to England, the vase came with him. Its fame had previously excited the desires of many virtuosi. By the Duchess of Portland it was so strongly coveted, that she employed a niece of Sir William to conduct a negotiation with much more solemnity and mystery than the ambassador would have thought needful in conducting a critical Treaty of Peace. |Correspondence of Mrs. Delany, vol. ii (in many places).| The Duchess’s precautions foiled the curiosity of not a few of her fellow-collectors in virtû. ‘I have heard,’ wrote Horace Walpole, ‘that Sir W. Hamilton’s renowned vase, which had disappeared with so much mystery, is again recovered; not in the tomb, but the treasury, of the Duchess of Portland, in which, I fancy, it had made ample room for itself. Sir William told me it would never go out of England. I do not see how he could warrant that. The Duchess and Lord Edward have both shown how little stability there is in the riches of that family.’ |H. Walpole to Lady Upper-Ossory, 10 August, 1785. (Cunn. Edit., vol. ix, p. 3.)| As yet, the reader will remember, that ‘Portland Estate,’ which was so profitably to turn farms into streets, was but in expectancy.

And then Walpole adds: ‘My family has felt how insecure is the permanency of heir-looms,’—the thought of that grand ‘Houghton Gallery,’ and its transportation to Russia, coming across his memory, whilst telling Lady Upper-Ossory the story of the coveted vase, just imported from the Barberini Palace at Rome.

The Duchess of Portland enjoyed the sight of her beautiful purchase only during a few weeks. It was bought in by the family (at the nominal price of £1029^[11]) at the sale of her famous museum of curiosities—a sale extending to more than four thousand lots—and twenty-four years afterwards, it was lent, for exhibition (1810), by the third Duke of Portland, to the Trustees of the British Museum, where it has since remained.

When Wedgwood set about imitating the Portland Vase in his manufactory at Etruria—for which purpose the then Duke liberally lent it to him—he discovered that the vase had been broken and skilfully put together again. After it had been publicly exhibited during almost thirty-five years in London, the frenzy of a maniac led—as it seemed at the moment—to its utter destruction. But, mainly by the singular skill and patience of the late John Doubleday (a craftsman attached to the Department of Antiquities for many years), it was soon restored to its pristine beauty. That one act of violence in 1845 is the only instance of very serious injury arising from open exhibition to all comers which the annals of the Museum record.

Notices of the Literary Tastes and Acquirements of King George the Third.—His Conversations with Men of Letters.—History of his Library and of its Transfer to the British Nation by George the Fourth.

The strong antagonisms in mind, in disposition, and in tastes, which existed between George the Third and George the Fourth, may be seen in the small and incidental acts of their respective lives, almost as distinctly, and as sharply defined, as they are seen in their private lives, or in their characteristic modes of transacting the public business. |The Contrasts between George III and George IV.| George the Third regretted the giving away of the old ‘Royal Library’ of the Kings his ancestors, not because he grudged a liberal use of royal books by private scholars, but because he thought a fine Library was the necessary appendage of a palace. He occasionally stinted himself of some of his personal enjoyments in life, in order to have the more means to amass books. He formed, during his own lifetime, a Library which is probably both larger and finer than any like Collection ever made by any one man, even under the advantageous conditions of royalty. When he had collected his books, he made them liberally accessible. To himself, as we all know, Nature had not given any very conspicuous faculty for turning either books or men to good account; nor had education done much to improve the parts he possessed.

George the Fourth, as it seems, regretted the formation of the new Royal Library by the King his father, because, when he inherited it, he found that its decent maintenance and upkeeping would demand every year a sum of money which he could spend in ways far more to his taste. He had been far better educated than his father had been. And to him Nature had given good abilities; but study was about the last and least likely use to which, at any time, he was inclined to apply them. If he saw any good at all in having, on his accession, the ownership of a large Library, it lay, not in the power it afforded him of benefiting literature, and the labourers in literature, but in the possibility he saw that so fine a collection of books might be made to produce a round sum of money. One of his first thoughts about the matter was, that it would be a good thing to offer his father’s beloved Library for sale—to the Emperor of Russia. By what influences that shrewd scheme of turning a penny was diverted will be seen in the sequel.

If George the Third was, in respect to his parts, only slenderly endowed, he had in another respect large gifts. Both his industry and his power of sustained application were uncommon. And his conscientious sense of responsibility for the use of such abilities as he had was no less remarkable. Whatever may have been his mistakes in government, no man ever sat on the British throne who was more thoroughly honest in his intentions, or more deeply anxious to show, in the discharge of his duties, his consciousness of being

That his public acts did not more adequately correspond with his good desires was due, in large measure, to an infelicitous parentage and a narrow education.

