CHAPTER III.
A GROUP OF BOOK-LOVERS AND PUBLIC BENEFACTORS.
‘If we were to take away from the Museum Collection [of Books] the King’s Library, and the collection which George the Third gave before that, and then the magnificent collection of Mr. Cracherode, as well as those of Sir William Musgrave, Sir Joseph Banks, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, and many others,—and also all the books received under the Copyright Act,—if we were to take away all the books so given, I am satisfied not one half of the books [in 1836], nor one third of the value of the Library, has been procured with money voted by the Nation. The Nation has done almost nothing for the Library....
‘Considering the British Museum to be a National Library for research, its utility increases in proportion with the very rare and costly books, in preference to modern books.... I think that scholars have a right to look, for these expensive works, to the Government of the Country....
‘I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity,—of following his rational pursuits,—of consulting the same authorities,—of fathoming the most intricate inquiry,—as the richest man in the kingdom, as far as books go. And I contend that Government is bound to give him the most liberal and unlimited assistance in this respect. I want the Library of the British Museum to have books of both descriptions....
‘When you have given a hundred thousand pounds,—in ten or twelve years,—you will begin to have a library worthy of the British Nation.’—
Antonio Panizzi—Evidence before Select Committee on British Museum, 7th June, 1836. (Q. 4785–4795.)
Notices of some early Donors of Books.—The Life and Collections of Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode.—William Petty, first Marquess of Lansdowne, and his Library of Manuscripts.—The Literary Life and Collections of Dr. Charles Burney.—Francis Hargrave and his Manuscripts.—The Life and Testamentary Foundations of Francis Henry Egerton, Ninth Earl of Bridgewater.
The Reader has now seen that, within some twelve or fifteen years, a Collection of Antiquities, comparatively small and insignificant, was so enriched as to gain the aspect of a National Museum of which all English-speaking men might be proud, and mere fragments of which enlightened Foreign Sovereigns were under sore temptation to covet. He has seen, also, that the praise of so striking a change was due, in the main, to the public spirit and the liberal endeavours of a small group of antiquarians and scholars. They were, most of them, men of high birth, and of generous education. They were, in fact, precisely such men as, in the jargon of our present day, it is too much the mode to speak of as the antitheses of ‘the People,’ although in earlier days men of that strain were thought to be part of the very core and kernel of a nation.
But if it be undeniably true that the chief and primary merit of so good a piece of public service was due to the Hamiltons, Towneleys, Elgins, and Knights of the last generation, it is also true that the Public, through their representatives, did, at length, join fairly in the work by bearing their part of the cost, though they could share neither the enterprise, the self-denial, nor the wearing toils, which the work had exacted.
Now that the story turns to another department of the National Museum, we find that the same primary and salient characteristic—private liberality of individuals, as distinguished from public support by the Kingdom—still holds good. But we have to wait a very long time indeed, before we perceive public effort at length falling into rank with private, in the shape of parliamentary grants for the purchase of books, calculated even upon a rough approximation towards equality.