was an account of the excava-
tions of Wroxeter (1872).
tions of Wroxeter (1872).
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v12
Latin Scholars
1872 was filled for the next twenty-eight years by John Eyton
Bickersteth Mayor, of Shrewsbury and St John's, university
librarian from 1864 to 1867. His Juvenal was first published in
1853. Not a few of the comprehensive notes in this work
(especially in its later editions) are recognised as signally
complete summaries of the literature of the subject concerned.
The stamp of his profound learning is also impressed upon all
his other works. Among those directly connected with classical
scholarship may be mentioned his First Greek Reader, and his
editions of Cicero's Second Philippic, and of the third book of
Pliny's Letters. In 1863–9 he contributed to the Rolls series
the two volumes of his learned edition of Richard of Cirencester.
Nearly one hundred and fifty pages of the preface to the second
volume are devoted to the examination of a work ascribed to
Richard under the title De Situ Britanniae, proving it to be the
work of a forger alike contemptible as penman, Latinist, historian,
geographer, critic'; it was never mentioned until 1747, and its
author was Charles Bertram, of Copenhagen. Mayor's activity, as
editor and biographer, continued to the last, and extended into
many paths of historical and antiquarian research? ; while what-
ever he published was annotated with a minute and exhaustive
erudition which is generally reserved for the leading representa-
tives of classical literature.
Five years younger than Mayor was the scholar, educational
reformer and legal writer, Henry John Roby, senior classic of
1853, fellow and ultimately honorary fellow of St John's, where
he began his career as a college lecturer and a private tutor for
the seven years between 1854 and 1861, making his first public
appearance in 1858 as the author of a pamphlet on college
reform. His brief experience as a master at Dulwich convinced
him of the need for improvements in the Latin grammar then in
vogue, and led to his producing in 1862 his Elementary Latin
Granmar, which profoundly modified Kennedy's revised version of
the authorised text-book. This was followed, ten years later, by the
first of the five editions of bis Latin Grammar from Plautus to
Suetonius, in which the principles of phonetics and physiology
were for the first time applied to the life and growth of the Latin
language. Meanwhile, at the end of 1864, he had been appointed
secretary to the Endowed Schools commission, and wrote two
of the chief parts of its report. His experience in 1866–8 as
professor of jurisprudence at University college, London, ultimately
1 See bibliography.
## p. 337 (#361) ############################################
Xv] Conington. Nettleship. Ellis. Sellar 337
XV
bore fruit in 1884 in the two volumes of his Introduction to
Justinian's Digest, and, again, in 1902, in the two volumes entitled
Roman Private Law in the Times of Cicero and the Antonines,
and in his Essays on the Law of Cicero's Private Orations. He
was member for the Eccles division of Lancashire from 1890 to
1895, when he left Manchester and settled at Grasmere for the
last twenty years of his life. A standard edition of Cicero, De
Oratore, was prepared for the Oxford press by Augustus Samuel
Wilkins, of St John's college, Cambridge, for many years professor
of Latin and comparative philology in Manchester. He also edited
Cicero's Speeches against Catiline, and Horace's Epistles, besides
taking part in the translation of George Curtius's Principles of
Greek Etymology, and of his work entitled The Greek Verb.
The first professor of Latin at Oxford was John Conington,
who was elected in 1854 and held the professorship for the last
fifteen of the forty-four years of his life. He is widely known as
the editor and translator of Virgil and Persius. His translation
of Horace into English verse was regarded by Munro as 'on the
whole perhaps the best and most successful translation of a
Classic that exists in the English language. ' Edwin Palmer filled
the Latin chair from 1870 to 1878. Palmer's successor, Henry
Nettleship, planned a great Latin dictionary, and published a
tenth part of the proposed work under the title Contributions
to Latin Lexicography. He was an able critic of the ancient
Latin poets and grammarians, and many of his best papers have
been collected in the two volumes of his Essays. In 1893 he was
succeeded by Robinson Ellis, best known as the learned editor of
Catullus. His metrical version of that author has many touches
of true poetry. He was also known as the editor of Velleius
Paterculus, Avianus and Orientius, of the Ibis and the Aetna
and of the Appendix Vergiliana. An unswerving and unselfish
love of Latin learning, for its own sake, was the leading charac-
teristic of his work from first to last.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the professorship of humanity in
Edinburgh was held by Conington's contemporary, a fellow of
Oriel, William Young Sellar. Immediately before his appoint-
ment in 1863, he produced, in his Roman Poets of the Republic, a
masterpiece of literary criticism, which was followed in due time
by similar works on Virgil, and on Horace and the elegiac poets.
Among Latin scholars in Ireland, mention should be made of
Henry Ellis Allen, who, between 1836 and 1856, produced able
22
E. L. XII.
CH. XV.
## p. 338 (#362) ############################################
338
Classical Archaeologists [CH.
critical editions of Cicero's philosophical works; and of James
Henry, whose Aeneidea, of 1873 to 1889, includes many important
contributions to the interpretation of the poet's text. In the next
generation, textual criticism was the forte of Arthur Palmer,
professor of Latin at Trinity college, Dublin, who was specially
interested in the criticism of the elegiac poets and of Plautus.
His contemporary, Robert Yelverton Tyrrell, who may fitly be
described as doctus sermones utriusque linguae, edited the
Bacchae of Euripides during his tenure of the professorship of
Latin, and the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus on his promotion to
the professorship of Greek. In 1879, he undertook an extensive
commentary on the correspondence of Cicero, which, with the
learned aid of Louis Claude Purser, he brought to a successful
conclusion in 1900. He also published a critical text of Sophocles.