As the father of lies sometimes speaks truth, so a mere party manifesto may sometimes give sound advice, though clothed in a discreditable garb. |The education of George III, after the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales.| When public attention came first to be attracted to the character of the peculiar influences which began to mould the training of the young Prince of Wales soon after his father’s death, a Court Chamberlain received, one morning, by the post, an unsigned document, which he thought it his duty to place in the hands of the Prime Minister, and he, when he had read it, thought the paper important enough to be laid before the King. This anonymous memorial denounced, as early as in the winter of 1752 (when the Prince was but fourteen years old), the sort of education which George the Third was receiving as being likely to initiate an unfortunate reign.

The paper (which I have now before me) is headed: ‘A Memorial of several Noblemen and Gentlemen of the first rank,’ and in the course of it there is an assertion—as being already matter of public notoriety—‘that books inculcating the worst maxims of government, and defending the most avowed tyrannies, have been put into the hands of the Prince of Wales,’ and such a fact, it is said, ‘cannot but affect the memorialists with the most melancholy apprehensions when they find that the men who had the honesty and resolution to complain of such astonishing methods of instruction are driven away from Court, and the men who have dared to teach such doctrines are continued in trust and favour.’^[12]

Making all allowance for partisan feeling and for that tinge of Whig oligarchism which peeps out, as well in the very title, as in the contents of this ‘Memorial,’ there was obvious truth in the denunciation, and a modicum of true prophecy in the inference. But such a remonstrance had just as little effect, in the way of checking undue influences, as it had of wisdom in the form given to it, or in the mode of its presentation at Court.

The Prince’s education was not merely imbued with ideas and maxims little likely to conduce towards a prosperous reign. It was intellectually narrow and mean. He grew up, for example, in utter ignorance of many of the great lights of English literature. In respect to all books, save one (that, happily, the greatest of all), he became one of those who, through life, draw from the small cisterns, instead of going to the deep wells. He seems to have been trained to think that the literary glories of his country began with the age of Queen Anne.

In after-years, George the Third attained to some dim consciousness of his own narrowness of culture. The ply, however, had been too early taken to be got rid of. No training, probably, could have made him a scholar. But his powers of application under wise direction would have opened to him stores of knowledge, from which unwise influences shut him out for life. His faculty of perseverance in study, it must be remembered, was backed by thorough honesty of nature, and by an ability to withstand temptations. When he was entering his nineteenth year, a sub-preceptor, who had watched him sedulously, said of him: ‘He is a lad of good principle. He has no heroic strain, and no turn for extravagance. He loves peace, and, as yet, has shown very virtuous principles. He has the greatest temptation to gallant with ladies, who lay themselves out in the most shameless manner to draw him on, but to no purpose.’ Certainly this last characteristic was neither an inherited virtue nor an ancestral tradition. And it stands in curious contrast with the tendencies of all his brothers and of almost all his sons.

From youth upwards the Prince read much, though he did not read wisely. No sooner was he King than he began to set about the collection of his noble Library. In the choice of a librarian he was not infelicitous, though the selection was in part dictated by a feeling of brotherly kindness. For he chose a very near relative—Mr. afterwards Sir Frederick Augusta Barnard. Mr. Barnard had many qualities which fitted him for his task.

The foundation of the Library was laid by a very fortunate purchase on the Continent. Its increase was largely promoted by a political revolution which ensued shortly afterwards; and, in order to turn his large opportunities to most account, the King’s Librarian modestly sought and instantly obtained the best advice which that generation could afford him—the advice of Samuel Johnson.

In 1762, the fine Library of Joseph Smith, who had been British Consul at Venice during many years, was bought for the King. It cost about ten thousand pounds. Smith had ransacked Italy for choice books, much as his contemporary, Sir William Hamilton, had ransacked that country for choice vases. And he had been not less successful in his quest. In amassing early and choice editions of the classics, and also the curiosities and rarities of fifteenth century printing, he had been especially lucky. From the same source, but at a later date, George the Third also obtained a fine gallery of pictures and a collection of coins and gems. For these he gave twenty thousand pounds. |Dactyliotheca Smithiana; 1767; Lady M. W. Montagu, Letters, vol. iii, p. 89.| For seven or eight years the shops and warehouses of English booksellers were also sedulously examined, and large purchases were made from them. In this labour Johnson often assisted, actively, as well as by advice.

