It was in the year 1797, and again in 1806, that Sir Joseph was enabled to render special service to that African enterprise which lay near his heart, by enlisting in its toils a zealous German and a not less zealous Swiss—Frederick Hornemann and John Lewis Burckhardt. It was the fate of both of those enterprising men to pay the usual penalty of African exploration. Hornemann succumbed, after six years’ service. Burckhardt was spared to work for ten years. Some among the minor scientific results of his well-known travels are preserved in the Public Library at Cambridge (to which he bequeathed his manuscripts). Others of them are in the British Museum. The latter would deserve record in these pages, were it now practicable. Burckhardt died at Cairo on the seventeenth of October, 1817, just eleven years after his arrival in London, from Göttingen, with that letter to Sir Joseph Banks in his pocket which, under Divine Providence, determined his work in life. Another great public service of a like kind, rendered by Sir Joseph Banks to his country and to mankind, was his zealous encouragement of explorations in Australia.
Meanwhile, a new outburst of discord in the Royal Society arose out of a well-merited honour conferred on its President by the Institute of France, in 1802. It was inevitable that a body so eminent and illustrious as the French Institute should not only feel gratitude to Sir Joseph Banks for that liberality of spirit which had dictated, in the midst of war, his many gracious and generous acts of service to Frenchmen, but should long since have reached the conviction that they would be honouring themselves, not less than honouring him, by his reception in their midst. |His election into the Institute of France.| During the momentary lull afforded by the Peace of Amiens—when the Institute was reorganized by the hand of the great man who was proud of its badge of fellowship, even when clad in the dalmatica—they placed Banks at the head of their eight Foreign Members. Banks’ estimate of the honour of membership was much like Napoleon’s. ‘I consider this mark of your esteem,’ said Banks, in his reply, ‘the highest and most enviable literary distinction which I could possibly attain. To be the first elected as an Associate of the first Literary Society in the world surpasses my most ambitious hopes.’
Several Fellows of the Royal Society resented these warm acknowledgments. |Letter of Misogallus, 1802 (privately printed).| They thought them both unpatriotic, and uncomplimentary to themselves. The mathematical malcontents, with Bishop Horsley at their head, eagerly profited by so favourable an opportunity of renewing the expression of their old and still lurking dissatisfaction with the choice of their President. Horsley addressed to Sir Joseph a letter of indignant and angry remonstrance. Somewhat discreditably, the Bishop chose a pseudonymous signature instead of manfully affixing his own. ‘Misogallus’[[22]] was the mask under which he made an appeal to those anti-Gallican prejudices which so many of us imbibe almost with our mother’s milk, and have in after-years to get rid of. He aimed a poisoned dart at his old antagonist, when pointing one of his many passionate sentences in a way which he knew would arrest the special attention of the King. The shaft hit the mark. But the King was presently appeased. He knew Banks, and he knew the Bishop of St. Asaph.
Sir Joseph Banks as an Author.
From time to time Sir Joseph Banks contributed many interesting articles to the Philosophical Transactions, and to the Annals of Agriculture. His able paper on the Blight in Wheat did service in its day, and was separately published. But it is not as an author that this illustrious man will be remembered. He knew how to fructify the thoughts and to disseminate the wisdom of minds more largely gifted than his own. Necessarily, space and prominence in the public eye is—more especially after a man’s death—a good deal determined by authorship. Hence, in our Biographical Dictionaries, a crowd of small writers occupy a disproportionate place, and some true and illustrious public benefactors remain almost unnoticed. Undeniably, the fame of one such benefactor as a Joseph Banks ought to outweigh, and must, intrinsically, outweigh, that of many scores of minor penmen. His benefactions were world-wide. And by them he, being dead, yet speaks, and will long continue to speak, to very good and lofty purpose. He died in London on the ninth of May, 1820, at the venerable age of eighty-one years completed.
He died without issue, and was succeeded in his chief Lincolnshire estates by the Honourable James Hamilton Stanhope (afterwards Mr. Stanhope Banks), and by Sir Henry Hawley. |Death.| |Bequests.| His Kentish estates were bequeathed to Sir Edward Knatchbull.
Will and Codicils, Jan. 7 and 21; and March 7, 1820.
His Library, Herbarium, Manuscripts, Drawings, Engravings, and all his other subsisting Collections, he bequeathed to the Trustees of the British Museum, for public use for ever, subject to a life-use and a life-interest in them which, together with an annuity, he specifically bequeathed to the eminent botanist, Robert Brown, who was, for many years, both his friend and his librarian. He also gave an annuity of three hundred pounds a year to Mr. Bauer, an eminent botanical draughtsman; and he added, largely, to the innumerable benefactions he had made in his lifetime to the Botanical Gardens at Kew. To Mr. Brown he also left the use, for life, of his town house in Soho Square, subject to the life-interest, or the voluntary concession, of the testator’s widow.
In his first Codicil, Sir Joseph Banks made a proviso that, if it should be the desire of the Trustees of the British Museum—and if that desire should also receive the approval of Mr. Brown—the life-possessor should be at full liberty to cause the Collections to be transferred to the Museum during his lifetime. That, in fact, was the course which, by mutual consent, was eventually taken, to the manifest advantage of the British Public and the promotion of Science.
Part of Sir Joseph’s personal Manuscripts were bequeathed to the Royal Society; another portion to the British Museum; and a third portion (connected with the Coinage of the Realm) to the Royal Mint. A minor part of his Collections in Natural History had been given to the British Museum in his own lifetime, |Other bequests.| and he had personally superintended their selection and arrangement. He had also been a benefactor to the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow, to the Museum of the London College of Surgeons, and to that, also in London, formerly known as ‘Bullock’s Museum.’ He was, throughout life, as eager to give, as he was diligent to get.