His devotion to ancient and modern drama was combined with
a keen wit and a felicitous style; and his appreciation of great
writers was enhanced by his own delight in literary form.
CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS
An interest in classical archaeology was fostered by the founda-
tion of the society of Dilettanti at the close of 1733. The society
produced a splendid series of archaeological publications, includ-
ing Richard Chandler's Antiquities of Ionia (1769 and 1797)!
Learned travel was also represented by Edward Dodwell's Classical
and Topographical Tour through Greece (1819), and by his
work on Cyclopian remains in Italy and Greece (1834); also by
Sir William Gell's works on Troy and Ithaca, his itineraries of
Greece and the Morea, and his Pompeiana (1817-32).
One of the foremost of the Greek topographers of the nine-
teenth century was William Martin Leake, who, on retiring from
active military service in 1815, devoted all his energies to the
cause of classical learning. In his Researches in Greece (1814) he
gives an elementary grammar of modern Greek, with a list of
neo-Hellenic authors. This was followed by an important work
entitled The Topography of Athens, and by Travels in Asia
Minor, in the Morea, and in Northern Greece. In his Numismata
Hellenica he described his great collection of Greek coins, which
was afterwards acquired by the university of Cambridge.
The geographical and historical elucidation of Thucydides was
largely promoted by Thomas Arnold's edition of 1830—5, whose
i See further in bibliography, 11.
## p. 339 (#363) ############################################
Xv]
339
Leake.
Newton
History of Rome is noticed in another chapter", where reference
is also made to the chronological researches of Henry Fynes
Clinton, of Christ Church, Oxford, the learned author of Fasti
Hellenici and Fasti Romani. His younger contemporary William
Mure travelled in Greece in 1838, and, in his Critical History
of the Literature of Ancient Greece, showed a special interest in
Xenophon. An Enquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman
History was published in 1855 by Sir George Cornewall Lewis,
who also translated Boeckh's Public Economy of Athens, edited
Babrius and wrote on The Astronomy of the Ancients.
Lycia was traversed in 1838 and 1840 by Charles Fellows, the
discoverer of the Xanthian marbles, and, in 1842, by Thomas Abel
Brimage Spratt and Edward Forbes. Nineveh was excavated in
1845 by (Sir) Austen Henry Layard. Crete was explored in 1851-3
by Spratt, and, more than half a century later, by (Sir) Arthur
Evans, whose investigations, in and after 1893, resulted in the
discovery of the pre-Phoenician script, and, finally (in 1900-8),
in the excavation of the prehistoric palace of Cnossos. The
necropolis of Cameiros in Rhodes was excavated by Salzmann
and Biliotti in 1858 and 1865; Cyrene was explored in 1860—1 by
(Sir) Robert Murdoch Smith and E. A. Porcher ; the antiquities
of Egypt were investigated by the aid of the Egypt Exploration
Fund, and also by that of the Research Account founded by
William Matthew Flinders Petrie in 1894, and enlarged as the
British School of Archaeology in Egypt in 1905.
Charles Thomas Newton, of Shrewsbury and of Christ Church,
began in 1840 the long series of services to the British Museum
which ended in 1885, when he completed the twenty-four years
of his tenure of the office of keeper of Greek and Roman
antiquities. That appointment marked the dawn of a true
interest in classical archaeology in England. Newton's name had
already been associated with the recovery of the remains of the
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in 1856. In 1880 he published a
collected edition of his Essays in Art and Archaeology, including
an excellent paper on Greek inscriptions. He was among the
first to welcome the opening of the museums of classical archae-
ology at Cambridge and Oxford. At the inaugural ceremony at
Cambridge in 1884 the cast of the figure of Proserpine, which he
had himself discovered at Cnidos, prompted him to describe the
occasion as the ăvodos of archaeology, so long buried in England. '
In the study of Greek architecture an eminent position was
1 See ante, p. 303.
22-2
## p. 340 (#364) ############################################
340 Classical Archaeologists [CH.
6
>
>
attained by Newton's contemporary, Francis Cranmer Penrose,
who, as 'travelling bachelor of the university of Cambridge,'
studied architecture in Rome and in Athens, where he was led by
the theories of Pennethorne to determine the hyperbolic curve of
the entasis of the columns of the Parthenon. The results were
published in his Principles of Athenian Architecture in 18511
The study of classical archaeology has been fostered in England
by the foundation of the societies for the Promotion of Hellenic
and Roman Studies in 1879 and 1911, and by the institution of
the British Schools of Archaeology at Athens (of which Penrose
was the first director) in 1886 and at Rome in 1901.
Fragments of Epicurus and Philodemus, discovered at Hercu-
laneum in 1752, were published at Oxford in 1824 and 1891.
Many remnants of Greek literature have been recovered from
the sands of Egypt. Three of the speeches of the Attic orator,
Hyperides, were discovered in 1847, and his Funeral Oration in
1856. Part of another oration was found in the series acquired
by the British Museum in 1890, which also included Aristotle's
Constitution of Athens, and the Mimes of Herodas, followed in
1896—7 by the Odes of Bacchylides. Among the literary papyri
since published by the Graeco-Roman branch of the Egypt Ex-
ploration Fund have been the Paeans and Partheneia of Pindar,
a large part of a satyric drama of Sophocles and numerous
fragments of the Greek Bible.
