BOOK I, Chap. II. CESSORS OF SIR ROBERT and papers.' The Act then proceeds to declare that an agreement had been made for the purchase of Cotton House for £4,500, to the intent that it might be in Her Majesty's power to make this most valuable collection useful to her own subjects, and to all learned strangers.' Within five years, however, this unfortunate Library had to be removed from Cotton House to Essex House, in the Strand (1712); and thence again, in 1730, to Ashburnham House, at Westminster (already containing the Royal collection), where it had not long been lodged, when the THE FIRE AT fire occurred by which it was so seriously injured. The HAM HOUSE. account which the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry gave to the Public, shortly after the occurrence of this calamity, runs thus: ASHBURN 'On Saturday morning, October 23, 1731, a great smoke was perceived by Dr. BENTLEY, and the rest of the family at Ashburnham House, which soon after broke out into a flame. It began from a wooden mantel-tree taking fire which lay across a stove-chimney that was under the room where the MSS. of the Royal and Cottonian Libraries were lodged, and was communicated to that room by the wainscoat and by pieces of timber, that stood perpendicularly upon each end of the mantel-tree.' 'They were in hope, at first,' continues the Committee, 'to put a stop to the fire by throwing water upon the pieces of timber and wainscoat, . . . and therefore did not begin to remove the books so soon as they otherwise would have done. But, the fire prevailing, Mr. CASLEY, the Deputy Librarian, took care in the first place to remove the famous Alexandrian MS. and the books under the head of Augustus' [twelve of the Cottonian presses, it will be remembered, were adorned by the heads of the twelve Cæsars, whence the still existing designations or press 132] Chap. II. most THE SUC- SIR ROBERT marks, as for instance, that of the famous Evangeliary of Book I, King Ethelstan, NERO D. vi, mentioned on page in the Cottonian Library, as being esteemed the valuable amongst the collection. Several entire presses, COTTON. with the books in them, were also removed; but ... several of the backs of the presses being already on fire, they were obliged to be broke open, and the books, as many as could be, thrown out of the windows.' All the MSS. that were saved, and the remains of what been burnt, were removed to the Dormitory of Westminster School. 1731 October. At the time of this disastrous fire, the number of MS. volumes was 958. Of this number 114 were reported to be lost, burnt, or entirely spoiled; and 98 damaged so as to be defective.' Mr. Speaker ONSLOW took immediate measures, in conjunction with Dr. BENTLEY and Mr. CASLEY, for the examination of the burnt MSS., and for the repair of such as were then deemed alone reparable. Three months afterwards the Record Clerk to whom the task was more particularly committed, thus reports his progress : 'One hundred and upwards,' he says, 'being volumes of Letters and State Papers, have been quite taken to pieces, marked, and bound again.' But he laments that there Report of the having no way hitherto been found out to extend vellum Committee and parchment that has been shrivelled up and contracted by fire to its former dimensions, part of several of the vellum MSS. must remain not legible, unless the desideratum can be supplied.' For nearly a century some of the most precious of the injured MSS. remained as the fire had left them. But in 1824, by the care of Mr. FORSHALL, the then Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum, a commencement was made towards their restoration, which his successor, Sir F. MADDEN, zealously and successfully continued. Nearly appointed to view the Cotbrary (1732), PP. 5, tonian Li and Casley's Appendix thereto. Book I, Chap. II. THE SUC CESSORS OF SIR ROBERT COTTON. THE BEQUEST OF ARTHUR EDWARDS. three hundred volumes have been repaired, and more or less completely restored, (a considerable number of which were previously regarded as beyond all hope of recovery) to a state of legibility.