Lord Oxford’s private life was not less chequered by rapid alternations of sunshine and of gloom than was his political career. In August, 1713, he gratified a cherished desire by the marriage of his son Edward, Lord Harley, with the Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, daughter and heiress of John, Duke of Newcastle (who died in 1711). With what Lord Harley had already derived under the Duke’s will, this marriage brought him an estate then worth sixteen thousand pounds a year, and destined to increase enormously in value. Three months afterwards the Earl lost a dearly loved daughter, the Marchioness of Caermarthen, who died at the age of twenty-eight. It was of her that Swift wrote to him—‘I have sat down to think of every amiable quality that could enter into the composition of a lady, and could not single out one which she did not possess in as high a perfection as human nature is capable of. But as to your Lordship’s own particular, as it is an unconceivable misfortune to have lost such a daughter, so it is a possession which few can boast of to have had such a daughter. I have often said to your Lordship that “I never knew any one by many degrees so happy in their domestics as you;” and I affirm that you are so still, though not by so many degrees.... |Swift to Oxford; 21 Nov., 1713. (Works, vol. xvi, pp. 78–80.)| You began to be too happy for a mortal; much more happy than is usual with the dispensations of Providence long to continue.’
Under the sorrows both of public and of private life it was his wont to find a part of his habitual consolations in the use, as well as in the increase, of his splendid library. |History of the Harleian Library.| He began the work of collection in youth, and to add to his treasures was one of the matters which, at intervals, occupied his latest thoughts.
Among the famous Englishmen whose manuscripts passed, either wholly or partially, into the Harleian Library are to be counted Sir Thomas Smith; John Fox, the martyrologist; John Stowe, the historian; Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and Archbishop Sancroft. Among famous foreigners, Augustus Lomenie de Brienne; Peter Séguier, Chancellor of France; and Gerard John Vossius. Perhaps the most extensive of the prior collections which it had absorbed, in mass, was the assemblage of manuscripts that had been gathered by Sir Symonds D’Ewes, whose acquisitions included a rich series of the materials of English history.
The inquiries which led to the purchase of the D’Ewes’ Collection were the occasion of making fully known to Robert Harley a model librarian in the person of Humphrey Wanley. |Humphrey Wanley; his Life, Letters, and Journal.| The latter portion of Wanley’s life was wholly devoted to the service of the Harleian Library, and his employment there was a felicity, both for him and for it. His journal of the incidents which occurred during the growth of the collection given to his care is the most curious document in its kind which is known to exist. That journal illustrates the literary history and the manners of the time, not less amusingly than it exhibits the personal character of its writer, and the fidelity with which he worked at his task in life.
Wanley was the son of a country parson, little known to fame, but possessing some tincture of learning, and was born at Coventry, on the 21st of March, 1673. In his youth he attracted the favourable notice of his father’s diocesan, William Lloyd, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (and afterwards of Worcester), by whom he was sent to Edmund Hall at Oxford. That hall he soon exchanged for University College, on the persuasion of Dr. Arthur Charlett, by whose influence he was afterwards made an Underkeeper of the Bodleian Library. He took no degree, but won some distinction, whilst at Oxford, by the services which he rendered to Dr. Mill in collating the text of the New Testament.
On leaving the University, Wanley went to London, where he became Secretary to the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. He translated Ostervald’s Grounds and Principles of the Christian Religion; and compiled a valuable Catalogue of the Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts preserved in the chief libraries of Great Britain. The last-named labour gave proof of much ability. It was a sample of the work for which its writer was best fitted.
As Speaker of the House of Commons, Harley took a considerable part in organizing the Cottonian Library, when it became a public institution under the Act of Parliament. Wanley proffered to the Speaker, on this occasion, some advice about the necessary arrangements; became well acquainted with Harley’s bookishness, and saw how eagerly he would welcome opportunities for the improvement of his own library, as well as of that newly acquired by the Public.
The D’Ewes Collections and their History.
The Sir Symonds D’Ewes of that generation was the grandson of the diligent antiquary and politician who has been heretofore mentioned in this volume as the close friend of Sir Robert Cotton, and to whose labours, in a twofold capacity, students of our history owe a far better acquaintance with parliamentary debates, in the times both of Elizabeth and of Cromwell, than, but for him, would have been possible. The grandson of the first Sir Symonds had inherited from his ancestor a valuable library; but its possession had no great charm for him. He was willing to part with it, for due consideration, yet aware that he was under an obligation, moral if not legal, not so to part with his books as to lead to their dispersion.
On that head, the original collector had thus expressed himself in his last Will:—‘I bequeath to Adrian D’Ewes, my young son yet lying in the cradle, or to any other of my sons, hereafter to be born, who shall prove my heir (if God shall vouchsafe unto me a masculine heir by whom my surname and male line may be continued in the ages to come), my precious library, in which I have stored up, for divers years past, with great care, cost, and industry, divers originals and autographs, ... and such [books] as are unprinted; and it is my inviolable injunction and behest that he keep it entire, and not sell, divide, or dissipate it. Neither would I have it locked up from furthering the public good, the advancing of which I have always endeavoured; but that all lovers of learning, of known virtue and integrity, might have access to it at reasonable times, so that they did give sufficient security to restore safely any original or autograph ... borrowed out of the same, ... without blotting, erasing, or defraying it. But if God hath decreed now at last to add an end to my family in the male line, His most holy and just will be done!’ In that case, the testator proceeds to declare, it is his desire that the library should pass to his daughter and her heirs, on like conditions as to its perpetual preservation, so ‘that not only all lovers of learning ... may have access to it at seasonable times, but also that all collections which concern mine own family, or my wife’s, may freely be lent ... to members thereof,’ &c. |D’Ewes, Autobiography, in MS. Harl. (B. M.)| Then the testator adds—in relation to the last-named clause—an averment that he had ‘only sought after the very truth, as well in these things as in all other my elucubrations, whilst I searched amongst the King’s records or public offices.’