Among English editors of the Greek Testament, Christopher
Wordsworth, afterwards bishop of Lincoln, published in 1856–9
a commentary on the Greek Testament which teems with citations
from patristic literature. The German commentators are more
fully noticed in the edition produced by Henry Alford, dean of
Canterbury. Several of the Pauline epistles were elaborately
edited by Charles John Ellicott, afterwards bishop of Gloucester
and Bristol, and, with a higher degree of success, by Joseph Barber
Lightfoot, bishop of Durham, who was also the editor of Clement
of Rome, and of Ignatius and Polycarp. Critical texts of the
Greek Testament were produced by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, by
Frederick Henry Scrivener, and, in 1881, by Brooke Foss Westcott,
afterwards bishop of Durham, and Fenton John Anthony Hort.
Of these last, the former published commentaries on the Gospel
and the epistles of St John, and on the epistle to the Hebrews.
English and American scholars joined in the revision of the
1 For other works on classical archaeology see bibliography.
## p. 341 (#365) ############################################
xv]
341
Oriental Scholars
Authorised Version of the New Testament from June 1870 to
November 1880.
ORIENTAL SCHOLARS
. و، ناران
The Cambridge Hebraists of the nineteenth century include the
names of Samuel Lee, professor of Hebrew and Arabic ; William
Hodge Mill, who is better known as a theologian; Frederick Field,
whose edition of Origen's Hexapla placed him in the front rank
of Hebrew and Syriac scholars; Peter Hamnett Mason, author ú?
of a Hebrew grammar and a rabbinical reader ; Andrew Bruce
Davidson, author of a Hebrew grammar and syntax, and of com-
mentaries on the book of Job, and on several of the prophets;
and Charles Taylor, master of St John's, editor of the Hebrew
Sayings of the Fathers. William Aldis Wright, besides editing
a commentary on the book of Job from a MS in the Cambridge
library, was secretary of the Old Testament revision company
from 1870 to 1885. At Oxford, the professorship of Hebrew was
held for fifty-four years by Edward Bouverie Puseył, author of
A Commentary on the Minor Prophets and of Lectures on the
Prophet Daniel; and, for thirty years, by Samuel Rolles Driver,
author of An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament,
,,,
and of commentaries on many parts of it, as well as joint author
of a Hebrew-English lexicon.
qyte
Meanwhile, in London, Christian David Ginsburg had, among
his many important works, produced translations of The Song of
indi
Songs and of Ecclesiastes, and had published the Massorah,
a at ganolex
a 'Masoretico-critical' edition of the Hebrew Bible, with an
introduction, and Facsimiles of MSS of the Hebrew Bible.
his common
William Cureton, of Christ Church, published a Syriac MS of The
Epistles of St Ignatius in 1845—9, the Syriac version of The Festal
Letters of Athanasius, and remains of the Syriac Gospels from a MS and Cinsi. com?
A congé, eral
of the fifth century; Robert Payne Smith, dean of Canterbury, began,
in 1868, the publication of an important Syriac lexicon ; and Robert
Lubbock Bensly, fellow of Gonville and Caius, who was the first to
publish, in 1875, from an Amiens MS of the ninth century, the
missing fragment of the Latin translation of the fourth book of Ezra,
spent the last year of his life in deciphering the Syriac MS of
the Gospels discovered in 1892 at St Catharine's, on mount Sinai.
Bensly’s discovery of the fragment of the fourth book of Ezra
had been anticipated, in 1826, by John Palmer, fellow of St John's,
OPY
*****
N
1 Cf, ante, pp. 262—3.
## p. 342 (#366) ############################################
342
[CH.
Oriental Scholars
professor of Arabic from 1804 to 1840, whose discovery was not
published until 1877.
Arabic was ably represented in the nineteenth century by
Edward William Lane, author of the great Arabic lexicon, and
translator of The Arabian Nights ; by William Wright, professor
of Arabic in Cambridge from 1870 to 1889, author of an
excellent Arabic grammar, and a distinguished Syriac scholar;
and by Edward Henry Palmer, lord almoner's reader in Cam-
bridge, who showed the highest genius for the acquisition of
oriental languages, travelled in the Desert of the Exodus' in
1868–9, and finally died in Arabia in the service of his country
during the rebellion of Arabi in 1882. His successor in the
readership, William Robertson Smith, a scholar of singular
versatility, besides studying physics with distinction in Aberdeen,
and becoming prominent as an advanced theologian, devoted
himself to oriental languages, and was appointed librarian of the
university of Cambridge, and, subsequently, professor of Arabic.
In Turkish, one of the leading authorities was Sir James
William Redhouse, author of a grammar and dictionary of the
Ottoman language. Turkish, Arabic and Persian were successfully
studied by Elias John Wilkinson Gibb, author of a History of
Ottoman Poetry; and Persian, many years previously, by Sir
William Ouseley, and by his younger brother, Sir Gore Ouseley.
The cuneiform inscriptions of Persia, Assyria and Babylonia were
deciphered between 1837 and 1851 by Sir Henry Creswicke
Rawlinson, and, in 1849, by Edward Hincks, fellow of Trinity
college, Dublin. In 1876, all the inscriptions relating to the
Creation, which had been found in Assyria by George Smith, of
the British Museum, were published in his Chaldaean Genesis.
Among English Egyptologists special mention is due to Sir
John Gardner Wilkinson, whose admirable Manners and Customs
of the Ancient Egyptians, first published in 1837, attained its final
form in 1878. Samuel Birch, of the British Museum, produced, in
1867, an Hieroglyphical Grammar and Dictionary, and a transla-
tion of The Book of the Dead, and, in 1858, a History of Ancient
Pottery, a new and revised edition of which appeared in 1873.
