intrigues; but he was this man of wretchedness! Truly he exclaimed one day, in grasping a volume, "For this only am I fitted." The intellectual architect who had modelled his house of Solomon, and should have been for ever the ideal inhabitant of that palace of the mind, was the tenant of an abode of disorder, where every one was master but its owner, a maculated man seeking to shelter himself in dejection and in shade, Whisperers, surmisers, evil eyes, and evil tongues, the domestic asp, whose bite sends poison into the veins of him on whom it hangs — these were his familiars, while his abstracted mind was dictating to his chaplain the laws and economy of nature. Yet there were some better spirits in the mansion of Gorhambury, and even in the obscurity of Gray's Inn, who have left testimonies of their devotion to the great man long after his death. In the psychological history of Lord Bacon, we must not pass by the psychological monument which the affectionate Sir Thomas Meautys, who, by his desire, lies buried at his feet, raised to his master. The design is as original as it is grand, and is said to have been the invention of Sir Henry Wotton, who, in his long residence abroad, had formed a refined taste for the arts which were yet strangers in England. The simplicity of our ancestors had placed their sculptured figures recumbent on their tombs; the taste of Watton raised the marble figure to imitate life itself, and to give the mind of the original to its image. The monument of Bacon exhibits the great philosopher seated in profound contemplation in his habitual attitude, for the inscription records for posterity, Sic <debat.* * See "Curiosities of Literature," art. "Bacon at Home." 346 THE FIRST FOUNDER OF A PUBLIC LIBRARY. THE first marked advancement in the progress of the national understanding was made by a new race of public benefactors, who, in their munificence, no longer endowing absolute superstitions, and inefficient or misplaced charities, erected libraries and opened academies; founders of those habitations of knowledge whose doors open to the bidding of all comers. To the privacy aud the silent labors of some men of letters and some lovers of the arts, usually classed under the general designation of COLLECTORS, literary Europe, for the great part, owes its public museums and its public libraries. It was their ripe knowledge only which could have created them, their opulence only which could render them worthy of a nation's purchase, or of its acceptance, when in their generous enthusiasm they consecrated the intellectual gift for their countrymen. These collections could only have acquired their strength by their growth, for gradual were their acquisitions and innumerable were their details ; they claimed the sleepless vigilance of a whole life, the devotion of a whole fortune, and often that moral intrepidity which wrestled with insurmountable difficulties. We may admire the generous enthusiasm whose opulence was solely directed to enrich what hereafter was to be consecrated as public property; but it has not always received the notice and the eulogy so largely its due. It is but bare justice to distinguish these men from their numerous brothers whose collections have terminated with themselves, known only to posterity by their posthumous catalogues-the sole record that these collectors were great buyers and more famous sellers. Of many of the founders of public collections the names are not familiar to the reader, though some have sometimes been identified with their more celebrated collections, from the gratitude of a succeeding age. A collection formed by a single mind, skilled in its favorite pursuit, becomes the tangible depository of the thoughts of its owner; there is a unity in this labor of love, and a secret connexion through its dependent parts. Thus we are told that Cecil's library was the best for history; Walsingham's for policy; Arundel's for heraldry; Cotton's for antiquity; and Usher's for divinity. The completion of such a collec tion reflects the perfect image of the mind of the philosopher, the philologist, the antiquary, the natu ralist, the scientific or the legal character, who into one locality has gathered together and arranged this furniture of the human intellect. To disperse their collections would be, to these elect spirits, to resolve them back into their first elements to scatter them in the air, or to mingle them with the dust.* Happily for mankind, these have been men to whom the perpetuity of their intellectual associations was a future existence. Conscious that their hands had fastened links in the unbroken chain of human inquiry, they left the legacy to the world. The creators of these collections have often betrayed their anxiety to preserve them distinct and entire. Confident I am that such was the real feeling of a recent celebrated collector The rich and peculiar collection of manuscripts, and of * Sir Simonds d'Ewes feelingly describes in his will, his "precious library."—"It is my inviolable injunction that it be kept entire, and not sold, divided, or dissipated." It was not, however, to be locked up from the public good. Such was the feeling of an eminent antiquary. A later Sir Simonds d'Ewes was an extravagant man, and seems to have sold everything about 1716, when the collection passed into the possession of the Earl of Oxford, rare and chosen volumes, of Francis Douce, from his earliest days had been the objects of his incessant cares. With means extremely restricted, but with a mind which no obstructions could swerve from its direct course, through many years he accomplished a glorious desigu. Our modest antiquary startled the most curious, not only of his countrymen but of foreigners, by his knowledge, diversified as his own unrivalled collections, in the recondite literature of the middle ages, and whatever exhibited the manners, the customs, and the arts of every people and of every age. Late in life he accidentally became the possessor of a considerable fortune, and having decided that this work of his life should be a public inheritance, he seemed at a loss where it might at once rest in security; and lie patent for the world. The idea of its dispersion was very painful, for he was aware that the singleness of design which had assembled such various matters together could never be resumed by another. He often regretted that in the great national repository of literature the collection would merge into the universal mass. about this time that we visited together the great library of Oxford. Douce contemplated in the Bodleian that arch over which is placed the portrait of Selden, and the library of Selden preserved entire ; the antiquary's closet which holds the great topographical collections of Gough; and the distinct shelves dedicated to the small Shakespearean library of Malone. He observed that the collections of Rawlinson, of Tanner, and of others, had preserved their identity by their separation. This was the subject of our conversation. At this moment Douce must have decided on the locality where his precious collection was to find a perpetual abode; for it was immediately on his return home that our literary antiquary bequeathed his collection to the Bodleian Library, where it now occupies more than one apartment. It was To the anxious cares of such founders of public collections England, as well as Italy and France, owes a national debt; nor can we pass over in silence the man to whom first occurred the happy idea of instituting a library which should have for its owners his own fellow-citizens. A Florentine merchant, emancipated From the thraldom of traffic, vowed himself to the pursuits of literature, and, just before the art of printing was practised, to the preservation of manuscripts, which he not only multiplied by his unwearied hand, but was the first of that race of critics who amended the texts of the early copyists. What he could not purchase, his pure zeal was not the less solicitous to preserve. Boccaccio had bequeathed his own library to a convent in Florence, and its sight produced that effect on him which the library of Shakespeare, had it been preserved, might have had on an Englishman; and, since he could not possess it, he built an apartment solely to preserve it distinct from any other collection. At a period when the owners of manuscripts were so avaricious of their possessions that they refused their loan, and were frugal even in allowing a sight of their leaves, the hardy generosity of this Florentine merchant conceived one of the most important designs for the interests of learning; -to invite readers, he bequeathed his own as A PUBLIC LIBRARY. * He who occupied but a private station, first offered Europe a model of patriotic greatness which princes and nobles in their magnificence would emulate. It has been said that the founder of this public library at Florence had only revived the noble design of the ancients, who had displayed their affection for literature by even bestowing their own names on public libraries; but this must not detract from the true glory of the merchant of Florence; it was at least an idea which had * Tiraboschi, vI., pt. i., 131. Vor II.-30 |