66 Mr. Bichard B. Holmes [Feb. 17, 



being redeemed, sold them to my father. . . . When all the stores at 

 Somerset House were brought by order of George III. to Kensington 

 that His Majesty might choose some to replace what he had taken 

 from Windsor and Hampton Court for the Queen's hoiise in St. James's 

 Park, he gave the residue, as they said, to Earl Gower, Lord Chamber- 

 lain, and his deputy, Sir Robert Wilmot, and the refuse they gave to 

 Mr. Town, under-housekeeper at Kensington ; but as he was servant 

 to my sister, Lady Mary Churchill, then housekeeper, and as I had the 

 care of that palace during her absence in France, I said, ' Mr. Town, 

 the Lord Chamberlain may take or give what he pleases, but you are 

 under my sister, take none, leave them here,' and they were left." 



In another note Walpole goes on to say of one who has not 

 generally been credited with much taste for art, " Frederick, Prince 

 of Wales, was very desirous of reassembling all he could of the collec- 

 tion of Charles I. He bought many fine pictures, particularly the 

 principal, of Mr. Humphry Edwin's collection ; " and in mentioning 

 the collections of George III. he proceeds to say, " he inherited from 

 his father Prince Frederick's collection of miniatures, among which 

 were Dr. Mead's admirable works of Isaac Oliver, namely, the whole- 

 length of Sir Philip Sydney, and the heads of Queen Elizabeth, the 

 Queen of Scots, Ben Jonson, and Oliver himself." 



This gossip of Horace Walpole's, which is dated from 1783, 1 have 

 quoted as an introduction to my subject, and to give an idea of the 

 chaotic condition in which the collections were at the beginning of 

 the reign. 



When George III. succeeded to the throne he was still young, and 

 had been brought up in comparative seclusion by his mother, the 

 widowed Princess of Wales. He was then entirely under her influence 

 and that of Lord Bute, who, whatever may be said of his political 

 conduct, was a man of no mean intellect or culture, heing devoted to 

 literature and the fine arts, and passionately fond of botany. He 

 was the constant friend and companion of the young Prince of Wales, 

 and by him the tastes of the future king were in a great measure 

 formed. 



The dominant fashion of the time at the King's accession was the 

 study of classical antiquity, led by the Society of Dilettanti, which 

 had then been formed about a quarter of a century. George III. did not 

 follow in the footsteps of this convivial club, though his agents secured 

 for him a very important collection of works relating to antiquity, 

 which will be mentioned later. His first thought was to form a 

 library, which should replace the collection which, as I have already 

 mentioned, his predecessor had given to the British Museum. But 

 even before he had formulated this project, he had enriched the 

 National Museum by the gift of the Thomason Collection — a curious 

 and unique assemblage of English literature printed during the period 

 of the Civil War — containing about 33,000 separate articles published 

 between 1640 and 1662, and bound in over 2000 volumes. The col- 

 lection had been valued at some thousands, and after having been for 