Among Chinese scholars, the most eminent have been the three
missionaries—Robert Morrison, author of the first Chinese-English
dictionary (1815—23), who translated the Bible with the
coopera-
tion of William Milne; Walter Henry Medhurst, translator of the
Bible, and author of an English-Japanese, as well as a Chinese-
English and English-Chinese, dictionary; and James Legge,
>
## p. 343 (#367) ############################################
Xv]
343
Arabic. Chinese.
Sanskrit
canon.
translator of some Taoist classics, and of the whole of the Confucian
The last of these scholars was the first holder of the
chair of Chinese founded at Oxford in 1875, while at Cambridge
an honorary professorship of that language was held until 1895
by Sir Thomas Francis Wade, who presented to the university
his valuable library of Chinese literature.
The first Englishman who worked at Sanskrit to any purpose was
Sir Charles Wilkins. He began his study of the language in India
in 1778, encouraged by Warren Hastings, and, besides translating
the Bhagavadgītā and the Hitopadesa, produced a Sanskrit
grammar in 1808. In 1786 (as we have already seen) Sir William
Jones had pointed out the affinity of Sanskrit with Greek, Latin,
Gothic and Celtic, and, in 1789, its connection with Zend.
Burnouf and Friedrich Schlegel learnt their Sanskrit from an
Indian civilian, Alexander Hamilton, who was captured by Napoleon
in 1802, and detained until 1807, and was thereby enabled to excite
the first interest in that language in France and Germany. William
Carey, the baptist missionary, published a Sanskrit grammar in
1806, edited and translated the Rāmāyana and translated the
Bible into Sanskrit. Henry Thomas Colebrooke produced elaborate
renderings of two treatises on the law of inheritance, and of certain
mathematical and philosophical works, while his collected Essays
on Sanskrit literature (1837) are recognised as masterpieces of
research. The study of the language was specially promoted by
Horace Hayman Wilson, the first professor of Sanskrit at Oxford
(1833), whose dictionary of 1819 and 1832 made the further study of
the language possible in Europe. In 1860 he was succeeded in the
chair by (Sir Monier) Monier Williams, who completed his Sanskrit-
English dictionary in 1872, and brought about the foundation of the
Indian Institute in 1883. Meanwhile, Friedrich Max Müller, who
had settled at Oxford in 1848, and had published an edition of The
Rigveda in 1849—73, gave two admirable courses of Lectures on
the Science of Languages at the Royal Institution in 1861—4, which
led to his appointment as professor of comparative philology at
Oxford in 1868. In and after 1875, he edited the important series
known as The Sacred Books of the East. From 1867 to 1903,
Edward Byles Cowell of Magdalen hall, Oxford, president of the
Sanskrit college, Calcutta, was the first holder of the professorship
of Sanskrit at Cambridge, and, with the aid of his pupils, issued
an important series of Sanskrit texts and translations.
i Ante, p. 327.
## p. 344 (#368) ############################################
344
[CH.
English Scholars
ENGLISH SCHOLARS
The dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, begun by Edward Lye, was
completed by Owen Manning in 1776. The next landmark in the
literature of the subject was the publication of Sharon Turner's
History of the Anglo-Saxons, in 1799–1805? Benjamin Thorpe,
.
who studied at Copenhagen under Rask, published Rask's Anglo-
Saxon Grammar in English in 1830, translated Caedmon in 1832
and Beowulf in 1855, and edited The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in
1861; while John Mitchell Kemble, of Trinity college, Cambridge,
a friend and pupil of Jacob Grimm, edited Beowulf in 1833, and
the Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici, in six volumes, in 1839
48, founding on this great collection of charters his important work
entitled The Saxons in England (1849)? Richard Morris, in his
Specimens of Early English (1867), distinguished the chief
characteristics of the three main dialects of middle English, the
northern, midland and southern. Joseph Bosworth, of Trinity
college, Cambridge, after publishing his elementary grammar in
1823 and his larger dictionary in 1838, filled the chair of Anglo-
Saxon at Oxford from 1858 to 1876, and, by a gift dating from
1867, brought about the foundation of the Elrington and Bosworth
professorship at Cambridge eleven years later. The professorship
was held from 1878 to 1912 by Walter William Skeat, fellow of
Christ's college, the unwearied editor of many English classics,
including Piers Plowman, Barbour's Bruce and Chaucer, and
author of An Etymological Dictionary of the English Languages.
The publications of the Early English Text society and the Scottish
Text society concern language rather than literature ; and in this
connection we may also mention those of the Philological society
and the English Dialect society. Celtic studies have made much
progress, not only in Ireland, but also in Scotland and in Wales.
>
ARCHAEOLOGICAL ANTIQUARIES
Richard Gough, the first of the English antiquaries to be
noticed in this chapter, devoted his whole life to antiquarian
research. He had inherited a large fortune, and, even in his
undergraduate days at Corpus Christi college, Cambridge, was
already beginning Anecdotes of British Topography, which he
published in 1768 and enlarged in 1780. He was the author of
1 Cf. vol. XIII.
2 Cf. ibid.
* For Shakespearean scholars, see ante, vol. v, pp. 277—280, and bibliography to
chaps. VIII—XII.
.
## p. 345 (#369) ############################################
Xv]
345
Archaeological Antiquaries
the 'History of the Society of Antiquaries' prefixed to their
Archaeologia. He also produced in 1789 an expanded edition
of the English translation of Camden's Britannia. Moreover, in
1786, he had begun Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain,
which he completed in 1799. The second volume of this was
hailed by Horace Walpole as 'the most splendid work' he had ever
seen. Gough's Anecdotes of British Topography was continued
in the ten volumes of John Nichols’s Bibliotheca Topographica
(1780—1800), whose most important work was The History and
Antiquities of the Town and County of Leicester, published
from 1795 to 1815. He also supplied the elaborate index to
Bowyer's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, while
the work entitled Illustrations of the Literary History of that
century, begun by John Nichols, was completed by his son, John
Bowyer, and his grandson, John Gough Nichols 1.
