score of the special injunctions which the King had formerly laid down for his guidance in such public competitions. Book II, Chap. IV. LIBRARY. For it deserves to be remembered that GEORGE THE GEORGIAN' THIRD'S Conscientious thoughtfulness for other people led him, early in his career as a Collector, to give to his librarian a general instruction such as the servants of wealthy Collectors rarely receive. I do not wish you,' he said, ' to bid either against a literary man who wants books for study, or against a known Collector of small means.' He was very free to bid, on the other hand, against a Duke of ROXBURGHE or an Earl SPENCER. The King's kindness of nature was also shown in the free access which he at all times afforded to scholars and students in his own Library. To this circumstance we owe some of the most interesting notices we have of his opinions of authors and of books. In the earliest years of the Royal Collectorship part of the Library was kept in the old palace at Kew, which has long since disappeared, the site of it being now a gorgeous flower-bed. Afterwards, and on the acquisition for the Queen, of Buckingham House,* the chief part of the Collection was removed to Pimlico, and arranged in the handsome rooms of which a view appears, by way of vignette, on the title-pages of the sumptuously printed catalogue prepared by BARNARD. It was at Buckingham House that JOHNSON'S well-known conversation with the King took place, in February, 1767. When JOHNSON first began to use the Royal Collection it *The mansion for which the Trustees of the British Museum had been asked to give £30,000 was sold, five years afterwards, to the King for £20,000. It was purchased for the Queen as a jointure-house in lieu of her proper mansion, Somerset House, then devoted to public purposes. All the royal princes and princesses were born in Buckingham House, except George IV, and one, perhaps, of the younger children. LOCALITIES OF oF THE GEORGIAN LIBRARY. BOOK II, THE KING'S OR 'GEORGIAN' LIBRARY. THE INTER VIEW AT HAM HOUSE BETWEEN AND DR. JOHNSON. ary. was still in its infancy. He was surprised both at its extent and at the number of rare and choice books which it already included. He had seen BARNARD'S assiduity, and had helped him occasionally in his book-researches, long prior to the tour of 1768. But it astonished him to see that the King, within six or seven years, had gathered so fine a Library as that which he saw in 1767. He became a frequent visitor. The King, hearing of the circumstance, desired his librarian to let him know when the literary autocrat came again. The King's first questions were about the doings at Oxford, whence, he had been told, Johnson had recently returned. The Doctor expressed his inability to bestow GEORGE III much commendation on the diligence then exhibited by the resident scholars of the University in the way of any con1767, Febru- spicuous additions to literature. Presently, the King put to him the question, And what are you about yourself? ' 'I think,' was the answer-given in a tone more modest than the strict sense of the words may import—'that I have already done my part as a writer.' To which the King rejoined, I should think so too, had you not written so well.' After this happy retort, the King turned the conversation on some recent theological controversies. About that between WARBURTON and LowTH he made another neat though obvious remark-When it comes to calling names, argument, truly, is pretty well at an end.' They then passed in review many of the periodical publications of the day, in the course of which His Majesty displayed considerable knowledge of the chief books of that class, both English and French. He showed his characteristic and kingly attention to minutiæ by an observation which he made when JOHNSON had praised an improved arrangement of the contents of the Philosophical Transactions— Croker's Boswell, pp. 184-186. Chap. IV. oblivious, at the moment, that he had himself suggested the Book II, change. They have to thank Dr. JOHNSON for that,' said THE the King. KING'S OR Another remark made by GEORGE THE THIRD during this LIBRARY. conversation deserves to be remembered. 