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liament for the improvement of the national collections of BOOK II, books.

Chap. III. BOOKLOVERS AND

PUBLIC

TORS

Four thousand nine hundred and twenty-five pounds was the sum given to Lord LANSDOWNE'S executors for his BENEFACmanuscripts. Besides the successive accumulations of State Papers heretofore mentioned, the LANSDOWNE Collection included other historical documents, extending in date from the reign of HENRY THE SIXTH to that of GEORGE THE THIRD; the varied Collections of William PETYT on parliamentary and juridical lore; those of WARBURTON on the topography and family history of Yorkshire, and of HOLLES, containing matter of a like character for the local concerns of the county of Lincoln; the Heraldic and Genealogical Collections of SEGAR, SAINT GEORGE, DUGDALE, and LE NEVE; and a most curious series of early treatises upon music, which had been collected by John WYLDE, who was for many years precentor of Waltham Abbey, in the time of the second of the Tudor monarchs.

The Lansdowne Collection did not contain very much of a classical character. Its strength, it has been seen already, lay in the sections of Modern History and Politics. The next important addition to the Library of the Muscum -that of the manuscripts and printed books of Francis HARGRAVE was likewise chiefly composed of political and juridical literature. But the third parliamentary acquisition brought to the Museum a store of classical wealth, both in manuscripts and in printed books. HARGRAVE'S Legal Library was bought in 1813. Charles BUR

NEY'S Classical Library was bought in 1818. In the biographical point of view neither of these men ran a career which offers much of narrative interest. The one career

THE ACQUI-
THE HAR-

SITION OF

GRAVE AND

BURNEY
LIBRARIES.

BOOK II,

Chap. III.

Book

LOVERS AND
PUBLIC
BENEFAC-
TORS.

THE LIFE

AND LI-
TERARY

WORKS OF

DR. CHAS.
BURNEY.

was that of a busy lawyer; the other, that of a laborious, scholar. But to BURNEY'S life a few sentences may be briefly and fitly given.

The second Charles BURNEY was a younger son of the well-known historian of Music, who for more than fifty years was a prominent figure in the literary circles—and especially in the Johnsonian circle-of London and in whose well-filled life a very moderate share of literary ability was made to go a long way, and to elicit a very resonant echo. That clever dog BURNEY,' as he was wont to be called by the autocrat of the dinner-table, had the good fortune to be the father of several children even more clever than himself. Their reputation enhanced his

own.

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Charles BURNEY, junior, was born at Lynn, in Norfolk, on the 10th of December, 1757. He was educated at the Charter House in London, at Caius College, Cambridge, and at King's College, Aberdeen. At Aberdeen, Burney formed a friendship with Dr. DUNBAR, a Scottish professor of some distinction, and an incident which grew, in afteryears, out of that connection, determined the scene and character of the principal employments of BURNEY'S life. He devoted himself to scholastic labours, in both senses of the term; their union proved mutually advantageous, and as tuition gave leisure for literary labour, so the successful issues of that labour spread far and wide his fame as a schoolmaster. He was one of the not very large group of men who in that employment have won wealth as well as honour. It was finely said, many years ago— in one of the State Papers written by GUIZOT, when he was Minister of Public Instruction in France-the good schoolmaster must work for man, and be content to await his reward from God.' In BURNEY'S case, the combined

Chap. III.

LOVERS AND

PUBLIC

TORS.

assiduity of an energetic man at the author's writing- BOOK II, table, at the master's desk, and also (it must in truthful Bookcandour be added) at his flogging block,* brought him a large fortune as well as a wide-spread reputation. This BENEFACfortune enabled him to collect what, for a schoolmaster, I imagine to have been a Classical Library hardly ever rivalled in beauty and value. It was the gathering of a deeply read critic, as well as of an openhanded purchaser.

The bias of Dr. BURNEY'S learning and tastes in literature led him to a preference of the Greek classics far above the Latin. Naturally, his Library bore this character in counterpart. He aimed at collecting Greek authorsand especially the dramatists-in such a way that the collocation of his copies gave a sort of chronological view of the literary history of the books and of their successive recensions.