Three volumes of The Beauties of Wiltshire, five of The Archi-
tectural Antiquities of Great Britain, and six of The Cathedral
Antiquities, with single volumes on Picturesque Antiquities of
English Cities,' on St Mary Redcliffe church, Bristol, on Fonthill
abbey, and on Windsor castle, form a large part of the works
of John Britton, a native of Wiltshire. It was said of him that
‘his elegantly-illustrated works have been a chief exciting cause
in bringing about the improved state of public feeling with reference
to our national antiquities. '2 In conjunction with Edward Wedlake
Brayley he edited, in 1801-14, nine volumes of The Beauties
of England and Wales. Daniel Lysons; in conjunction with
his brother, Samuel, began, under the title Magna Britannia,
an account of Great Britain, dealing with the first ten counties
in alphabetical order from Bedfordshire to Devonshire (1806—22).
The volumes were welcomed, in The Gentleman's Magazine, as 'a
rich museum of valuable curiosities. The topographical collections
for the remainder of the great work are preserved in sixty-four
volumes among the manuscripts of the British Museum (Additional
MSS, 9408—71). The principal separate work of Daniel Lysons
was The Environs of London, while his brother is best known
by his Reliquiae Britannico-Romanae.
A large amount of valuable work was accomplished by
Thomas Dunham Whitaker, of St John's college, Cambridge.
His publications included, with other works on the topography
· Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. vi, pp. 262—343.
* Life of Britton in Knight's English Cyclopaedia. For his other works, see biblio.
graphy.
## p. 346 (#370) ############################################
346
[CH.
Archaeological Antiquaries
6
of northern England, a History of Richmondshire. This im-
portant work was completed in two folio volumes in 1823, with
thirty-two plates by Turner. Its merits and defects are thus
summed up in The Retrospective Review":
No work of County History has hitherto issued from the press (not
excepting even Sir Richard Hoare's magnificent Wiltshire) so splendid, in
respect both of typography and graphic illustration, as Dr Whitaker's
Richmond; and yet, with all the author's high reputation and acknowledged
talent, few (we believe) have fallen so far short of the expectations formed
by readers of real science and desirous of substantial information, principally
in those very points in which we have represented Mr Baker as far
excelling.
The work of George Baker, extolled in the above passage,
is his History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, published
in five parts between 1822 and 1841, and then abandoned
from lack of adequate support. A history of Hallamshire,
published in 1819, and enlarged fifty years later, was produced
by Joseph Hunter, the historian of South Yorkshire (1828–31).
Other counties have their ‘histories. ' They may be described as
works of various degrees of merit; but it is hardly necessary to
enumerate them, especially as they are in process of being
absorbed and superseded by The Victoria County Histories.
There are also special bibliographies of the literature of several
of the counties: e. g. Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire,
Hampshire, Lancashire, Norfolk and Shropshire.
The foundation of the study of English folklore was laid by
The Antiquities of the Common People, first published at
Newcastle by Henry Bourne in 1725, and re-issued in an expanded
form by John Brand in 1777. In 1813, 1843 and 1849 it was
greatly enlarged by Sir Henry Ellis, principal librarian of the
British Museum, who published An Introduction to Domesday
Book, and eleven volumes of Original Letters, illustrative of
English History, with notes and illustrations (1824—48), and
also prepared a new edition of Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum.
The Roman antiquities of Caerleon were repeatedly described
by John Edward Lee, author of Imperial Profiles, enlarged
from Roman coins (1874). The Roman wall was the theme of an
admirable hand-book by John Collingwood Bruce, that reached
a fifth edition in 1907. Bruce was also editor of Lapidarium
Septentrionale, a volume illustrated by nearly a thousand wood-
cuts and maps and describing the monuments of Roman rule
in the north of England (1875). The 'Antiquarian Notes' in
1 Vol. ix (1824), p. 223.
6
## p. 347 (#371) ############################################
Xv]
England
347
The Gentleman's Magazine were edited for many years by
Charles Roach Smith, who wrote on the antiquities of Rich-
borough, Reculver, Lymne and Faversham, in Kent, and also
on Roman London. The ancient remains collected by him
during a course of twenty years were purchased for the British
Museum. He also wrote on the birthplace and the rural life
of Shakespeare, as illustrated by his works; in conjunction
with Thomas Wright, he founded the British Archaeological
association in 1843; and, in 1883, he published in his Retro-
spections a review of the researches of English antiquaries
during the past forty years. Among the many antiquarian
publications of Thomas Wright?
was an account of the excava-
tions of Wroxeter (1872). William Thompson Watkin devoted
special attention to the Roman antiquities of England and Wales.
His Roman Lancashire (1882) takes rank with the best local
histories of the Roman occupation of Britain, and is even sur-
passed by his later work entitled Roman Cheshire (1886). An
admirably illustrated work entitled Romano-British Mosaic Pave-
ments was published by Thomas Morgan in 1886.
A work on the archaeology of the northern nations, under
the title Horae Ferales, which had been left unfinished by
John Mitchell Kemble, was edited in 1863 by (Sir) Augustus
Wollaston Franks, of Trinity college, Cambridge, ultimately keeper
of mediaeval antiquities in the British Museum, who wrote
numerous memoirs on archaeological subjects, besides drawing
up the catalogue of his own priceless collection of porcelain.
