FOOTNOTES:
[63] Description of library in sale catalogue.
JOHN MURRAY, 1670-1748
John Murray of Sacombe in Hertfordshire, who was born on the 24th of January 1670, and died on September 13, 1748, was an indefatigable collector of books. In the Account of London Libraries, by Bagford and Oldys, we read that he 'made scarce publications of English authors his inquiry all his life,' and that he had been 'a collector above forty years at all sales, auctions, shops, and stalls, partly for his own curiosity, and partly to oblige such authors and gentry as have commissioned him.' He was a friend of Hearne, who frequently mentions him in his works and Diary. Hearne states that Murray told him he began to collect books at thirteen years of age. Dr. Rawlinson possessed a painting of him, which was engraved by Vertue. He is leaning on three books, inscribed 'T. Hearne, V. III., Sessions Papers, and Tryals of Witches,' and holding a fourth under his coat. Underneath are the following lines, signed G.N.:—
'Hoh Maister John Murray of Sacomb!
The Works of old Time to collect was his pride,
Till Oblivion dreaded his Care:
Regardless of Friends, intestate he dy'd,
So the Rooks and the Crows were his Heir.'
DR. MEAD, 1673-1754
Dr. Richard Mead, the eminent physician and collector, was born at Stepney, Middlesex, on the 11th of August 1673. His father, Matthew Mead, was a divine of some eminence among the dissenters, and during the Commonwealth was minister of Stepney, but was ejected for nonconformity in 1662. Richard Mead was first educated at home, and at a private school kept by Mr. Thomas Singleton, who was at one time second master at Eton. At the age of sixteen he entered the University of Utrecht, where he remained three years, and then proceeded to the University of Leyden for the purpose of qualifying himself for the medical profession. In 1695 he made a tour in Italy, and after taking the degree of doctor of philosophy and physic at Padua, he visited Naples and Rome. In 1696 he returned to England, and began to practise at Stepney, in the house in which he was born. In 1703 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the same year he was chosen Physician to St. Thomas's Hospital, and took a house in Crutched Friars, in the City of London, where he resided until 1711, when he removed to one in Austin Friars, which had formerly been inhabited by Dr. Howe. In 1707 the University of Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and in the following year he was admitted a member of the College of Physicians, of which institution he was elected a Fellow in 1716. On the death of Dr. Radcliffe in 1714, Mead removed to the residence which had been occupied by that distinguished physician in Bloomsbury Square, and in 1720 he took a house in Great Ormond Street, which he filled with books, pictures and antiquities, and where he lived until his death on the 16th of January 1754. In 1727 he was appointed Physician-in-Ordinary to King George II., and in 1734 he was offered the post of President of the College of Physicians, but this he declined, being desirous of retirement. He was twice married. Dr. Mead was the foremost medical man of his time, and his professional income was a very large one. The greater part of his wealth he devoted to the patronage of science and literature, and to the acquisition of his valuable collections, which were always open to students who wished to consult them. He had a very large circle of attached friends, amongst whom were Newton, Halley, Pope, Bentley, and Freind; and Dr. Johnson said of him that he 'lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any other man.' Pope refers to his love of books in his epistle to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, Of the Use of Riches:—
'Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,
And books for Mead and butterflies for Sloane.'