Amidst these varied avocations, the growth of the library and museum went on unceasingly. Friends and foes contributed, in turn, to its enrichment. The year 1702 saw the incorporation with the original gatherings of the West India voyage of the splendid collections of Courten, the friend of Sloane’s youth. In 1710, Sir Hans acquired the valuable herbaria of his old assailant, Leonard Plukenet. In 1718 he purchased the extensive collections, in all departments of natural history, of another friend of early years, James Petiver. The herbarium of Adam Buddle, a botanist little remembered now but of note in his generation, came to Sloane, as a token of friendship, from the death-bed of its collector. |MS. Sloane, 4069, passim.| The scientific possessions of Dr. Christopher Merret were purchased from his son, and from time to time, when valuable collections were known to be on sale upon the Continent, agents went across to buy.
Of these numerous sources of augmentation the museum of Petiver was next in importance to that of Courten—but with a considerable interval. It is said (in the contemporary correspondence, as I think) that its cost to Sloane was four thousand pounds. But remembering what four thousand pounds was a hundred and fifty years ago, there is reason to suspect some exaggeration in the statement.
The Natural History Collections of Petiver.
James Petiver, when Sir Hans first became acquainted with him, was serving, as an apprentice, the then apothecary of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. He afterwards became apothecary to the Charter House. He had, in one way or other, made for himself a singularly extensive acquaintance amongst seafaring men; and by their help had established an almost world-wide correspondence with people interested in natural history, or possessed of special opportunities for gathering its rarities. Of such rarities, Sloane somewhere says, ‘He had procured, I believe, a greater quantity than any man before him.’ But in course of time his collections overpowered his means, or his industry, for the work of preservation and arrangement. When, at the collector’s death, they passed into the possession of his friend, choice specimens were found, not in order, but in heaps. The due classification and ordering occupied many hands during many months.
Sloane’s Correspondence, and his Charities.
The charities of human life were not, in the breast of Sir Hans Sloane, choked either by the various allurements and preoccupations of science, or by the ceaseless toils of a busy and anxious profession. He was a very liberal giver, and also a discriminating and conscientious giver. I have rarely seen a correspondence which mirrors more strikingly than does that of Sloane, a just and equable attention to multifarious and often conflicting claims.
The multiplicity of the claims was, indeed, as notable as was the patience with which they were listened to. Not to dwell upon the innumerable gropings after money of which, in one form or other, every man who attains any sort of eminence is sure to have his share (but of which Sir Hans Sloane seems to have had a Benjamin’s portion) or upon interminable requests for the use of influence, at Court, at the Treasury, at the London Hospitals, at the Council Boards of the Royal Society or of the College of Physicians, and elsewhere; his fame brought upon him a mass of appeals and solicitations from utter strangers, busied with less worldly aims and pursuits. Enthusiastic students of the deep things of theology sought his opinion on abstruse and mystical doctrines. Advocates of perpetual peace, and of the transformation, at a breath, of the Europe of the eighteenth century into a new Garden of Eden, implored him to endorse their theories, or to interpret their dreams.
His replies are sometimes both characteristic and amusing; none the less so for the fact that his power of writing was, at all times, far beneath his other mental powers and attainments. Now and then, though rarely, a touch of humour lights up the homeliness of phrase.
To one of the enthusiasts in mystic divinity, who had sent for his perusal an enormous manuscript, he replied: ‘I am very much obliged for the esteem you have of my knowledge, which, I am very sure, comes far short of your opinion. |Sloane to Gabriel Nisbett, May, 1737, MS. Sloane, 4069, f. 38.| As to the particular controversies on foot in relation to Natural and Revealed Religion, and to Predestination, I am no ways further concerned than to act as my own conscience directs me in those matters; and am no judge for other people.... I have not time to peruse the book you sent.’
To the worthy and once famous Abbé de Saint Pierre, who would fain have established with Sloane a steady correspondence on the universal amelioration of mankind, by means of a vast series of measures, juridical, political, and politico-economical, which started from the total abolition of vice and of war, and descended to the improvement of road-making by some happy anticipation—a hundred years in advance—of our own Macadam, he wrote thus: ‘I should be very glad to see a general Peace established, for ever. |Sloane to St. Pierre, MS. Sloane, 4069, f. 44.| Rumours of war are often, indeed, found to be baseless, and the fears of it, even when well grounded, are often dissipated by an unlooked-for Providence. But poor mortals are often so weak as to suffer, in their health, from the fear of danger, where there is none!’