The many-sided antiquary Sir John Evans, who was suc-
cessively president of the Geological, Numismatic and Antiquarian
societies, and contributed largely to their Transactions, is best
remembered as the author of three important works, each of
them a masterpiece in its special department of study: (1) The
Coins of the Ancient Britons (1864); (2) The Ancient Stone
Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain (1872);
and (3) The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons, and Orna-
ments of Great Britain and Ireland (1881). The second of these
was welcomed as “an admirable summary of the facts and the
deductions as to. . . the relative antiquity of these rude relics of
the earliest inhabitants'? ; and the third, as 'a rich repertory
of facts . . . skilfully marshalled in such fashion as to form an
organised body. '8
1 See post, p. 353.
The Academy, vol. vi, p. 159.
3 Ibid. vol. xx, p. 33.
## p. 348 (#372) ############################################
348
Archaeological Antiquaries [ch.
Under the title Textrinum Antiquum, 'an account of the
art of weaving among the ancients' was produced in 1843 by
James Yates, a unitarian minister, whose work was welcomed as
' worthy of the best days of critical antiquarianism,' and as
'deserving to rank with the works of the Graevii and the Gronovii
of past ages. '1 A History of British Costumes, the result of ten
years' study, had meanwhile been published by a versatile writer,
James Robinson Planché. Primeval History (1846), and Ancient
Egypt (1850) and Phoenicia (1857), were among the earlier pro-
ductions of one who has been regarded as the greatest scholar
among the unitarians, John Kenrick.
With a view to the reconstruction of the past, ancient remains
and the manners and customs of modern savages were studied in
Prehistoric Times (1865) by Sir John Lubbock (afterwards Lord
Avebury), who also wrote The Origin of Civilization, and the
Primitive Condition of Man (1870). The same subjects were
treated from a different point of view, and with different results,
by John Ferguson MacLennan, author of Primitive Marriage.
In 1883, under the influence of Sir Henry Maine's Ancient
Law and Village Communities, The English Village Community
'in its relations to the manorial and tribal systems, and to the
common or open field system of husbandry' was published by
Frederic Seebohm, who subsequently produced The Tribal System
of Wales The British Barrows of canon Greenwell, of Durham,
(1877) supplied a very full and accurate record of the examination
of sepulchral mounds in various parts of England. Ten years
later, the same author published an important monograph, The
electrum coinage of Cyzicus. George William Kitchin, dean of
Durham, author of a History of France, wrote on Winchester,
and on the great screen of its cathedral; and a History of the
Cathedral Church of Wells was written in 1870 by Edward
Augustus Freeman. The Architectural History of the University
and Colleges of Cambridge, together with that of Eton college,
begun by Robert Willis, was continued and brought to a
successful conclusion by John Willis Clark, registrary of the
university from 1891 to his death in 1910, who also deserves to
be remembered for his work on Barnwell priory, and for his
fine volume on the history of libraries entitled The Care of Books.
In 1872 Mackenzie Edward Charles Walcott had published
1 The Literary Gazette, 1844, p. 89.
(2 As to his other publications, see bibliography.
: Cf. a later volume, where see, also, as to Sir Henry Maine.
Give indossar
,
en est hom
resipi. Xe 36
7. ;
+, 6y.
1
## p. 349 (#373) ############################################
xv]
England
349
Traditions and Customs of Cathedrals, followed in 1874 by
A History of the Cathedrals, Conventual Foundations, Collegiate
Churches, and Hospitals of Scotland. The latter work was said
to have largely supplied what Scotland had long needed, 'a Dods-
worth, a Dugdale, a Ware, or an Archdale, who should employ
his leisure in the preparation of her Monasticon'. A Survey
of London, intended to do for modern London what Stow had
done for the Elizabethan city, was unfortunately left unfinished
by Sir Walter Besant, whose keen interest in the subject was,
however, partly proved by his completed works, London (1892),
Westminster (1895) and South London (1899).
George Thomas Clark, a founder of the Archaeological
association (now the Royal Archaeological institute), propounded,
in his Mediaeval Military Architecture in England (1884), the
theory that the castle of Norman times was identical with the
burh of the Old English Chronicle ; but this theory has been,
practically, overthrown by later authorities. Other important
works on the same general subject were The Castles of England,
their Story and Structure, by Sir James Dixon Mackenzie (1897),
and the unfinished Border Holds of Northumberland by Cadwal-
lader John Bates ? .
The antiquities of Scotland, as well as those of England and
Wales, were explored by Francis Grose, an excellent draughtsman
and accomplished scholar of Swiss origin, whose work, The
Antiquities of England and Wales, begun in 1777, was com-
pleted ten years later. Two years after its completion, he set
out for Scotland, where he met Robert Burns, and was immortalised
by him in the famous song beginning ‘Ken ye ought o' Captain
Grose,' while, in another poem, 'Hear, land o' Cakes, and
brither Scots,' he playfully warned all Scotsmen of this chield
amang them, taking notes. The two volumes of Grose's An-
tiquities of Scotland were completed in 1791, which was
also the year of his death, and of the publication of his
posthumous work, The Antiquities of Ireland. Captain Grose,
who has been aptly described as 'a sort of antiquarian Falstaff,'
is further known as the author of a treatise entitled Ancient
Armour and Weapons, and of two volumes on military
antiquities. The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was founded
in Edinburgh in 1780, at a time when captain Grose was still
engaged on The Antiquities of England and Wales.
1 The Athenaeum, no. 2444.
2 See the bibliography on pp. xiii-xxi of A. Hamilton Thompson's Military Archi-
tecture during the Middle Ages (1912).