* The calamity of 1731 brought about what may, in a sense, be termed a partial compensation, by inducing Major Arthur EDWARDS to make an important bequest, with the view of precluding its recurrence. Owing to the protraction of a life interest in the legacy-the terms of which will be cited in describing that eventual Act of Incorporation which created the British Museum-it did not become available until other arrangements had made its application to building purposes needless. It was, consequently, and in pursuance of the Testator's contingent instructions, appropriated to the purchase of books in the manner, and with results, which will be spoken of in a subsequent chapter. Major EDWARDS also bequeathed his own collection of about 2,000 volumes of printed books, by way of addition to the Cottonian Library of MSS. These, however, were not actually incorporated with the Museum collections until the year 1769. For several years, BENTLEY conjoined the Keepership of the Cottonian with that of the Royal Library. His predecessors in the office were Dr. Thomas SMITH (hitherto the only THE KEEP biographer of the Founder,) and William HANBURY, who had married a descendant of the Founder. Dr. SMITH was less eminent as a scholar-though his learning was great-but far more estimable as a man, than was his successor in the ERS OF THE COTTONIAN * 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. Chap. II. LIFE AND CHARACTER OF SIR ROBERT COTTON. Keepership, the imperious and covetous Master of Trinity. BOOK I, For conscience sake, SMITH had given up both a good fellowship and a good living, at the Revolution. Literature profited by the loss of Divinity. He died in May, 1710. HANBURY-by a very undesirable plurality-was a Trustee as well as Keeper. That he was not, in either capacity, strictly faithful to the spirit of the Trust confided to him seems to be established by incidents which I find recorded in the MS. Diary of Humphrey WANLEY. The reader will observe that it is possible to reconcile WANLEY'S statement with the supposition that the MSS. alienated had never actually been made part of the Cottonian Library, though it is as plain as sunlight that a really faithful trustee would have made them part of it. As it turned out, the sale of them did no actual and eventual mischief. On December 2nd, 1724, says WANLEY, 'I had a conversation with Mr. HANBURY, who owned that he hath still in his possession many original and valuable papers given him by his wife's brother, Sir JOHN COTTON, which now lie in different places. These papers and whatever else happens to be among them-as books, rolls, &c. -he hath agreed to put into my hands for my Lord's Wanley's [OXFORD'S] use. I have promised that he shall be very ii, 40 (B.M). well paid and considered for the same.' WANLEY had already recorded a previous visit in which HANBURY had delivered for my Lord OXFORD's use, a small but curious parcel of old letters,' adding: 'I believe he expects a gratuity for them.' On the last day of December he received another parcel; and on the 4th January, 1725, he again writes: Mr. HANBURY gave me another parcel of letters written to Sir Robert COTTON.' Without endorsing the violent diatribe of Lord OXFORD (the second of the Harleian Earls) against HANBURY'S Diary, MS., Book I, Chap. II. LIFE AND OF SIR ROBERT COTTON. successor as the almost wilful destroyer of part of the Cotton MSS.-it must be admitted that there is conCHARACTER clusive evidence that neglect of duty on Dr. BENTLEY'S part was a moving agent in the disaster. Under his nominal keepership the practical duties of Cottonian Librarian were discharged by an industrious and otherwise meritorious deputy, David CASLEY. THE PRO JECT OF 1707 THE COT TONIAN, ROYAL, AND There were many projects for making Sir Robert FOR UNITING COTTON'S noble collections, both in literature and antiquities, the foundation of a British Museum,' before a feasible and successful project was hit upon. It is curious to note that one of these schemes embraced, as the groundwork of the projected national Museum, the collections of Sir Robert COTTON, of Prince HENRY, and of Lord ARUNDEL; and that some particulars of the plan were narrated—to a country correspondent-by Sir Hans SLOANE, almost fifty Sloane to Charlett, (Bodleian Library, Oxford). 7 April, 1707. years before his own conditional bequest gave occasion and means for the eventual union of the collections so spoken of with the vast gatherings of all kinds, in literature and in science, to the procuring of which so large a portion of his own useful and laborious life was to be devoted. When that occasion came, two of the then Cottonian Trustees framed a Petition to Parliament in which they expressed their acknowledgments for 'seasonable and necessary care' of the Cotton Library. They alleged that it had remained almost useless' to the Public, during many years, for want of a fixed and convenient building to receive it; that it had been exposed to many dangers by frequent removals, and had once run the hazard of ' a total destruction by fire.' If, said they, the loss which the Public then sustained proved to be less than had been feared, the Public owed the obligation to a great member |