For the tragedians, more particularly, his researches were brilliantly successful. Of Eschylus he had amassed forty-seven editions; of Sophocles, one hundred and two; of Euripides, one hundred and sixty-six.

His first publication was a sharp criticism (in the Monthly Review) on Mr. (afterwards Bishop) HUNTINGFORD'S Collection of Greek poems entitled Monostrophica. This was followed, in 1789, by the issue of an Appendix to SCAPULA'S Lexicon; and in 1807 by a collection of the correspondence of BENTLEY and other scholars. Two years later, he gave to students of Greek his Tentamen de Metris ab Eschylo in choricis cantibus adhibitis, and to the youthful theologians his meritorious abridgment of Bishop PEARSON'S

* More than one of Burney's scholars was accustomed to speak feelingly on the topic of ancient school 'discipline' when any passing incident led the talk in that direction in after life.

BOOK II,

Chap. III.
BOOK-

LOVERS AND
PUBLIC
BENEFAC-

TORS.

CHOICE

BOOKS IN
BURNEY'S
LIBRARY.

Exposition of the Creed. In 1812, he published the Lexicon of PHILEMON.

The only Church preferments enjoyed by Dr. BURNEY were the rectory of St. Paul, Deptford, near London, and that of Cliffe, also in Kent. His only theological publication-other than the abridgment of PEARSON-was a sermon which he had preached in St. Paul's Cathedral in 1812. Late in life he was made a Prebendary of Lincoln.

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Like his father, and others of his family, Charles BURNEY was a very sociable man. He lived much with PARR and with PORSON, and, like those eminent scholars, he had the good and catholic taste which embraced in its appreciations, and with like geniality, old wine, as well as old books. He was less wise in nourishing a great dislike to cool breezes. Shut the door,' was usually his first greeting to any visitant who had to introduce himself to the Doctor's notice; and it was a joke against him, in his later days, that the same words were his parting salutation to a couple of highwaymen who had taken his purse as he was journeying homewards in his carriage, and who were adding cruelty to robbery by exposing him to the fresh air when they made off.

Some of Dr. BURNEY'S choicest books were obtained when the Pinelli Library was brought to England from Italy. The prime ornament of his manuscript Collection, a thirteenth century copy of the Iliad, of great beauty and rich in scholia, was bought at the sale of the fine Library of Charles TowNELEY, Collector of the Marbles.

Although classical literature was the strength of the BURNEY Collection, it was also rich in some other departments. Of English newspapers, for example, he had brought together nearly seven hundred volumes of the

Chap. III.

LOVERS AND

TORS.

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reaching from the BOOK II, reign of JAMES THE FIRST to the reign of GEORGE THE BOOKTHIRD. No such assemblage had been theretofore formed, I think, by any Collector. He had also amassed nearly four BENEFAChundred volumes containing materials for a history of the British Stage, which materials have subsequently been largely used by Mr. GENEST, in his work on that subject. For BURNEY's life-long study of the Greek drama had gradually inspired him with a desire to trace what, in a sense, may be termed its modern revival, in the grand sequel given to it by SHAKESPEARE and his contemporaries. He had also collected about five thousand engraved theatrical portraits, and two thousand portraits of literary per

sonages.

A large number of his printed books contained marginal manuscript notes by BENTLEY, CASAUBON, BURMANN, and other noted scholars. And in a series of one hundred and seventy volumes BURNEY had himself collected all the extant remains and fragments of Greek dramatic writersabout three hundred in number. These remains he had arranged under the collective title of Fragmenta Scenica

Græca.

A splendid vellum manuscript of the Greek orators, in scription of the fourteenth century, had been obtained from Dr. CLARKE, by whom it had been acquired during Lord ELGIN'S Ottoman Embassy, and brought into England. It supplied lacunæ which are found wanting in all other known manuscripts. It completed an imperfect oration of Lycurgus, and another of Dinarchus. Another MS. of the Greek orators, of the fifteenth century, is only next in value to that derived from CLARKE's researches in the East, of 1800. There is also a very fine manuscript of the Geography of PTOLEMY, with maps compiled in the fifteenth

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