## p. 350 (#374) ############################################
350 Archaeological Antiquaries [CH.
A comprehensive topographical and historical account of
Scotland was published in 1807—24 in the Caledonia of George
Chalmers, who devoted a large part of his life to this stupendous
work, which, unhappily, remained unfinished. The author has
been described by Dibdin as “the Atlas of Scottish Antiquaries
and Historians; bearing on his shoulders whatever has been
collected, and with pain separately endured by his predecessors';
one whom neither difficulties tire, nor dangers daunt. ' During
his previous migration to Maryland, he had made a collection of
"Treaties' and of Political Annals of the. . . Colonies. After his
return to Scotland, he wrote lives of Ruddiman, Sir David
Lyndsay and Mary queen of Scots. The Scottish section of his
library has been described as one of the most valuable collections
of works on the history and literature of Scotland ever formed
by a private individual. '1 In the next generation, Sir John
Graham Dalyell, author of The Darker Superstitions of Scotland
(1834), gave proof of being a remarkably versatile antiquary.
James Logan was a man of some note as the author of The
Scottish Gael, or Celtic Manners as preserved amongst the
Highlanders (1831), and also of the two illustrated folios on the
Clans of the Scottish Highlands (1843—9), regarded in their
day as one of the most valuable and interesting works of modern
times. ' Robert Stuart, the bookseller and antiquary of Glasgow,
produced, in his Caledonia Romana of 1845, 'a descriptive
account of the Roman antiquities of Scotland. ' John Stuart, of
Edinburgh, published, in 1856, The Sculptured Stones of Scotland,
besides editing, in 1869, The Book of Deer, and preparing for
publication, in 1872, Archaeological Essays by the eminent
physician, Sir James Young Simpson.
Contributions to Scottish Ethnology was the title of the first
important work of John Beddoe, who was born in Worcestershire
in 1826, and educated in the universities of London and Edinburgh,
and was president of the Anthropological society in 1869–70.
He subsequently wrote The Races of Britain (1885), and The
1 Cf. David Murray's David Laing, p. 33. The Antiquary was given to the world
by the author of Waverley' in 1815. The character of the whimsical virtuoso,
Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns, was partly founded on that of an old friend of Scott's
youth, George Constable, of Wallace Craigie, vear Dundee, while the scene in which
Edie Ochiltree interrupts the antiquary's ecstatic description of the Praetorium of
Agrippa by exclaiming, ' Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I mind the bigging o't,' is
an echo of an incident that actually happened to an antiquary of great learning and
acuteness, Sir John Clerk, of Penicuik, one of the barons of the Scottish court of
exchequer, when he conducted the English antiquary, Roger Gale, to the Roman station
of Birrenswark, in Dumfriesshire.
6
## p. 351 (#375) ############################################
Xv]
351
Scotland.
Ireland
Anthropological History of Europe (1891). The Archaeology and
Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, published in 1851 by (Sir)
Daniel Wilson, afterwards president of the university of Toronto,
formed an epoch in the study of the earlier antiquities of Scotland,
and invested antiquities with all the charms of graceful literaturel.
Sir Daniel was also the author of 'Researches into the origin of
civilisation in the Old and the New World,' published under the title
Prehistoric Man, a work teeming with interesting matter clothed
in a clear and graphic style. The Rhind lectures in archaeology
were founded by Alexander Henry Rhind, who made a special
study of Scottish antiquities, and, during a visit to Egypt for the
benefit of his health, collected the materials for a work entitled
Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants (1862).
In Irish archaeology, the first name of permanent importance
is that of George Petrie. In 1833 he was appointed to super-
intend the historical and antiquarian sections of the ordnance
survey of Ireland.
It was originally proposed to add to the
maps of each district a memoir on its past history and its
ancient monuments, but, after one volume of the proposed series
had been issued, the work was suddenly dropped on the alleged
ground of expense. Petrie's three chief essays were the outcome
of his work on the survey. In his prize-essay, The Round Towers
of Ireland (1833), he dispelled the theory of their pagan origin by
proving that they were Christian belfries; and this essay was
expanded into his great work, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of
Ireland (1845). His second essay, Antiquities of Tara (1843),
was originally intended for the ordnance memoir on Meath. The
manuscript of the third, Irish Military Architecture, still remains
among the archives of the Royal Irish academy. As a landscape
painter, he had been attracted by the surpassing interest of Irish
antiquities. He traversed the whole country'in search of subjects
for his canvas, and, at the same time, made copious notes and
sketches of buildings,' besides collecting antiquities, and reaping
'a vast harvest of traditional music. ” Petrie, on joining the Irish
academy, arranged the small series of weapons and implements
presented by the king of Denmark. After his death, his own
collection was added, and, in 1857—62, all the antiquarian
acquisitions of the academy were described in an amply illus-
trated catalogue by the distinguished physician, Sir William
Wilde, who thus provided the quarry from which all later
1 The Westminster Review, April 1856, p. 384.
? Macalister, R. A. S. , in The Journal of the Ivernian Society, vol. v (1912), p. 30.
## p. 352 (#376) ############################################
352
[CH.