'I wish,' said he, 'that we could have a really well-executed body of British Biography.' This was a desideratum in the seventh year of the old King, and it is a desideratum still in the thirtyfourth year of his granddaughter. The reign of Queen VicTORIA was comparatively young when the late Mr. MURRAY first announced, not without some flourish of trumpets, a forthcoming attempt at such a labour, but the little that was said as to the precise plan and scope of the work then contemplated, gave small promise of an adequate performance; and hitherto there has been no performance at all. THE KING'S CONVERSA TION WITH DR. Six years after the interview with JOHNSON, another literary conversation, of which we have a record, was held in the Royal Library. But on this occasion the scene was BEATTIE; Kew. Dr. BEATTIE'S fame is now a thing of the past. There is still, however, some living interest in the account of the talk between the author of The Minstrel and his 1773. sovereign, held in 1773, about liturgies, about prayers occasional and prayers ex tempore, and about the methods of of Beattie, education adopted in the Scottish universities. The King's least favourable-but not least characteristic -appearance, as a talker on literary subjects, is made in August. Forbes, Life vol. i, pp. 347354. MISS that conversation with Miss BURNEY, in which he uttered AND WITH his often-quoted remark on SHAKESPEARE: Was there BURNEY. ever such stuff as great part of Shakespeare-only one must not say so?' The sense of the humorous seems in 1785. GEORGE III to have been wholly lacking. And some part of the sadness of his life has probably a vital connexion with that deficiency. December. BOOK II, Chap. IV. THE KING'S OR 'GEORGIAN' LIBRARY. D'Arblay, Diary, vol. ii, pp. 395-398. GEORGE THE SERIES OF BOOKS FROM CAXTON'S In the last-mentioned conversation, the King evinced considerable acquaintance with French literature. He shared, to some extent, the then very general admiration for RousSEAU, on whom he had bestowed more than one act of kindness during the brief English exile of the author of Emile. He shared, also, the common impression as to the absence of gratitude in the brilliant Frenchman's character. When Miss BURNEY told him that his own portrait had been seen to occupy the most conspicuous place in ROUSSEAU's livingroom after his return to France, the King was both surprised and touched. Next after the large and choice acquisitions made for the King's Library on the Continent, some of its most conspicuous and valuable literary treasures were acquired at the several sales, in London, of the Libraries of James WEST (1773), of John RATCLIFFE (1776), and of Richard FARMER (1798). It was at the first of these sales that GEORGE THE THIRD laid the foundation of his unequalled series of the productions of the father of English printing. The Caxtons bought for the King at West's sale included the dearly prized Recuyell of the Histories of Troye (14721474?), the Booke of the Chesse (1476 ?), the Canterbury Tales of CHAUCER (1478?), the Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers (1480), the Mirrour of the World (1481), the Godfrey of Boloyne (1482), the Confessio Amantis (1483), the Paris and Vienne (1485), and the Royal Booke (1487 ?). Of these, the lowest in price was the Confessio of 1483, which the King acquired for nine guineas, and the highest in price was the Chaucer of 1478, which cost him fortyseven pounds fifteen shillings. At the same sale, he also acquired another Caxton, which has a peculiar interest. The King's copy of the Troylus Chap. IV. and Creside (probably printed in the year 1484) formerly BOOK 11, belonged 'To Her, most gentle, most unfortunate, Crowned but to die-who in her chamber sate And every ear and every heart was won, And all, in green array, were chasing down the sun;' and it bears her autograph. Three years after the dispersion of WEST's Library came that of the extraordinary Collection which had been made by a Bermondsey ship-chandler, John RATCLIFFE by name. This worthy and fortunate Collector has been said, commonly, to have amassed his black-letter curiosities by buying them, at so much a pound, over his counter. * But of such windfalls no man has ever been so lucky as to have more than a few. John RATCLIFFE was, like his King, a large buyer at WEST's sale, and at many other sales, upon the ordinary terms. By pains and perseverance he had collected of books printed by CAXTON the extraordinary number of fortyeight. No Collector ever surpassed, or even reached, that number, except Robert HARLEY, in whose days books that are now worth three hundred pounds could, not infrequently, be bought for much less than the half of three hundred pence. RATCLIFFE'S forty-eight Caxtons produced at his sale two hundred and thirty-six pounds. The King bought twenty of them at an aggregate cost of about eighty-five pounds. Amongst them were the Boethius, of 1478; the Reynarde the Foxe, of 1481; the Golden Legende, and the * The story, I observe, has been endorsed in Mr. Blades' excellent Life of Caxton (see part 2, p. 268), but it is undoubtedly a distortion or exaggeration of some chance occurrence. No such series could have been formed otherwise than, in the main, by systematic research. THE KING'S OR 'GEORGIAN' LIBRARY. JOHN Rat- CLIFFE OF SEY AND HIS BRARY. |
