Like good counsel was given to Barnard by the great lexicographer, in relation to the gathering of illustrated books. He told the King’s Librarian that he ought to seek diligently for old books adorned with woodcuts, because the designs were often those of great masters.
Johnson’s remark on modern illustrated books.
When to this remark the Doctor added the words: ‘Those old prints are such as cannot be made by any artist now living,’ he asserted what was undoubtedly true, if he limited that high praise to the best class of the works of which he was speaking. But his words carry in them also an indirect testimony of honour to George the Third. If, in the century which has passed since Samuel Johnson discussed with Frederick Barnard the wisest means of forming a Royal Library, a great stride has been made by the arts of design in Britain, a share of the merit belongs to the patriotic old King. He was amongst the earliest in his dominions to encourage British art with an open hand. He was not only the founder of the Royal Academy, but a most liberal patron to artists; and he did not limit his patronage to those men alone who belonged to his own Academy. If for a series of years the Royal Academy did less for Art, and did its work in a more narrow spirit of coterie than it ought to have done, the fault was not in the founder. And, of late years, the Academy itself has, in many ways, nobly vindicated its foundation and the aid it has received from the Public. Towards the foundation of the Academy, George the Third gave, from his privy purse, more than five thousand pounds. To many of its members he was a genial friend, as well as a liberal patron.
Many other institutions of public education shared his liberality. Some generous benefactions which he gave to the British Museum itself, in the earlier years of his reign, have been mentioned already. But there were a crowd of other gifts, both in the earlier and in the later years, of which the limits of this volume at present forbid me to make detailed mention.
The Continental tour of Mr. Barnard was very successful as to its main object. He obtained such rich accessions for the Library as raised it—especially in the various departments of Continental history and literature—much above all other Libraries in Britain.
Bibliotheca Askeviana (1775). Literary Anecdotes of Eighteenth Century, vol. iv, p. 513 (183–).
Within a few years of his return to England the very choice Collection which had been formed by Dr. Anthony Askew came into the market. For this Library, in bulk, the King offered Askew’s representatives five thousand pounds. They thought they could make more of the Collection by an auction, but, in the event, obtained less than four thousand pounds. The Askew Library extended only to three thousand five hundred and seventy separate printed works, but it contained a large proportion of rare and choice books. The chief buyers at the sale were the Duke of La Vallière and (through the agency of De Bure) Lewis the Sixteenth. The King of England bought comparatively little, although on this occasion Mr. Barnard could scarcely have withholden his hand on the score of the special injunctions which the King had formerly laid down for his guidance in such public competitions.
For it deserves to be remembered that George the Third’s conscientious thoughtfulness for other people led him, early in his career as a Collector, to give to his librarian a general instruction such as the servants of wealthy Collectors rarely receive. ‘I do not wish you,’ he said, ‘to bid either against a literary man who wants books for study, or against a known Collector of small means.’ He was very free to bid, on the other hand, against a Duke of Roxburghe or an Earl Spencer.
The King’s kindness of nature was also shown in the free access which he at all times afforded to scholars and students in his own Library. To this circumstance we owe some of the most interesting notices we have of his opinions of authors and of books.
The old localities of the Georgian Library.