BOOK II, The Chevalier BRÖNDSTED added other fragments in 1824. CLASSICAL Only one entire slab of the original sculpture is wanting. ARCHEOLO GISTS AND PURCHASE OF THE SECOND TOWNELEY 1814. Almost contemporaneously with the accessions which came to the Museum as the result of the explorations in 1814 of Mr. COCKERELL and his fellow-travellers in COLLECTION, Arcadia, a considerable addition was made to the Towneley Gallery by the purchase of a large series of bronzes, gems, and drawings, and of a cabinet of coins and medals, both Greek and Roman, all of which had been formed by the Collector of the Marbles. These were purchased from Mr. TOWNELEY'S representatives for the sum of eight thousand two hundred pounds. Among other conspicuous additions, made from time to time, a few claim special mention. Among these are the Cupid, acquired from the representatives of Edmund BURKE; the Jupiter and Leda, in low relief, bought of Colonel de BossET; and the Apollo, bought in Paris, at the sale of the Choiseul Collection. MINOR OF THE LECTION. Among the minor Greek antiquities which came to the British Museum in 1816, along with the sculptures of the ELGIN COL Parthenon, are the fine Caryatid figure, and the very beautiful Ionic capitals, bases, and fragments of shafts, from the double temple of the Erectheium and Pandrosos at Athens, -part of which, like the Temple of Neptune, was used by the Turks, in Lord ELGIN's time, as a powder-magazine. Acquisitions still more valuable than these were the grand fragment of the colossal Bacchus in feminine attire, which Lord ELGIN brought from the Choragic monument of Thrasyllus; the statue of Icarus (identified by comparison with a well-known low-relief in rosso antico formerly preserved in the Albani Collection); and the noble series of casts from the frieze of the Theseium and from that of the Chap. II. Choragic monument of Lysicrates. The Collection also BOOK II, included many statues' heads and fragments of great CLASSICAL archæological interest, but of which the original localities ARCHEOLO are for the most part unknown, and a considerable series of EXPLORERS. sepulchral urns. After the Elgin Marbles, the next important acquisition in the Department of Antiquities was that made by the purchase, in 1819, of the famous Apotheosis of Homer.' This marble had been found, almost two centuries before, at Frattocchi (the ancient Boville'), about ten miles from Rome on the Appian road, and had long been counted among the choicest ornaments of the Colonna Palace. It cost the Trustees one thousand pounds. Then, in 1825, came the noble bequest of Mr. Richard Payne Knight. When the treasures of Mr. Payne KNIGHT came to be added to the several Collections made, during the preceding fifty years, by HAMILTON, TOWNELEY, and ELGIN, as well as to those which the British army had won in Egypt, or which were due, in the main, to the research and energy of our travelling fellow-countrymen, the national storehouse may fairly be said to have passed from its nonage into maturity. The Elgin Collection had, of itself, sufficed to lift the British Museum into the first rank among its peers. But the antiquarian treasures of the Museum showed many gaps. Some important additions, indeed, had been made, from time to time, to the class of Egyptian antiquities. And a small foundation had been laid of what is now the superb Assyrian Gallery. Rich in certain classes of archæology, it remained, nevertheless, poor in certain others. In 1825, it came to the front in all. Richard Payne KNIGHT is one of the many men who, in all probability, would have attained more eminent and enduring distinction had he been less impetuous and more GISTS AND THE LIFE, AND COL LECTIONS, OF R. PAYNE KNIGHT. BOOK II, Chap. II. CLASSICAL ARCHEOLO GISTS AND concentrated in its pursuit. He went in for all the honours. He aimed to be conspicuous, at once, as archæologist and philosopher, critic and poet, politician and dictator-general EXPLORERS. in matters of art and of taste. He was ready to give judgment, at any moment, and without appeal, whether the question at issue concerned the decoration of a landscape, the summing-up of the achievement of a HOMER or a PHIDIAS, or the system of the universe. Mr. KNIGHT was born in 1749, and was the son of a landed man, of good property, whose estates were chiefly in Wiltshire, and who possessed a borough interest' in Ludlow. His constitution was so weakly, and his chance of attaining manhood seemed so doubtful, that his father would not allow him to go to any school, or to be put to much study at home. It was only after his father's death, and when he had entered his fourteenth year, that his education can be said to have begun. Within three years of his first appearance in any sort of school, he went into Italy; substituting for the university the grand tour. Only when he was approaching eighteen years of age did he fairly set to work to learn Greek. But he studied it with a will, and to good purpose. After remaining on the Continent about six or seven years, Mr. Payne KNIGHT removed to England, and went to live at Downton Castle. He took delight in the management of his land, proved himself to be a kind landlord as well as a skilful one, and convinced his neighbours that a man might love Greek and yet ride well to hounds. When returned to Parliament for the neighbouring borough, he attached himself to the Whigs, and more particularly to that section of them who supported BURKE in his demands for economical reform. When in London, he gave constant attention to his parliamentary duty, and when in the Chap. II. ARCHEOLO country, foxhunting, hospitality, and the improvement of BOOK II, his estate, had their fair share of his time. But, at all CLASSICAL periods of life, his love of reading was insatiable. When there was no hunting and no urgent business, he could read for ten hours at a stretch. He had reached his thirty-sixth year before he made the first beginning of his museum of antiquities. The primitive acquisition was a head, unknown-probably of Diomede -which was discovered at Rome in 1785. It is in brass, of early Greek work, and was bought of JENKINS. Despite the doubt which exists as to the personage, there are many known copies of this fine head upon ancient pastes and gems. In the following year, Mr. KNIGHT made his first appearance as an author. career. The Inquiry into the remains of the Worship of Priapus, as existing at Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples, treated of a subject which scarcely any one will now think to have been well chosen, as the firstfruits or earnest of a scholarly When a French critic said of it a maiden-work, but little virgin-like (peu virginal)' he expressed, pithily, the usual opinion of the very small circle of readers at home to whom the book became known. The author eventually called in the impression, so far as lay in his power, and the book is now one of the many rarities' which might well be still more rare than they are. In 1791, he gave to the world another work on a classical subject which possessed real value, and, amongst scholars, attracted much attention. The Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet is a treatise which, in its day, rendered good service to grammatical learning, and led to more. was followed, in 1794, by The Landscape, a Poem. It "The Landscape' is an elaborate protest against the then fashionable modes of gardening, which sought to improve' GISTS AND EARLY WRITINGS OF KNIGHT. BOOK II, GISTS AND nature, almost as much by replacement as by selection. On many points the poem is marked by good sense and just thought, as well as by vigour of expression, but its reasoning EXPLORERS. is far superior to its poetry. What is said of the choice and growth of trees shows thorough knowledge of the subject and true taste. But it needs no poet to convict Capability BROWN' of ignorance in his own pursuit when he insisted on the careful removal of every token of decay' as a cardinal maxim in landscape-gardening. Such topics may well be left to plain prose. The one notable feature in the poem which has still an interest is its curious indication of that peculiarity in Mr. KNIGHT's creed which asserted-in relation both to the works of nature and to those of art-that beauty is absolutely inconsistent with vastness. The excessive love of the minute and delicate led Mr. KNIGHT into the greatest practical error of his public life, as will be seen presently. At this time it merely led him to the bold assertion that no mountain ought to dare to lift its head so high as to 'Shame the high-spreading oak, or lofty tower.' The lines which follow are, it will be seen, curiously prophetic of that controversy about the Marbles of the Parthenon in which Mr. Payne KNIGHT took so large a share : 'But as vain painters, destitute of skill, Large sheets of canvas with large figures fill, The view sublime, when vast and undefined. |