Chap. IV. KING'S OR to have the more means to amass books. He formed, Book II, during his own lifetime, a Library which is probably both THE larger and finer than any like Collection ever made by any GEORGIAN one man, even under the advantageous conditions of LIBRARY. royalty. When he had collected his books, he made them liberally accessible. To himself, as we all know, Nature had not given any very conspicuous faculty for turning either books or men to good account; nor had education done much to improve the parts he possessed. GEORGE THE FOURTH, as it seems, regretted the formation of the new Royal Library by the King his father, because, when he inherited it, he found that its decent maintenance and upkeeping would demand every year a sum of money which he could spend in ways far more to his taste. He had been far better educated than his father had been. And to him Nature had given good abilities but study was about the last and least likely use to which, at any time, he was inclined to apply them. If he saw any good at all in having, on his accession, the ownership of a large Library, it lay, not in the power it afforded him of benefiting literature, and the labourers in literature, but in the possibility he saw that so fine a collection of books might be made to produce a round sum of money. One of his first thoughts about the matter was, that it would be a good thing to offer his father's beloved Library for sale― to the Emperor of Russia. By what influences that shrewd scheme of turning a penny was diverted will be seen in the sequel. If GEORGE THE THIRD was, in respect to his parts, only slenderly endowed, he had in another respect large gifts. Both his industry and his power of sustained application And his conscientious sense of responsi were uncommon. BOOK II, Chap. IV. THE KING'S OR bility for the use of such abilities as he had was no less remarkable. Whatever may have been his mistakes in GEORGIAN' government, no man ever sat on the British throne who was more thoroughly honest in his intentions, or more deeply anxious to show, in the discharge of his duties, his consciousness of being LIBRARY. THE EDUCA 'Ever in his great taskmaster's eye.' That his public acts did not more adequately correspond with his good desires was due, in large measure, to an infelicitous parentage and a narrow education. As the father of lies sometimes speaks truth, so a mere party manifesto may sometimes give sound advice, though clothed in a discreditable garb. When public attention came first to be attracted to the character of the peculiar influences which began to mould the training of the young FREDERICK, Prince of WALES soon after his father's death, a Court TION OF GEORGE III, AFTER THE DEATH OF PRINCE OF WALES. Chamberlain received, one morning, by the post, an unsigned document, which he thought it his duty to place in the hands of the Prime Minister, and he, when he had read it, thought the paper important enough to be laid before the King. This anonymous memorial denounced, as early as in the winter of 1752 (when the Prince was but fourteen years old), the sort of education which GEORGE THE THIRD was receiving as being likely to initiate an unfortunate reign. The paper (which I have now before me) is headed: "A Memorial of several Noblemen and Gentlemen of the first rank,' and in the course of it there is an assertion-as being already matter of public notoriety—' that books inculcating the worst maxims of government, and defending the most avowed tyrannies, have been put into the hands of the Prince of Wales,' and such a fact, it is said, 'cannot but affect the memorialists with the most melancholy apprehensions when Chap. IV. KING'S OR 'GEORGIAN' LIBRARY. 4 Memorial, ADDIT. 6271, &c.; MS. they find that the men who had the honesty and resolution BOOK II, to complain of such astonishing methods of instruction are driven away from Court, and the men who have dared to teach such doctrines are continued in trust and favour.'* Making all allowance for partisan feeling and for that tinge of Whig oligarchism which peeps out, as well in the very title, as in the contents of this Memorial,' there was obvious truth in the denunciation, and a modicum of true prophecy in the inference. But such a remonstrance had just as little effect, in the way of checking undue influences, as it had of wisdom in the form given to it, or in the mode of its presentation at Court. fol. 3. RANGE OF THIRD'S The Prince's education was not merely imbued with NARROW ideas and maxims little likely to conduce towards a pros- GEORGE THE perous reign. It was intellectually narrow and mean. He TASTES FOR grew up, for example, in utter ignorance of many of the BOOKS. great lights of English literature. In respect to all books, save one (that, happily, the greatest of all), he became one of those who, through life, draw from the small cisterns, * Lord Harcourt resigned