The Inquiry into Symbolism was, at first, printed only for private circulation, in 1818. It was afterwards reprinted in the Classical Journal, with some corrections by the author. It was again reprinted, after his death, as an appendix to the second volume of the Specimens of Ancient Sculpture.

To the first volume of that work Mr. Payne Knight had already prefixed his Preliminary Dissertation on the Progress of Ancient Sculpture. After showing that of Phœnician art we have no real knowledge other than that which is to be derived from the study of coins, and that thence it may be learnt that the Phœnicians had artisans, but not artists, he goes on to survey Greek art in its successive phases. That art, at its best, finds, he thinks, a typical expression, or summary, in the saying ascribed to Lysippus: ‘It is for the sculptor to represent men as they seem to be, not as they really are.’ He dates the culmination of Greek sculpture as ranging between the years B.C. 450 and 400, and as due to the national pride and energy which were excited by the defeat of Xerxes and the events which followed. He thinks that what was gained, by the artists of the next half-century, in ideal grace, and in the fluent refinements of workmanship, was obtained only by a loss of energy, of characteristic expression, and of originality—the εθος of art. In the works of Lysippus and his school (B.C. 350–300), he sees a brief resuscitation of the vigour of the former period, combined with much more than the grace of the latter, to be followed only too swiftly by those desolating wars ‘in which the temples were destroyed, their treasures of art pillaged, and artists, for the first time, saw their works perish before themselves.’

In the ‘Dissertation,’ as in the ‘Inquiry,’ there are many statements and many reasonings to which subsequent discoveries have brought a tacit correction. |Mr. Payne Knight and the Elgin Marbles.| The passage in the former about the Elgin Marbles had to be corrected by the evidence of the author’s own eyesight. His examination before the Commons’ Committee of 1816 was an amusing scene. The key-note was struck by the witness’s first words. To the question ‘Have you seen the marbles brought to England by Lord Elgin?’ he replied, ‘Yes. I have looked them over.’ But on this point, enough has been said already in a previous page.

Both to the Edinburgh Review and to the Classical Journal Mr. Knight was a frequent and valuable contributor. It was in the latter periodical that his Prolegomena to Homer were first given to the world, although he had printed a small edition (limited to fifty copies) for private circulation, as early as in the year 1808.[[66]] His latest poetical work, the Romance of Alfred, I have never had the opportunity of reading.

Richard Payne Knight died on the twenty-fourth of April, 1824, in the 75th year of his age. He bequeathed his whole Collections to the British Museum, of which he had long been a zealous and faithful Trustee. He made no conditions, other than that his gift should be commemorated by the addition to the Trust of a perpetual Knight ‘Family Trustee.’

For this purpose a Bill was introduced into Parliament by Lord Colchester on the eighth of June. It received the royal assent on the seventeenth.

The addition of Mr. Knight’s Greek Coins made the British Museum superior, in that department, to the Royal Museum of Paris; the addition of his bronzes raised it above the famous Museum of Naples. By the most competent judges it has been estimated that, if the Collection had been sold by public auction, Mr. Knight’s representatives would probably have obtained for it the sum of sixty thousand pounds.

[1]. Sir Robert’s father was the fourth ‘Thomas Cotton of Conington,’ and fifth Lord of that manor of the Cotton family. The marriage of William Cotton with the eventual heiress of the Huntingdonshire Bruces was contracted about the year 1450.

[2]. ‘By this woman the Earldom of Huntingdon and the Lordship of Conington came to the Crown of Scotland.’-MS. Note by Sir R. Cotton, in ‘Harl. 807.’