Bellori, Le Vite de Pittori, &c.
Passeri, Vite de Pittori.
D'Argenville, ii. 26.
Fuseli describes the gallery of the Farnese palace as a work of uniform vigour of execution, which nothing can equal but its imbecility and incongruity of conception. This deficiency in Annibale was always readily supplied by the taste and learning of Agostino; the vigour of Annibale was deficient both in sensibility and correct invention.
Long after this article was composed, the Royal Society of Literature was projected. It was founded by King George IV., and is said to have originated in a conversation between Dr. Burgess, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, and a member of the royal household, who reported its substance to the king. The bishop was again sent for, and the formation of the society commenced by the offer of premiums for an essay on Homer, the prize being one hundred guineas; a poem on Dartmoor, prize fifty guineas (awarded to Mrs. Hemans); and one of twenty-five guineas, for an essay on the Ancient and Modern Languages of Greece. In 1823 the king granted the society a charter, and placed the annual sum of eleven hundred guineas at its disposal, to be spent in endowing ten associates for life, who were to receive one hundred guineas each yearly (as a delicate mode of aiding needy literary men); the remaining one hundred guineas to be expended on two gold medals, to be also awarded to eminent men of letters. Coleridge, Dr. Jameson, Malthus, Roscoe, Todd, and Sharon Turner received annuities among other well-known literary characters; and Mitford, Southey, Scott, Crabbe, Hallam, and Washington Irving received medals. On the death of George IV., the grant was discontinued, and the society now exists by the subscriptions of its members.
See an article "On the ridiculous titles assumed by the Italian Academies," in a future page of this volume.
In J.T. Smith's "Historical and Literary Curiosities" is engraved a fac-simile of a series of designs for the arms of the Royal Society, drawn by Evelyn, but not used, because the king gave them the choice of using the Royal Arms in a canton. The first of Evelyn's designs exhibits a ship in full sail, with the motto Et Augebitur Scientia. The other are as follows:—A hand issuing from the clouds holding a plumb-line—motto, Omnia probate; two telescopes saltier-wise, the earth and planets above—motto, Quantum nescimus; the sun in splendour—motto, Ad majorem lumen; a terrestrial globe, with the human eye above—motto, Rerum cognoscere causas.
Evelyn notes in his Diary, August 20, 1662—"The king gave us the armes of England, to be borne in a canton in our armes; and sent us a mace of silver-gilt, of the same fashion and bigness as those carried before his majestie, to be borne before our president on meeting-days." This mace is still used.
It was revived in 1707, by Wanley, the librarian to the Earl of Oxford, who composed its rules; he was joined by Bagford, Elstob, Holmes (keeper of the Tower records), Maddox, Stukely, and Vertue the engraver. They met at the Devil Tavern, Fleet-street, and afterwards in rooms of their own in Chancery-lane. They ultimately removed to apartments granted them in Somerset House by George III., where they still remain.
It was said of Prynne, and his custom of quoting authorities by hundreds in the margins of his books to corroborate what he said in the text, that "he always had his wits beside him in the margin, to be beside his wits in the text." This jest is Milton's.