BRITISH MUSEUM, THE. 



BRITISH MUSEUM, THE. 



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III., for 300/. The collection when presented to the Museum was 

 known there by the name of the " King's Pamphlets," the name and 

 merits of the collector who had displayed such sagacity, energy, and 

 perseverance, having sunk into total oblivion. 



The presentation of the Royal Library to the Museum by George II. 

 had left his successor without a collection of books, and George III. 

 felt the deficiency keenly. He purchased in 1762, for about 10,000k 

 a library of noted merit which had been collected by Mr. Smith, the 

 English consul at Venice ; and it is said that on an average about 20001. 

 a year were expended during his long reign of sixty years in the augmen- 

 tation of his library, under the care of his illegitimate half-brother, 

 Sir Frederick Augusta Barnard. The King himself took a lively 

 interest in the collection, was well acquainted with its contents and 

 arrangement, and amongst other signs of interest he showed in it 

 was anxious to have a printed catalogue, which Sir Frederick Barnard, 

 who lived till 1827, survived to make. No ordinary taste and judg- 

 ment were shown in the selection of the volumes, in which modern 

 history and polite literature formed the principal features ; and not 

 only was Germany well represented in both, a very unusual circum- 

 stance in an English library of the time, but the other northern 

 countries were not overlooked, though the collections appear to have 

 been principally made in a mass, a large number of Scandinavian books 

 for instance being purchased at once of Thorkelin. The library was 

 kept in a series of rooms at Buckingham House, the site which had 

 once been proposed for the British Museum ; and a view of some of 

 the rooms which contained it will be found in Pyne's ' Royal Resi- 

 dences.' Some alterations which George IV. proposed to make in the 

 building, are said to have suggested to him the idea of disposing of the 

 library. The history of its donation is involved in some mystery. 

 After all that has been said upon the subject by Mr. Ford in the 

 ' Quarterly Review ' (1850, v. 88, p. 143), and by Mr. Croker in ' Notes 

 and Queries' (v. 4, pp. 155, 446), those will not err who believe that 

 at all events enough was said of transferring it to Russia to occasion a 

 rather energetic remonstrance on the part of Lord Sidmouth, at the 

 instigation of Richard Heber. On January 15th, 1823, George IV. 

 addressed a letter to Lord Liverpool, in these words : " The King, my 

 late revered and excellent father, having formed during a long series of 

 years a most valuable and extensive library, consisting of about 

 120,000 volumes, I have resolved to present this collection to the 

 British nation." The number here stated is worthy of remark from 

 the excellent illustration it affords of the way in which the extent of 

 libraries is usually exaggerated. The select committee of the House 

 of Commons bad the books counted, and said in consequence, in 

 their report, " The number of books in the library is about 65,250, 

 exclusive of a very numerous assortment of pamphlets, principally 

 contained in 868 cases, and requiring about 140 more cases to contain 

 the whole." These pamphlets have been since bound in separate 

 volumes, and now therefore the number of volumes in the library is 

 much above that stated in the report of the committee. Notwith- 

 standing all this discussion, in Timperiey's ' Encyclopaedia of Literary 

 and Typographical Anecdote,' the edition of 1842, this very King's 

 Library is described (at page 686) as "amounting to full 250,000 

 volumes in number." 



In order to connect together the series of royal donations, we have 

 stepped a little out of the order of chronological arrangement. 

 Previous to the accession of the King's Library there had been two 

 bequests of great importance, and each of them by trustees ; the first, 

 of the library as well as the other collections of the Rev. Clayton 

 Mordaunt Cracherode, in 1799 ; and the other of those of Sir Joseph 

 Banks, in 1820. Mr. Cracherode's collection amounted to about 4500 

 volumes in number, and was remarkable for the beauty, selectness, and 

 fine condition of the books which composed it ; Sir Joseph's amounted 

 to about 16,000 volumes, and was a working library, consisting almost 

 entirely of books on natural history and of voyages and travels, the 

 principal extrinsic value of which consisted in the fact that in a large 

 number of cases they were presentation copies from the authors. A 

 minute analytical catalogue of the natural history portion of the 

 library, which was published by the librarian Dr. Dryander, a Swede, 

 in 1799 1805, has always been regarded as one of the best biblio- 

 graphical works on natural history. Sir Joseph had previously pre- 

 sented to the Museum two or three collections of Icelandic works 

 obtained during his visit to Iceland, and one of which comprised the col- 

 lection of Halfdan Einarsson, author of the literary history of Iceland. 

 By his will he left the library in the first instance to his librarian, Mr. 

 Robert Brown, and only after his death to the Museum. As Mr. Brown 

 survived to the year 1868, the effect of this disposition would have 

 been not only to deprive the Museum of the benefit of the bequest for 

 nearly forty years, but during that time to prevent the national library 

 <:ven purchasing a copy of any of the books which composed the 

 Banksian, under penalty of procuring a prospective duplicate. For- 

 tunately an arrangement was entered into by which the Museum 

 acquired in the person of Mr. Brown one of its most distinguished 

 officers, as the keeper of the Banksian collection, and the library was 

 in 1 82 7, transferred to the national establishment. Both the Cracherode 

 and Banksian collections are still kept entirely distinct in apartments 

 which, although they contain other portions of the library in addition, 

 are known by the name of the Cracherode and Banksian rooms. 



