CHAPTER XXIV.
ANTIQUARIANA.
My most literary antiquarianism was an article I wrote for the Quarterly Review on Coins, accepted by Lockhart and inserted in one of the Nos. for 1843; he protested that "I could not be the Proverbial Philosopher, as my looks were too like David's,—it must be my father."—No, I replied, it is my father's son. However, when he read and approved my Coin article, he began to be convinced. I give here his letter to me on his acceptance:—
"Sir,—I am at present terribly overburdened with MSS., and know not whether I can send a proof of your paper for some weeks; but I like it much, and it shall be put into type as soon as I can manage. I assure you I am greatly pleased, and sincerely your obliged
"J. G. Lockhart.
"Sussex Place, February 16, 1843."
I expostulated with him as to divers omissions for space' sake, and for some unauthorised alterations; but editors are nothing if not autocratic, as we all know. My article (I find it noted) was written on the numismatic works of Cardwell and of Akerman, and took me ten days in its composition, I tried Lockhart with a second article on "Ancient Gems," but it failed to please. I never had an interview with him but once, and then he seemed to me brusque and cynical at first, warming a little afterwards. I have written also on Druidism; and the mystery of Easter Island, which I take to be the remains of a submerged Pacific continent, with its deified statues on the top of an extinct volcano. And I have flung my pen into many other mélées of discussion both old and new; for it may be stated as a feature in my literary life that I have had, one after another, all the ologies on my brain, and have personally made small collections of minerals, fossils, insects, and the like: special hobbies having been agates picked up in my rambles on every beach from Yarmouth to Sidmouth, and coins at Roman stations wherever I found them; besides a host of numismatic treasures bought at Sotheby's auction-room, but long since sold again, as well as sundry Egyptian and other antiquities. In particular, the Roman discoveries at Farley Heath in the neighbourhood of Albury were mainly due to my juvenile antiquarianism, when as a student along with Harold Browne (now Bishop of Winchester) we used to search for coins there, and found one happy day a Gallienus: all which I recorded years after in a now scarce booklet, "Farley Heath, and its Roman Remains," published, with illustrations, by Andrews, Guildford. Ultimately the finds of coin (from Nero to Honorius), some being rare and finely patinated, as well as several small bronzes, and old British money, were given by Mr. Drummond (who as lord of the manor employed labourers in the search for many months) to the British Museum, where they fill a niche near the prehistoric room.
Some of our finds were very curious, e.g., we were digging in the black mould of the burnt huts round the wall-foundations (all above ground of said hectagonal wall having since been ruthlessly utilised by parochial economists in making a road across the heath), and found amongst other spoil a little green bronze ring,—which I placed on the finger of our guest of the day, Mrs. Barclay of Bury Hill: oddly enough it had six angles exactly like one of gold she wore as her wedding-guard. Again; we had picked up some pieces of pottery decorated with human finger-tips,—just as modern cooks do with pie-crust; a son of mine said, perhaps we shall find a dog's foot on some tile,—and just as he said it, up came from the spade precisely what he was guessing at, the large footprint of dog or wolf stamped fifteen centuries ago on the unbaked clay. Again; I was leaving for an hour a labourer in whose industry and honesty I had not the fullest faith. So in order to employ him in my absence, I set him to dig up an old thorn bush and told him to give me when I returned the piece of money he would find under it. To my concealed but his own manifest astonishment, he gave me when I came back a worn large brass of Nero, saying with a scared face, "However could you tell it was there, sir?" I looked wise, and said nothing.
Among the rarest copper coins was one of Carausius (our English Carew), with two heads on it symbolling the ambition of our native usurper to assert empire over East as well as West, and among more treasure-trove was a unique gold coin of Veric,—the Bericus of Tacitus; as also the rare contents of a subterranean potter's oven, preserved to our day, and yielding several whole vases. Mr. Akerman of numismatic fame told me that out of Rome itself he did not know a richer site for old-world curiosities than Farley; in the course of years we found more than 1200 coins, besides Samian ware, and plenty of common pottery, as well as bronze ornaments, enamelled fibulæ, weapons of war, household implements, &c., both of the old British and the Roman, the Anglo-Saxon, and more recent periods; Farley having been a prætorian station on the Ikenild highway. This is quite a relevant episode of my literary antiquariana. As also is another respecting "My Mummy Wheat," a record of which found its way into print and made a stir many years ago. It grew from seeds given to me by Mr. Pettigrew out of an Amenti vase taken from a mummy pit by Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, and very carefully resuscitated by myself in garden-pots filled with well-sifted mould at Albury; it proved to be a new and prolific species of the semi-bearded Talavera kind, and a longest ear of 8-1/2 inches in length (engraved in an agricultural journal) was sent by me to Prince Albert, then a zealous British farmer.