Chap. IV. LECTOR OF porter of our profession.' In these artistic commissions and Book I, researches William TRUMBULL, Edward NORGATE, Sir John THE COL BOROUGH, and Sir Isaac WAKE, especially distinguished themselves. Their correspondence with Lord ARUNDEL is DELIAN MSS. spread over a long series of years, and it abounds with curious illustrations of the world of art,' as it lived and moved in the earlier part of the seventeenth century. Among those entire collections which the Earl purchased in bulk, two are more particularly notable-the museum, namely, of Daniel NICE, and the library of the family of PIRCKHEIMER of Nuremberg. NICE'S Museum was especially rich in medals and gems. If EVELYN's information about the circumstances of that acquisition was accurate, it cost the Earl the sum-enormous, at that date-of ten thousand pounds. I cannot, however, but suspect that into that statement some error of figures has crept. The acquisition of the PIRCKHEIMER Library was made by the Earl himself, during his diplomatic mission into Germany on the affairs of the Palatinate. In this collection some of the choicest of the Arundelian MSS. which now enrich the British Museum were comprised. Its foundation had been laid more than a hundred and thirty years before the date of the Earl's purchase. But part of the library of the first founder had passed into the possession of the City of Nuremberg. The collection which Lord ARUNDEL acquired was rich both in classical manuscripts and in the materials of mediaval history. The liberality with which these varied treasures, as they successively arrived in London, were made accessible to scholars was in harmony with the open-handedness by means of which they had been amassed. For a few Arundel House was itself an anticipatory British Museum.' 6 years Evelyn to Pepys ; Diary and Corresp. BOOK I, THE COL LECTOR OF Then came the civil war. But the injury which the ARUNDEL collections sustained from the insecurity and commotions of a turbulent time is very insignificant, in comparison with DELIAN MSS. that sustained, after the Restoration, through the ignorance and the indolence of an unworthy inheritor. THE ARUN THE SUCCESSORS OF LORD ARUNDEL. The immediate heir and successor of Earl Thomas survived his father less than six years. The first of these was But the whole of his He died at Arundel House in April, 1652, leaving several sons, of whom the two eldest, Thomas and Henry, became successively Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk. restored to the dukedom in 1660. life, after attaining manhood, was passed in Italy and under the heavy affliction of impaired mental faculties, following upon an attack of brain-fever which had seized him at Padua, in 1645. He never recovered, but died in the city in which the disease had stricken him, lingering until the year 1677. It was in consequence of this calamity that the inheritance of a large portion of the Arundelian collections, and also the possession of Arundel House in London, passed from Earl Henry-Frederick to his second son, Henry. We learn from many passages both in the Diary and in the Letters of John EVELYN that, under the new owner, Arundel House and its contents were so neglected as, at times, to lie at the mercy of a crowd of rapacious parasites. In one place he speaks of the mansion as being infested by painters, panders, and misses.' In another he describes the library as suffering by repeated depredations. He remonstrated with the owner, and at length obtained from him a gift of the library for the newly-founded Royal Society, and a gift of part of the marbles for the University of Oxford. In his Diary he thus narrates the circumstances under which these benefactions were BOOK I, made: Chap. IV. LECTOR OF THE ARUN ARUNDEL LIBRARY TO THE ROYAL Diary, &e., p. 20. AND THAT OF THE TO THE OF OXFORD. Having mentioned that on the destruction of the meeting-place of the Royal Society, its members were DELIAN MSS. invited by Mr. HOWARD to sit at Arundel House in the GIFT OF THE Strand,' he proceeds to say that Mr. HOWARD, 'at my instigation, likewise bestowed on the Society that noble SOCIETY; library which his grandfather especially, and his ancestors, had collected. This gentleman had so little inclination to books that it was the preservation of them from embezzlement.' Elsewhere he says that not a few books had Evelyn, actually been lost before, by his interference, the bulk vol. ii, of the collection was thus saved. The gift to the Royal Society was made at the close of the year 1666. In September of the following year this entry occurs in the same Diary :- [I went] to London, on the 19th, with Mr. Henry HOWARD of Norfolk, of whom I obtained the gift of his Arundelian Marbles, those celebrated and famous inscriptions, Greek and Latin, gathered with so much cost and industry from Greece by his illustrious grandfather the magnificent Earl of ARUNDEL.... . When I saw these precious monuments miserably neglected, and scattered up and down about the garden and other parts of Arundel House, and how exceedingly the corrosive air of London impaired them, I procured him to bestow them on the University of Oxford. This he was pleased to grant me, and now gave me the key of the gallery, with leave to mark all those stones, urns, altars, &c., and whatever I found had inscriptions on them, that were not statues. This I did, and getting them removed and piled together, with those which were encrusted in the garden-walls, I sent immediately letters to the Vice-Chancellor of what I had procured.' On the 8th of October he records a visit b., p. 29. (edit. 18:0.) BOOK I, from the President of Trinity, to thank me, in the name of the Vice-Chancellor and the whole University, and to receive my directions what was to be done to show their DELIAN MSS. gratitude to Mr. HOWARD.' LECTOR OF Ten months later, EVELYN records that he was called to London to wait upon the Duke of NORFOLK. The Duke, he says, having, at my sole request, bestowed the Arundelian Library on the Royal Society, sent to me to take charge of the books and remove them. Many of these books had been presented by Popes, Cardinals, and great persons, to the Earls of ARUNDEL and Dukes of NORFOLK; and the late magnificent Earl of ARUNDEL bought a noble library in Germany which is in this collection. I should not, for the honour I bear the family, have persuaded the Duke to part with these, had I not seen how negligent he was of them; suffering the priests and everybody to carry away and dispose of what they Ib., pp. 122, pleased, so that abundance of rare things are irrecoverably gone.' 123. A curious narrative communicated, almost a century afterwards, to the Society of Antiquaries, by James THEOBALD, proves that in this respect the gallery of antiquities-notwithstanding the noble benefaction to Oxford-was even more unfortunate than the library of books. At the time when these gifts were obtained for Oxford and for the Royal Society, another extensive portion of the original collections had already passed into the possession of William HOWARD, Viscount Stafford, and had been removed to Stafford House. Lord STAFFORD was a younger son of the collector, and appears to have received the choice artistic DISPERSION treasures which long adorned his town residence by the gift of his mother. According to EVELYN, Lady ARUNDEL also 'scattered and squandered away innumerable other OF PART OF THE ARUN DEL MAR- Chap. IV. THE COL LECTOR OF DELIAN MSS. History of rarities, . . . whilst my Lord was in Italy.' But in this BOOK I. instance he appears to speak by hearsay, rather than from personal knowledge. TIERNEY, the able and painstaking historian of the family, asserts that its records contain no proof whatever of the justice of the charge. And he traces the origin of EVELYN's statement to a passage in one of the letters of Francis JUNIUS, in which it is said of Lady ARUNDEL that she carried over a vast treasure of rarities, and convaighed them away out of England.' Even to JUNIUS, notwithstanding his connection with the family, the charge may have come but as a rumour. Be that as it may, the subsequent dispersion of many treasures of art which the Earl had collected with such unwearied pains and lavish expenditure is unquestionable. Lord Henry HoWARD, it has been shown, excepted the 'statues' from his gift to the University. They remained at Arundel House, but so little care was bestowed upon their preservation that when the same owner afterwards obtained an Act of Parliament empowering him to build streets on part of the site of Arundel House and Gardens, many of these statues were broken by the throwing upon or near them of heaps of rubbish from the excavations. made, in the years 1678 and 1679, for the new buildings. These broken statues and fragments retained beauty enough to attract from time to time the admiration of educated eyes when such eyes chanced to fall upon them. Those which long adorned the seat of the Earls of POMFRET, at Easton Neston, in Oxfordshire, were purchased by Sir William FERMOR, and were given to the University of Oxford by one of his descendants. Others which are, or were, at Fawley Court, near Henley, were purchased by Mr. Arundel, p. 509. |