his office of Governor to the Prince at the beginning of December, 1752. Scott, then the Prince's tutor, was recommended to his office by Bolingbroke. The Bishop of Peterborough's appointment as Preceptor was made in January, 1753. Among the books complained of, the Histoire de la Grande Bretagne of Father Orléans, and the Introduction à la vie du Roi Henri IV of another Jesuit, Father Péréfixe, are said to have been included. Another and more famous book, which was much in Prince George's hands in his early years, was also obnoxious to the Whigs-Bolingbroke's Idea of a Patriot King. But it would scarcely have been prudent in the malcontents to have put a work which (whatever its faults) ranks, to some extent, among our English classics, in the same expurgatory, or prohibitory, index with the books of Orléans and of Péréfixe. If George the Third got some harm out of Lord Bolingbroke's book, he probably obtained also some good. Pure Whiggism-pure but not simple-has never been noted for any discriminating tolerance of spirit. And, in 1752, it was furious at the prospect that the continuance of its long domination was imperilled. BOOK II, instead of going to the deep wells. He seems to have been trained to think that the literary glories of his country GEORGIAN began with the age of Queen ANNE. THE KING'S OR LIBRARY. FOUNDATION BRARY. In after years, GEORGE THE THIRD attained to some dim consciousness of his own narrowness of culture. The ply, however, had been too early taken to be got rid of. No training, probably, could have made him a scholar. But his powers of application under wise direction would have opened to him stores of knowledge, from which unwise influences shut him out for life. His faculty of perseverance in study, it must be remembered, was backed by thorough honesty of nature, and by an ability to withstand temptations. When he was entering his nineteenth year, a subpreceptor, who had watched him sedulously, said of him : 'He is a lad of good principle. He has no heroic strain, and no turn for extravagance. He loves peace, and, as yet, has shown very virtuous principles. He has the greatest temptation to gallant with ladies, who lay themselves out in the most shameless manner to draw him on, but to no purpose.' Certainly this last characteristic was neither an inherited virtue nor an ancestral tradition. And it stands in curious contrast with the tendencies of all his brothers and of almost all his sons. From youth upwards the Prince read much, though he did not read wisely. No sooner was he King than he began to set about the collection of his noble Library. In the choice of a librarian he was not infelicitous, though the selection was in part dictated by a feeling of brotherly kindness. For he chose a very near relative-Mr. afterwards Sir Frederick Augusta BARNARD. Mr. BARNARD had many qualities which fitted him for his task. The foundation of the Library was laid by a very fortunate purchase on the Continent. Its increase was largely Chap. IV. KING'S OR promoted by a political revolution which ensued shortly BOOK II, afterwards; and, in order to turn his large opportunities to THE most account, the King's Librarian modestly sought and in- 'GEORGIAN' stantly obtained the best advice which that generation could LIBRARY. afford him-the advice of Samuel JOHNSON. In 1762, the fine Library of Joseph SMITH, who had been British Consul at Venice during many years, was bought for the King. It cost about ten thousand pounds. SMITH had ransacked Italy for choice books, much as his contemporary, Sir William HAMILTON, had ransacked that country for choice vases. And he had been not less successful in his quest. In amassing early and choice editions of the classics, and also the curiosities and rarities of fifteenth-century printing, he had been especially lucky. From the same source, but at a later date, GEORGE THE THIRD also obtained a fine gallery of pictures and a collection of coins and gems. For these he gave twenty thousand pounds. For seven or eight years the shops and Dactyliotheca warehouses of English booksellers were also sedulously 1767; Lady examined, and large purchases were made from them. In Montagu, this labour JOHNSON often assisted, actively, as well as by Letters, advice. When the suppression of the Jesuits in many parts of Europe made the literary treasures which that busy Society had collected-often upon a princely scale and with admirable taste, so far as their limitations permitted-both the King and his librarian were struck with the idea that another fine opportunity opened itself for book-buying on the Continent. It was resolved that Mr. BARNARD should travel for the purpose of profiting by it. Before he set out on his journey, he betook himself to JOHNSON for counsel as to the best way of setting about the task. JOHNSON'S Counsel may be thus abridged: The litera Smithiana; M. W. vol. iii, p. 89. |