On entering the Hall, we turned to the right, and saw the Library, consisting of two rooms communicating with each other, with galleries running round them. “The College,” said my master, “was built and used for public meetings, in the year 1674, but this Library was not finished till eight or ten years after[43]. Unfortunately we have lost our able Librarian, George Edwards, who died two years ago, at the age of eighty. But here,” said Dr. Pitcairn, “is his work on Birds, which he began about seven years after he was chosen Library Keeper, to which office he was elected in 1733, through the influence of Sir Hans Sloane, who continued through life his great patron. Edwards was an extraordinary man; when young he had been intended for trade, but having an opportunity to travel, he much improved himself; and when, on his return from abroad, he was lucky enough to obtain the leisure which his office here afforded him, he devoted himself to the study of natural history, and became by great assiduity a distinguished ornithologist. During thirty-six years he was Librarian to the College, and in that period was chosen Fellow of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, and by the first of these learned bodies was rewarded with the Copley medal; of which he was deservedly so proud, as to have caused it to be engraved in the title-page of the first volume of his work. Were he in my place, he would exhibit to you the treasures of our Library, which, though imperfect as a collection of medical books (for it consists chiefly of donations), is rich in rare classics, curious manuscripts, and in very scarce and valuable Treatises on Civil Law.”
On returning to the Hall, we ascended a broad staircase, the sides of which were hung with pictures, and on the first landing-place stopped, to read the long inscription to the memory of Harvey. “This,” said my master, “was voted by the College, in 1659, the year after the death of this illustrious man. You see it is on copper, which proves that it is a copy of the original epitaph, for that was on marble[44]. During his lifetime a statue, ornamented with a cap and gown, on the pedestal of which was another inscription, had been erected in the Hall of the College, in Amen Corner; but this honorary tablet which we are now looking at was placed in the Museum which bore his own name.” And this difference of position is alluded to in the inscription itself, for after enumerating the virtues, the discoveries, and more especially the various claims Harvey has to the eternal gratitude of the College, it concludes—
Ne mireris igitur Lector
Si quem Marmoreum illic stare vides
Hic totam implevit Tabulam.
Abi et merere alteram.
We now reached the great room, or Cænaculum, wainscoted by Hamey with Spanish oak, at the expense of some hundred pounds, in the most elegant manner, with pilasters and carved capitals; and here the President explained to his nephew the pictures with which this and the adjoining Censor’s Room were adorned. He particularly called his attention to the portraits of Sir Theodore Mayerne, of Sydenham, of Harvey, and of the deeply learned Physician and antiquary, Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the Religio Medici. While gazing on that of Sir Edmund King—“To be a court Physician now-a-days,” said my master, “does not involve quite so much responsibility as formerly, for the Doctor whose likeness is before us incurred considerable hazard, by saving for a time the life of His Majesty Charles the Second. When the King was first seized with his last illness, it was in his bedchamber, where he was surprised by an apoplectic fit, so that, if by God’s providence Dr. King had not been accidentally present to let him blood (having his lancet in his pocket), His Majesty had certainly died that moment; which might have been of direful consequence, there being nobody else present with the King, save this Doctor and one more. It was considered a mark of extraordinary dexterity, resolution, and presence of mind in the Doctor to let him blood in the very paroxysm, without staying the coming of other physicians, which regularly should have been done, and for want of which it was at first thought that he would require a regular pardon. The Privy Council, however, approved of what he had done, and ordered him £1000—which, by the by, was never paid him.”
We next passed to the portrait of Vesalius, on board, by Calker. “This famous anatomist,” continued the President, “was some time Physician to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, but being disgusted with the manners of a court, he made a voyage to the Holy Land; on his return thence to fill the chair of Professor of Medicine at Padua, to which he had been invited on the death of Fallopius, he was shipwrecked in 1564, in the Isle of Zante, where he perished of hunger.”
Opposite the full length portrait of Sir Hans Sloane my master paused, and told his nephew, that “Sir Hans, in the decline of his life, had left London, and retired to his manor-house[45] at Chelsea, where he resided about fourteen years before he died. Our Librarian, Edwards, of whom we were talking a few minutes ago, was used to visit him every week to divert him for an hour or two with the common news of the town, and with any particulars that might have happened amongst his acquaintances of the Royal Society, or other ingenious gentlemen, and seldom missed drinking coffee with him on a Saturday. The old baronet was so infirm, as to be wholly confined to his house, except sometimes, though rarely, taking a little air in his garden in a wheeled chair; and this confinement made him very desirous to see any of his old acquaintance to amuse him. Knowing that the Librarian did not abound in the gifts of fortune, he was strictly careful, Edwards used to say, that he should be at no expense in his journeys from London to Chelsea; and Sir Hans would calculate what the cost of coach hire, waterage, or any other little charge attending on his journeys backward and forward would amount to, and, observing as much delicacy as possible, would oblige him annually to accept of it. In this quiet and inoffensive life did he continue exercising the most charitable disposition towards decayed branches of families of eminent men, famous for their learned works, till January, 1753, when he died, with great firmness of mind, and resignation to the will of God. Thirty years before this event, he had presented to the Apothecaries’ Company his botanical garden at Chelsea, upon the following conditions, viz. the payment of £5 per annum, and the yearly offering of fifty plants to the Royal Society, till the number amounted to 2000. If it were attempted to convert it to any other use, it was to devolve to the Royal Society, and ultimately to the College of Physicians; but the intentions of the original donor have been most faithfully and liberally fulfilled by the Apothecaries, who expend a very large sum annually, with no other view than the promotion of botanical knowledge, more especially in the cultivation of curious and rare plants. In 1748, they erected a statue[46] to Sir Hans, in front of the green-house, with this inscription—
Hansio Sloane Baronetto Archiatro
Insignissimo Botanices Fautori
Hoc honoris causa Monimentum
Inque perpetuam ejus Memoriam
Sacrum Voluit
Societas Pharmacopæiorum Londinensis
1733.”
The merit and virtues of Sir Hans had particularly caught the attention of young Pitcairn, and his character continued to form the subject of conversation as the senior returned with his nephew to his own house.
“The immediate result of his death,” observed the uncle, “was the foundation of the British Museum; for this great patron of science, being well aware how much it is benefited by the aggregation of various objects, and anxious that his fine collection should be preserved entire, directed by his will, that after his decease the whole of his Museum of natural and artificial curiosities, which had cost him £50,000, should be offered to Parliament for the moderate sum of £20,000, to be paid to his family.