When the suppression of the Jesuits in many parts of Europe made the literary treasures which that busy Society had collected—often upon a princely scale and with admirable taste, so far as their limitations permitted—both the King and his librarian were struck with the idea that another fine opportunity opened itself for book-buying on the Continent. It was resolved that Mr. Barnard should travel for the purpose of profiting by it. Before he set out on his journey, he betook himself to Johnson for counsel as to the best way of setting about the task.

Johnson’s counsel may be thus abridged: The literature of every country may be best gathered on its native soil. And the studies of the learned are everywhere influenced by peculiarities of government and of religion. In Italy you may, therefore, expect to meet with abundance of the works of the Canonists and the Schoolmen; in Germany with store of writers on the Feudal Laws; in Holland you will find the booksellers’ shops swarming with the works of the Civilians. |Substance of Johnson’s advice on the Collection of the King’s Library.| Of Canonists a few of the most eminent will suffice. Of the Schoolmen a liberal supply will be a valuable addition to the King’s Library. The departments of Feudal and Civil Law you can hardly render too complete. In the Feudal Constitutions we see the origin of our property laws. Of the Civil Law it is not too much to say that it is a regal study.

In respect to standard books generally, continued Johnson, a Royal Library ought to have the earliest or most curious edition, the most sumptuous edition, and also the most useful one, which will commonly be one of the latest impressions of the book. As to the purchase of entire libraries in bulk, the Doctor inclined to think—even a century ago—that the inconvenience would commonly almost overbalance the advantage, on the score of the excessive accumulation of duplicate copies.

And then he added a remark which (long years afterwards) Sir Richard Colt Hoare profited by, and made a source of profit to our National Museum. ‘I am told,’ said Johnson, ‘that scarcely a village of Italy wants its historian. And it will be of great use to collect, in every place, maps of the adjacent country, and plans of towns, buildings, and gardens. By this care you will form a more valuable body of geography than could otherwise be had.’

On that point—as, indeed, on all the points about which he gave advice—Johnson’s counsel bore excellent fruit. The ‘body of geography’ contained in the Georgian Library has never, I think, been surpassed in any one Collection (made by a single Collector) in the world. It laid, substantially, the foundation of the noble assemblage of charts and maps which now forms a separate Department of the Museum, under the able superintendence of Mr. Richard Henry Major, who has done much for the advancement of geographical knowledge in many paths, but in none more efficiently than in his Museum labours.

Like good counsel was given to Barnard by the great lexicographer, in relation to the gathering of illustrated books. He told the King’s Librarian that he ought to seek diligently for old books adorned with woodcuts, because the designs were often those of great masters.

When to this remark the Doctor added the words: ‘Those old prints are such as cannot be made by any artist now living,’ he asserted what was undoubtedly true, if he limited that high praise to the best class of the works of which he was speaking. But his words carry in them also an indirect testimony of honour to George the Third. If, in the century which has passed since Samuel Johnson discussed with Frederick Barnard the wisest means of forming a Royal Library, a great stride has been made by the arts of design in Britain, a share of the merit belongs to the patriotic old King. He was amongst the earliest in his dominions to encourage British art with an open hand. He was not only the founder of the Royal Academy, but a most liberal patron to artists; and he did not limit his patronage to those men alone who belonged to his own Academy. If for a series of years the Royal Academy did less for Art, and did its work in a more narrow spirit of coterie than it ought to have done, the fault was not in the founder. And, of late years, the Academy itself has, in many ways, nobly vindicated its foundation and the aid it has received from the Public. Towards the foundation of the Academy, George the Third gave, from his privy purse, more than five thousand pounds. To many of its members he was a genial friend, as well as a liberal patron.

Many other institutions of public education shared his liberality. Some generous benefactions which he gave to the British Museum itself, in the earlier years of his reign, have been mentioned already. But there were a crowd of other gifts, both in the earlier and in the later years, of which the limits of this volume at present forbid me to make detailed mention.

The Continental tour of Mr. Barnard was very successful as to its main object. He obtained such rich accessions for the Library as raised it—especially in the various departments of Continental history and literature—much above all other Libraries in Britain.

Within a few years of his return to England the very choice Collection which had been formed by Dr. Anthony Askew came into the market. For this Library, in bulk, the King offered Askew’s representatives five thousand pounds. They thought they could make more of the Collection by an auction, but, in the event, obtained less than four thousand pounds. The Askew Library extended only to three thousand five hundred and seventy separate printed works, but it contained a large proportion of rare and choice books. The chief buyers at the sale were the Duke of La Vallière and (through the agency of De Bure) Lewis the Sixteenth. The King of England bought comparatively little, although on this occasion Mr. Barnard could scarcely have withholden his hand on the score of the special injunctions which the King had formerly laid down for his guidance in such public competitions.