Of (mailer acquisitions there were many of value. Dr. Thomas 



Birch, one of the most active of the early trustees, bequeathed in 1766, 

 bis library, which abounded in historical and biographical matter. Sir 

 William Musgrave, another trustee, made, in 1799, a bequest of all such 

 of his books as were not previously in the British Museum a most valu- 

 able form of bequest which was afterwards imitated by Mr. Tyrwhitt, 

 and which if it were followed out by other collectors would be of the 

 greatest possible benefit to the national library and the least injury to the 

 heirs. (Sir William had previously presented in 1790, a large collection 

 of pamphlets on English biography, his favourite pursuit, as is shown by 

 his manuscript catalogue, also in the Museum, in many folio volumes, 

 of the names of persons deceased, with indications of where notices of 

 them had been published, a valuable book of reference to biographical 

 compilers. The collections of the two rival historians of music, Sir 

 John Hawkins and Dr. Burney, were finally united at the Museum, that 

 of Sir John coming in 1778, by donation, that of Dr. Burney in 1815 

 by purchase. The bequest of Mr. Tyrwhitt, the editor of Chaucer, 

 in 1786, added a fine collection of about 900 volumes of classical, 

 and also of Italian and Spanish authors, including about 300 of the 

 plays of Lope de Vega. The fine collection of old English plays which 

 had belonged to Garrick was acquired in 1780, by purchase, from the 

 widow of the great actor. A library of law books, including many 

 rarities, was bought in 1813, of Francis Hargrave, an eminent barrister. 

 In 1807, when Cumberland, the author of the West Indian, had sold to 

 a bookseller about eighty volumes of the classics which had belonged 

 to his relation, the great Dr. Bentley, and were enriched with the 

 Doctor's manuscript notes, the circumstance fortunately became known 

 to the librarians of the Museum in time to enable them to acquire 

 these volumes for the national collection for the sum of 400?. 



About this period several entire libraries were purchased. In 1815, 

 a deputation of two of the officers of the Museum, the Rev. H. H. Baber 

 and Mr. Kbnig, was sent to Munich to examine the library of 20,000 

 volumes, chiefly of natural history and medicine, belonging to Baron 

 Moll, which was purchased at their recommendation. In 1818 nearly 

 five thousand volumes of miscellaneous Italian and French were bought 

 at once of the heirs of M. Gingueno' the historian of Italian literature. 

 In the same year another whole collection was obtained, and in this 

 case an English one, the library of Dr. Charles Burney of Greenwich, 

 the classical scholar, and son of the Dr. Burney whose musical col- 

 lection had been acquired three years before. It had three dis- 

 tinguishing features a collection of interleaved copies of the Greek 

 classics with manuscript notes, another of materials for the history of 

 the stage, consisting of printed playbills and manuscript memoranda ; 

 and another of about 700 volumes of newspapers from the earliest 

 period to the passing day. The great prize was considered to lie in 

 the interleaved classics, some of which are of value, and others were 

 afterwards found to be chiefly interleaved with blank paper, or paper 

 presenting only various readings copied from different editions in the 

 handwriting of the doctor's pupils. The materials for the history of 

 the stage have chiefly been turned to account by the plodding industry 

 of one man, the Rev. John Genest, who worked at them for years, 

 and whose anonymous ' History of the English Stage,' in 10 volumes, 

 is chiefly filled with the dates and " casts " which they supply. The 

 collection of newspapers, which was valued at a thousand pounds of 

 the 9000 guineas which the printed books of the Burney collection 

 cost, was looked on with little favour, and in the application to the 

 House of Commons for the grant, it was considered advisable to veil 

 this part of the collection in some ambiguity. Since Naudd had pointed 

 out the usefulness of preserving pamphlets, that kind of acquisition 

 had been in favour with many collectors, and it was the great boast of 

 the Harleian library of printed books that it contained 400,000, but no 

 one had yet pointed out the utility of preserving newspapers. The 

 Museum was already in possession, from the bequest of Dr. Birch in 

 1766, of a publication called ' The English Mercury,' bearing the'date 

 of 1588, and which since 1796, when George Chalmers first called 

 attention to it, had been looked upon not only as the first English 

 newspaper, but the first in the world an honour which it was 

 destined to lose in 1839, when Mr. Thomas Watts, in his ' Letter to 

 Antonio Panizzi, on the reputed earliest newspaper,' proved beyond 

 dispute that it was a fabrication, which was subsequently shown to 

 have originated, probably in a frolic, with one of the sons of Lord 

 Hardwicke, the Chancellor, and with Dr. Birch, who was the friend of 

 the family. The newspapers of Dr. Burney's collection comprised 

 many of the earliest genuine specimens extant, and to some minds few 

 of the objects in the British Museum are more interesting than the 

 contemporary newspapers which describe the trial and execution of 

 Charles I. Long neglected and almost unnoticed in Knight Hunt's 

 history of English newspapers, called ' The Fourth Estate,' the news- 

 papers of the Burney collection, have lately been partly brought to 

 light in Andrews's ' History of British Journalism,' but still contain 

 much that is curious, and yet awaits a chronicler. Those, for instance, 

 who suppose that leading articles are a comparatively recent invention, 

 may be surprised to find in the newspapers of 1649, leading articles 

 written in a Miltonic vein, and advocating the execution of the king. 

 The collection is indeed imperfect ; the early numbers of the ' Morning 

 Chronicle' are not to be found either in the Museum, or so far 

 as is known elsewhere, and when Sara Coleridge was anxious to 

 reprint her father's essays on contemporary politics from the 

 columns of the ' Morning Post/ she consulted the Museum in vain. 



