SIR JOSEPH BANKS xxxv 



For a man of his distinction the dignities which were 

 conferred upon him by royal favour seem disproportionate. 

 He was created a Baronet in 1781, a Knight of the Bath 

 in 1*795, and two years subsequently was sworn of the 

 Privy Council. In 1802 he was chosen one of the eight 

 foreign members of the French Acade"mie des Sciences, in 

 Paris. 



To the last his house, library, and museum were open 

 to all scientific men, of whatever nationality, and the ser- 

 vices of his successive librarians, Solander, Dryander, and 

 Brown, cannot be over-estimated. His Thursday breakfasts 

 and Sunday soirees in Soho Square made his house the centre 

 of influential gatherings of an informal kind ; curiosities 

 of every description were brought by visitors and exhibited, 

 and each new subject, book, drawing, animal, plant, or 

 mineral, each invention of art or science, was sure to find 

 its way to Sir Joseph's house. It was at one of these 

 parties that he strongly recommended the acquisition of the 

 Linnean Library and collections to James Edward Smith, 

 a young Norwich physician, and an ardent botanist. This 

 was the turning-point of Smith's life, and led to the founda- 

 tion of the Linnean Society, which held its meetings for 

 many years, during the lifetime of Eobert Brown, in Banks's 

 house in Soho Square, where the Linnean collections were 

 placed previous to the Society's removal to apartments 

 provided by Government in Burlington House. 



Sir Joseph Banks became latterly a great martyr to the 

 gout, " which grew to such an intensity as to deprive him 

 entirely of the power of walking, and for fourteen or fifteen 

 years previous to his death, he lost the use of his lower 

 limbs so completely as to oblige him to be carried, or 

 wheeled, as the case might require, by his servants in a 

 chair : in this way he was conveyed to the more dignified 

 chair of the Koyal Society, and also to the [Eoyal Society] 

 Club the former of which he very rarely omitted to attend, 

 and not often the latter ; he sat apparently so much at his 

 ease, both at the Society and in the Club, and conducted the 

 business of the meetings with so much spirit and dignity, 