For it deserves to be remembered that George the Third’s conscientious thoughtfulness for other people led him, early in his career as a Collector, to give to his librarian a general instruction such as the servants of wealthy Collectors rarely receive. ‘I do not wish you,’ he said, ‘to bid either against a literary man who wants books for study, or against a known Collector of small means.’ He was very free to bid, on the other hand, against a Duke of Roxburghe or an Earl Spencer.

The King’s kindness of nature was also shown in the free access which he at all times afforded to scholars and students in his own Library. To this circumstance we owe some of the most interesting notices we have of his opinions of authors and of books.

In the earliest years of the Royal Collectorship part of the Library was kept in the old palace at Kew, which has long since disappeared, the site of it being now a gorgeous flower-bed. Afterwards, and on the acquisition for the Queen, of Buckingham House,^[13] the chief part of the Collection was removed to Pimlico, and arranged in the handsome rooms of which a view appears, by way of vignette, on the title-pages of the sumptuously printed catalogue prepared by Barnard. It was at Buckingham House that Johnson’s well-known conversation with the King took place, in February, 1767.

When Johnson first began to use the Royal Collection it was still in its infancy. He was surprised both at its extent and at the number of rare and choice books which it already included. He had seen Barnard’s assiduity, and had helped him occasionally in his book-researches, long prior to the tour of 1768. But it astonished him to see that the King, within six or seven years, had gathered so fine a Library as that which he saw in 1767. He became a frequent visitor. The King, hearing of the circumstance, desired his librarian to let him know when the literary autocrat came again.

The King’s first questions were about the doings at Oxford, whence, he had been told, Johnson had recently returned. The Doctor expressed his inability to bestow much commendation on the diligence then exhibited by the resident scholars of the University in the way of any conspicuous additions to literature. |1767, February.| Presently, the King put to him the question, ‘And what are you about yourself?’ ‘I think,’ was the answer—given in a tone more modest than the strict sense of the words may import—‘that I have already done my part as a writer.’ To which the King rejoined, ‘I should think so too, had you not written so well.’ After this happy retort, the King turned the conversation on some recent theological controversies. About that between Warburton and Lowth he made another neat though obvious remark—‘When it comes to calling names, argument, truly, is pretty well at an end.’ They then passed in review many of the periodical publications of the day, in the course of which His Majesty displayed considerable knowledge of the chief books of that class, both English and French. |Croker’s Boswell, pp. 184–186.| He showed his characteristic and kingly attention to minutiæ by an observation which he made when Johnson had praised an improved arrangement of the contents of the Philosophical Transactions—oblivious, at the moment, that he had himself suggested the change. ‘They have to thank Dr. Johnson for that,’ said the King.

Another remark made by George the Third during this conversation deserves to be remembered. ‘I wish,’ said he, ‘that we could have a really well-executed body of British Biography.’ This was a desideratum in the seventh year of the old King, and it is a desideratum still in the thirty-fourth year of his granddaughter. The reign of Queen Victoria was comparatively young when the late Mr. Murray first announced, not without some flourish of trumpets, a forthcoming attempt at such a labour, but the little that was said as to the precise plan and scope of the work then contemplated, gave small promise of an adequate performance; and hitherto there has been no performance at all.

Six years after the interview with Johnson, another literary conversation, of which we have a record, was held in the Royal Library. But on this occasion the scene was Kew. Dr. Beattie’s fame is now a thing of the past. There is still, however, some living interest in the account of the talk between the author of The Minstrel and his sovereign, held in 1773, |1773. August.| about liturgies, |Forbes, Life of Beattie, vol. i, pp. 347–354.| about prayers occasional and prayers ex tempore, and about the methods of education adopted in the Scottish universities.

The King’s least favourable—but not least characteristic—appearance, as a talker on literary subjects, is made in that conversation with Miss Burney, |and with Miss Burney.| in which he uttered his often-quoted remark on Shakespeare:—‘Was there ever such stuff as great part of Shakespeare—only one must not say so?’ |1785. December.| The sense of the humorous seems in George III to have been wholly lacking. And some part of the sadness of his life has probably a vital connexion with that deficiency.

In the last-mentioned conversation, the King evinced considerable acquaintance with French literature. He shared, to some extent, the then very general admiration for Rousseau, on whom he had bestowed more than one act of kindness during the brief English exile of the author of Emile. |D’Arblay, Diary, vol. ii, pp. 395–398.| He shared, also, the common impression as to the absence of gratitude in the brilliant Frenchman’s character. When Miss Burney told him that his own portrait had been seen to occupy the most conspicuous place in Rousseau’s living-room after his return to France, the King was both surprised and touched.

