CHAPTER XV
Literary Direction given to My Numismatic Studies and Choice—The Wallenstein Thaler—The Good Caliph Haroun El Reschid—Some of the Twelve Peers of France who struck Money—Lorenzo de’ Medici, called The Magnificent—Robert the Devil—Alfred the Great—Harold—The Empress Matilda—Marino Faliero—Massaniello—The Technist thinks poorly of Me—My Plea for the Human, Educating Interest in Coins—The Penny Box now and then makes a Real Collector—How I threw Myself in Medias Res—First Impressions of the Greek Series—My Difficulty in Apprehending Facts—Early Illusions gradually dissipated—What Constitutes a Typical Greek and Roman Cabinet—And what renders Great Collections Great—Redundance in Certain Cases defended—Official Authorities except to My Treatment of the Subject—Tom Tidler’s Ground—The Technical versus the Vital and Substantial Interest in Coins—My Width of Sympathy Beneficial to Myself and likely to prove so to My Followers—Outline and Distribution of My Collection—Autotype Replicas and Forgeries—Romantic Evolution of Bactrian Coinage and History—Caution to My Fellow-Collectors against Excessive Prices for Greek Coins—Wait and Watch—Mr Hyman Montagu and His Roman Gold, and the Moral—The Best Coins not the Dearest—Our National Series—Its Susceptibility to Eclectic Treatment—A Whimsical Speculation—An Untechnical Method of Looking at a Coin—A Burst Bubble—The Continental Currencies—Their Clear Superiority of Interest and Instructive Power—The Writer’s Attitude toward Them.
My own sectional arrangement obeyed my doubtless peculiar training as a man of letters rather than a numismatist, and side by side with my peremptory instruction to myself as to quality I kept steadily in view the importance and charm, as it seemed to me, of comprising in my plan all those coins, which existed in the various series relating to celebrated historical personages and events. The dealers ignore this aspect of the question; they merely concern themselves with what is rare or common, dear or cheap. I negotiated a thaler of Wallenstein; the price was rather high; but I agreed to take it on account of the celebrity of the man. The vendor had never heard of him; he knew it only as an uncommon piece! You purchase a small gold coin of ‘El Reschid’; the hand, which is held out to receive the money for it—not so much over the metal—is not conscious that it may have been actually through those of the striker, the hero of the Arabian Nights, nor forsooth does he care. No one will probably offer a shilling more for it for such a reason.
It may occur that an insignificant, ill-struck coin of base metal appertains to Milon of Narbonne, or Roland, nephew of Charlemagne and the Orlando of the poets, or to Richard of the Lion Heart; one examines its credentials, and yields it a place of honour. I obtained in a lot of Italian copper a small quattrino, as it is called, with Lav. Medices Dux on one side and Pisavr on the other: what was it but money issued in 1516—and that year alone—by Lorenzo de’ Medici, called the Magnificent, as Duke of Pesaro? It may be equally predicated of Arthur of Bretagne, the possible prototype of the hero of Romance, Arthur of Little Britain, and of Robert of Normandy, called Le Diable, that their personal surpasses their numismatic distinction; for in the latter way they survive only in monuments of the poorest material, aspect, and style. Nor is it very different with the coins of Alfred the Great, of Harold, who fell at Hastings, of Henry Beauclerc, of Stephen, of the Empress Matilda, in the English series, and with such continental celebrities as the hero-Doges of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, Marino Faliero, and Francesco Foscari; or as King Robert of Sicily, Gaston de Foix, Joanna of Naples, Massaniello.
Yet, on the contrary, there are splendid medallic evidences of others both in ancient and modern times; and it appears to redeem a cabinet from the imputation of being a portrait-gallery of Illustrious Obscure, if we leaven its contents with the effigies of men and women, whose names are familiar to all fairly educated people.
This principle, then, collaterally influenced me in my selection, and made me anxious to omit no record of consequence illustrating a historical individual or incident. I aimed at approximating to a collection of medals, as far as the Coin would permit. I also affected the earliest examples of each country, bearing a note of the year of issue and of the current value; and altogether my project became quite powerfully tinctured by my prepossessions and lessons as a book-student. I looked with comparative lukewarmth at the technical side, and I apprehend that I enjoy an indifferent repute among my more learned contemporaries, who pride themselves on their familiarity with mechanical and official details. All these points are excessively important and interesting in their way; and I have entered into them a good deal in my two numismatic publications. I was disposed in my private capacity to regard the human constituents of these remains of former ages; and I promise that it will repay the trouble of investigating the illustrated works of reference, in default of possessing the objects themselves, by shewing how similar motives have swayed rulers and States from the outset in regulating the costume of their coinage, how they have habitually made it a political vehicle, and how the annals and fortunes of the country are to be read on its changing and varying face as in the pages of a volume.
It is the more to be lamented on that account, since it may not suit everybody to collect coins, that the pictorial feature in nearly all numismatic undertakings is the most imperfect and misleading and in the old-fashioned or cheap books amounts to little better than caricature. I grant that there is the proud lust of ownership; but the discs of metal are of no real relevance outside the story, which they are able to tell us, if or when we are qualified to read it. All the rest, in a high sense, is but bullion, is it not?—and the criticism emphatically applies to heterogeneous assemblages of obsolete currencies, formed without taste, and held without fruit.
This feeling, and the persuasion that the most extensive and long-established collections in the world are more or less incomplete, actuated me, so soon as I had graduated far enough to lay down regulations for my own use and to decide once for all on treating Condition as primary, and historical and personal interest as covetable succeedanea, which lightened and seasoned the rest.