Four thousand nine hundred and twenty-five pounds was the sum given to Lord Lansdowne’s executors for his manuscripts. Besides the successive accumulations of State Papers heretofore mentioned, the Lansdowne Collection included other historical documents, extending in date from the reign of Henry the Sixth to that of George the Third; the varied Collections of William Petyt on parliamentary and juridical lore; those of Warburton on the topography and family history of Yorkshire, and of Holles, containing matter of a like character for the local concerns of the county of Lincoln; the Heraldic and Genealogical Collections of Segar, Saint George, Dugdale, and Le Neve; and a most curious series of early treatises upon music, which had been collected by John Wylde, who was for many years precentor of Waltham Abbey, in the time of the second of the Tudor monarchs.

The Acquisition of the Hargrave and Burney Libraries.

The Lansdowne Collection did not contain very much of a classical character. Its strength, it has been seen already, lay in the sections of Modern History and Politics. The next important addition to the Library of the Museum—that of the manuscripts and printed books of Francis Hargrave—was likewise chiefly composed of political and juridical literature. But the third parliamentary acquisition brought to the Museum a store of classical wealth, both in manuscripts and in printed books. Hargrave’s Legal Library was bought in 1813. Charles Burney’s Classical Library was bought in 1818. In the biographical point of view neither of these men ran a career which offers much of narrative interest. The one career was that of a busy lawyer; the other, that of a laborious scholar. But to Burney’s life a few sentences may be briefly and fitly given.

The second Charles Burney was a younger son of the well-known historian of Music, who for more than fifty years was a prominent figure in the literary circles—and especially in the Johnsonian circle—of London; and in whose well-filled life a very moderate share of literary ability was made to go a long way, and to elicit a very resonant echo. That ‘clever dog Burney,’ as he was wont to be called by the autocrat of the dinner-table, had the good fortune to be the father of several children even more clever than himself. Their reputation enhanced his own.

The Life and Literary Works of Dr. Chas. Burney.

Charles Burney, junior, was born at Lynn, in Norfolk, on the 10th of December, 1757. He was educated at the Charter House in London, at Caius College, Cambridge, and at King’s College, Aberdeen. At Aberdeen, Burney formed a friendship with Dr. Dunbar, a Scottish professor of some distinction, and an incident which grew, in after-years, out of that connection, determined the scene and character of the principal employments of Burney’s life. He devoted himself to scholastic labours, in both senses of the term; their union proved mutually advantageous, and as tuition gave leisure for literary labour, so the successful issues of that labour spread far and wide his fame as a schoolmaster. He was one of the not very large group of men who in that employment have won wealth as well as honour. It was finely said, many years ago—in one of the State Papers written by Guizot, when he was Minister of Public Instruction in France—‘the good schoolmaster must work for man, and be content to await his reward from God.’ In Burney’s case, the combined assiduity of an energetic man at the author’s writing-table, at the master’s desk, and also (it must in truthful candour be added) at his flogging block,[[5]] brought him a large fortune as well as a wide-spread reputation. This fortune enabled him to collect what, for a schoolmaster, I imagine to have been a Classical Library hardly ever rivalled in beauty and value. It was the gathering of a deeply read critic, as well as of an open-handed purchaser.

The bias of Dr. Burney’s learning and tastes in literature led him to a preference of the Greek classics far above the Latin. Naturally, his Library bore this character in counterpart. He aimed at collecting Greek authors—and especially the dramatists—in such a way that the collocation of his copies gave a sort of chronological view of the literary history of the books and of their successive recensions.

For the tragedians, more particularly, his researches were brilliantly successful. Of Æschylus he had amassed forty-seven editions; of Sophocles, one hundred and two; of Euripides, one hundred and sixty-six.

His first publication was a sharp criticism (in the Monthly Review) on Mr. (afterwards Bishop) Huntingford’s Collection of Greek poems entitled Monostrophica. This was followed, in 1789, by the issue of an Appendix to Scapula’s Lexicon; and in 1807 by a collection of the correspondence of Bentley and other scholars. Two years later, he gave to students of Greek his Tentamen de Metris ab Æschylo in choricis cantibus adhibitis, and to the youthful theologians his meritorious abridgment of Bishop Pearson’s Exposition of the Creed. In 1812, he published the Lexicon of Philemon.

The only Church preferments enjoyed by Dr. Burney were the rectory of St. Paul, Deptford, near London, and that of Cliffe, also in Kent. His only theological publication—other than the abridgment of Pearson—was a sermon which he had preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1812. Late in life he was made a Prebendary of Lincoln.