Next after the large and choice acquisitions made for the King’s Library on the Continent, some of its most conspicuous and valuable literary treasures were acquired at the several sales, in London, of the Libraries of James West (1773), of John Ratcliffe (1776), and of Richard Farmer (1798). It was at the first of these sales that George the Third laid the foundation of his unequalled series of the productions of the father of English printing.

The Caxtons bought for the King at West’s sale included the dearly prized Recuyell of the Histories of Troye (1472–1474?), the Booke of the Chesse (1476?), the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer (1478?), the Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers (1480), the Mirrour of the World (1481), the Godfrey of Boloyne (1482), the Confessio Amantis (1483), the Paris and Vienne (1485), and the Royal Booke (1487?). Of these, the lowest in price was the Confessio of 1483, which the King acquired for nine guineas, and the highest in price was the Chaucer of 1478, which cost him forty-seven pounds fifteen shillings.

At the same sale, he also acquired another Caxton, which has a peculiar interest. The King’s copy of the Troylus and Creside (probably printed in the year 1484) formerly belonged

and it bears her autograph.

Three years after the dispersion of West’s Library came that of the extraordinary Collection which had been made by a Bermondsey ship-chandler, John Ratcliffe by name. This worthy and fortunate Collector has been said, commonly, to have amassed his black-letter curiosities by buying them, at so much a pound, over his counter.^[14] But of such windfalls no man has ever been so lucky as to have more than a few. |John Ratcliffe of Bermondsey and his curious Library.| John Ratcliffe was, like his King, a large buyer at West’s sale, and at many other sales, upon the ordinary terms.

By pains and perseverance he had collected of books printed by Caxton the extraordinary number of forty-eight. No Collector ever surpassed, or even reached, that number, except Robert Harley, in whose days books that are now worth three hundred pounds could, not infrequently, be bought for much less than the half of three hundred pence.

Ratcliffe’s forty-eight Caxtons produced at his sale two hundred and thirty-six pounds. The King bought twenty of them at an aggregate cost of about eighty-five pounds. Amongst them were the Boethius, of 1478; the Reynarde the Foxe, of 1481; the Golden Legende, and the Curial, both of 1484; and the Speculum Vitæ Christi, probably printed in 1488. The Boethius is a fine copy, and was obtained for four pounds six shillings. A few years ago an imperfect copy of the same book brought more than sixteen times that sum.

Two others of the King’s Caxtons were the gift of Jacob Bryant. One of these is Ralph Lefevre’s Recueil des histoires de Troye, printed, probably, in 1476. The other is the Doctrinal of Sapience, printed in 1489. This last-named volume is on vellum, and is the only copy so printed which is known to exist. A third Caxton volume was bequeathed to George the Third by Mr. Hewett, of Ipswich. This is the Æsop of 1484, and is the only extant copy. |George III and the Bibliomania.| It was delivered to the King by Sir John Hewett and Mr. Philip Broke, the legator’s executors. George the Third was very sensitive to the special triumphs of collectorship, and would be sure to prize the Æsop all the more for its attribute of uniqueness.

A story in illustration of this specific tinge of the bibliomania in our royal Collector was wont to be told by Sir Walter Scott, and is mentioned in his interesting obituary notice of the King, printed in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal^[15] immediately after the King’s death. According to Scott, George the Third was fond of crowing a little over his brother-collector, the Duke of Roxburghe, on the score that the royal copy of the famous Recuyell of the Histories of Troye had a pre-eminence over the Roxburghe copy. The pre-eminence was of a sort, indeed, to which no one but a thorough-paced Collector would be sensible. For it consisted in the ‘locking,’ or wrong imposing, of certain pages, afterwards corrected at press. The fault, therefore, indicated priority of working off. But I do not find in the King’s Recuyell—which now lies before me—the peculiarity spoken of in the poet’s story. Such a fault does exist in the Roxburghe copy, which now belongs to the Duke of Devonshire. Other and authenticated anecdotes, however, are abundant, which suffice to show the close knowledge of, and the keen interest in, his books, by which George the Third was characterised. It was a still better trait in him that he found real pleasure in knowing that the treasures and rarities of his Library subserved the inquiries and studies of scholars. Nor did he make narrow limitations. Men like Johnson and Bishop Horsley profited by the Collection. So, too, did men like Gibbon and Priestley.

The total number of Caxton prints amassed by George III was thirty-nine. Of these three are in the Royal Library at Windsor—namely, the Recueil (1476?), the Æsop (1484), and the Doctrinal (1489).