[2]. Loakes had been purchased from the last owner of the Archdall family by Henry, Earl of Shelburne. Earl William (first Marquess of Lansdowne) eventually sold it to the ancestor of the present Lord Carrington.
[3]. See, hereafter, in life of T. Grenville, Book III, c. 2.
[4]. This famous speech was delivered on the 5th of March, 1778. ‘Then,’ said Lord Shelburne, after denouncing measures which would sever the Colonies from the Kingdom, ‘the sun of Great Britain is set. We shall be no more a powerful or even a respectable people.’—Parliamentary Debates, vol. xix, col. 850.
[5]. More than one of Burney’s scholars was accustomed to speak feelingly on the topic of ancient school ‘discipline’ when any passing incident led the talk in that direction in after life.
[6]. This small fact in classical bibliography is remarkable enough to call for some particular exemplifications, beyond those given in the text, on a former page. Of the three greatest Greek dramatists, Burney had 315 editions against 75 in the Library of the British Museum. Of Homer he had 87 against 45; of Aristophanes, 74 against 23; of Demosthenes, 50 against 18; and of the Anthologia, 30 against 19.
[7]. It was also from the Edwards fund that the whole costs of the Oriental MSS. of Halhed, and of the Minerals of Hatchett, together with those of several other early and important acquisitions, were defrayed. That fund, in truth, was the mainstay of the Museum during the years of parliamentary parsimony.
[8]. Of these four thousand pounds, two thousand three hundred and forty-five pounds seem to have been expended in Printed Books; the remainder, probably, in Manuscripts.
[9]. To give but one example: Samuel Burder—the author of the excellent work, so illustrative of Biblical literature, entitled Oriental Customs—states, in his MS. correspondence now before me, that the only effective reward given to him, in the course of his long labours, was given by Lord Bridgewater. The book above mentioned was ‘successful,’ ‘but,’ he says, ‘the booksellers, as usual, reaped the harvest,’ not the author. It is—shall I say?—an amusing comment on this latter clause, to find that in one of his letters to Lord Bridgewater, Burder states that the person who took the most kindly notice of his literary labours, next after Lord Bridgewater himself, was—the Emperor of Russia (Alexander I).
[10]. These form the Egerton MSS. 215 to 262 inclusive.
[11]. Horace Walpole, at this sale, purchased the fine MS., with drawings by Julio Clovio, which was long an ornament of the villa at Strawberry Hill, and also a choice cameo of Jupiter Serapis, for which he gave a hundred and seventy-three pounds. He preferred, he said, either of them to the vase. So, at least, he fancied when he found it unattainable. ‘I am glad,’ he wrote to Conway (18 June, 1786), ‘that Sir Joshua saw no more excellence in the Jupiter than in the Clovio, or the Duke, I suppose, would have purchased it as he did the Vase—for £1000. I told Sir William and the late Duchess—when I never thought that it would be mine—that I would rather have the head than the vase.’