BOOK I, 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 SUC- LORD The immediate heir and successor of Earl Thomas survived his father less than six years. 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. The first of these was restored to the dukedom in 1660. But the whole of his 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. the LECTOR OF were the THE ARUN DELIAN MSS. GIFT OF THE ARUNDEL THE ROYAL Having mentioned that on the destruction of meeting-place of the Royal Society, its members invited by Mr. HOWARD to sit at Arundel House in 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. Diary, &c., p. 20. AND THAT OF THE TO THE OF OXFORD. 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, p. 29. (edit. 1850.) BOOK I, THE COL LECTOR OF DELIAN MSS. from the President of Trinity, to thank me, in the name 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 THE ARUN gift of his mother. According to EVELYN, Lady ARUNDEL also 'scattered and squandered away innumerable other OF PART OF DEL MAR- . Chap. IV. THE COL LECTOR OF Arundel, 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 PELIAN MSS. proof whatever of the justice of the charge. And he traces History of the origin of EVELYN's statement to a passage in one of the p.509. 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 unques tionable. 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. BOOK I, LECTOR OF FREEMAN. Others, again, were bought by Edmund WALLER, the poet, for the decoration of Beaconsfield. Still more strange was the fate which befell certain other DELIAN MSS. marbles which Lord Henry (by that time Duke of NORFOLK) caused to be removed from Arundel House to a piece of waste ground belonging to the manor of Kennington. These the owner seems to have regarded as little better than lumber. It is therefore the less surprising that his servants took so little care of them as to suffer them to be buried, in their turn, beneath rubbish which had been brought to Kennington from St. Paul's, during the rebuilding of that cathedral. By-and-bye, precious marbles, excavated amidst so many difficulties arising from Turkish barbarism in Asia Minor, had to be re-excavated in England. Many years after their second burial, some rumour of the circumstance came to the knowledge of the Earl of BURLINGTON, and by his efforts and care something was recovered. But the researches then made were, in some way, interrupted. They were afterwards resumed by Lord PETRE. After six days' of excavation and search, Narrative by eye-witness, 'just as the workmen were going to give over, they fell upon something which gave them hopes. Upon Anecdotes of further opening the ground they discovered six statues, some of a colossal size, the drapery of which was thought to be exceeding fine.' These went eventually to Worksop. Theobald; printed in Howard Family, pp. 101-120. says an Some Arundelian marbles were, it is said, converted into rollers for bowling-greens. The fragments of others lie in or beneath the foundations of the houses in Norfolk Street and the streets adjacent. The Stafford-House portion of the collections-which included pictures, drawings, vases, medals, and many miscellaneous antiquities of great curiosity-was sold by auction |