Archaeological Antiquaries
'1
6
>
writers on Irish antiquities draw their materials. ' The Royal
Irish academy had grown from a society established in Dublin
about 1782. The Kilkenny Archaeological society, founded in
1849, became, in 1869, the Royal Historical and Archaeological
Association of Ireland,' and, in 1890, the 'Royal Society of An-
tiquaries of Ireland. '
Turning from Ireland to India, we note that the Asiatic
society of Bengal was founded by Sir William Jones in 1784,
and that, in 1811, the eminent Sanskrit scholar, Horace Hayman
Wilson, was appointed secretary of that body. Wilson was also
an original member of the Royal Asiatic society, and director
of it from 1837 to his death in 1860. Most of his works were
specially connected with the Sanskrit language and literature? ; but
he was also an Indian antiquary. His Ariana Antiqua (1841)
is 'a Descriptive Account of the Antiquities and Coins of
Afghanistan, including a chapter on the progress of discovery'
of Indian monuments, and a 'Memoir on the Topes' by Charles
Masson, the traveller in Balochistan. James Tod, who lived in
India from 1800 to 1823, published The Antiquities of Rajpootana,
ranked by cardinal Wiseman ‘among the most valuable, as well
as among the most beautiful works upon Eastern literature. '
As secretary of the Asiatic society of Bengal, Wilson was
succeeded, in 1832, by James Prinsep, who, as an assay-master in
northern India, collected the materials for his earliest work,
his Benares illustrated (1831). He also paid special attention
to the deciphering of inscriptions.
The Kharosthi alphabet, written from right to left, ceased to
be used in India in the third century of our era; while the
Brāhmi, written from left to right, is the source of all later
Indian alphabets. A collection of Prinsep's Essays on Indian
Antiquities, bearing on these and on cognate topics, was pub-
lished by Edward Thomas in 1858. Edwin Norris, in a paper
on 'the Kapur-di-Giri rock-inscription' (1845), pointed out the
method of deciphering an alphabet, which had been previously
unknown, thus making, in the words of H. H. Wilson, 'an
unexpected and interesting accession to our knowledge of the
palaeography and ancient history of India. ': The office of director-
general of the archaeological survey of India was ably filled from
1870 to 1885 by major-general Sir Alexander Cunningham, who
had made his mark in antiquarian literature by his Essay on the
>
: Cf. ante, p. 343.
1 Macalister, R. A. S. , l. c. vol. v (1913), p. 85.
3 Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1845.
## p. 353 (#377) ############################################
Xv]
Literary Antiquaries 353
Architecture of the Temples of Kashmir (1848), followed by The
Bhilsa Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of Central India (1854).
He also wrote The Ancient Geography of India (1871), and
published an important Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum (1879).
James Fergusson, who went to India in 1829 as an indigo-
planter, settled in London in 1839, and devoted himself to
archaeological research. The author of the well-known IUus-
trated Hand-book of Architecture, which deals with the styles
of all ages and countries, was led by his early life in India
to take a special interest in its ancient architecture and its
religious institutions. Such was the origin of his Rock-cut
Temples of India (1864), his Tree and Serpent Worship, with
its illustrations from the sculptures of Buddhist topes (1863 and
1873), and his joint work The Cave Temples of India (1880).
The coins of ancient India were investigated by H. H. Wilson,
in his Ariana Antiqua; by James Prinsep in his Essays ; by
Edward Thomas in his Ancient Indian Weights; and by Sir
Alexander Cunningham, who also made a special study of the
coinage of the Hindu states of medieval India.
LITERARY ANTIQUARIES
“A literary antiquary’has been described by Isaac D’Israeli as 'that idler
whose life is passed in a perpetual voyage autour de ma chambre; fervent in
sagacious diligence, instinct with the enthusiasm of curious inquiry, critical as
well as erudite; he has to arbitrate between contending opinions, to resolve
the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at the remote; so busied
with other times, and so interested for other persons than those about him,
that he becomes the inhabitant of the visionary world of books. '2
One of the foremost places among the literary and historical
antiquaries of England is due to Thomas Wright, of Trinity
college, Cambridge, who, in 1838, was associated with John
Mason Neale, and with the Irish antiquary, Thomas Crofton
Croker, in founding the Camden society. The society was
founded in honour of William Camden, author of Britannia
(1586); and it had for its purpose the printing of books and
documents connected with the early civil, ecclesiastical and
literary history of the British empire. Wright was further
associated, in 1840, with Croker, and with Alexander Dyce,
J. 0. Halliwell(-Phillipps) and John Payne Collier, in founding
the Percy society for publishing old ballads and lyrical pieces,
1 For further publications, see bibliography.
* Curiosities of Literature, vol. II, p. 493, ed. 1866.
E. L. XII.
CH. XV.
23
## p. 354 (#378) ############################################
354 Literary Antiquaries [CH.
so named in memory of Thomas Percy, bishop of Dromore, the
first editor of Reliques of English Poetry (1765). Even in his
undergraduate days, Wright was an eager explorer of historic
manuscripts in the Cambridge libraries. In 1836, he published
four volumes of Early English Poetry, and, two years later,
A Series of Original Letters, illustrating the history of queen
Elizabeth and her times. In 1840 he edited, with notes and
glossary, The Vision and Creed of Piers Plowman, and, in 1842,
produced his Biographia Literaria of the Anglo-Saxon period,
comprising 'a rich mass of materials, arranged with taste and
judgment. This was followed, two years later, by his Anecdota
Literaria, a collection of short poems in English, Latin and
French, illustrating the literature and history of England in the
thirteenth century. Among his many other works were essays on
subjects connected with the literature, popular superstitions
and history of England in the middle ages; a history of domestic
manners and sentiments, and of caricature and grotesque in
literature and art, besides editions of Chaucer, and of the romance
of king Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.
An Account of the Public Records was published in 1832
by Charles Purton Cooper, who also prepared a catalogue
of the fine collection of old French law which he presented to
the library of Lincoln's inn. The labours of John Bruce, as
calendarer of state papers, and as editor for the Camden society
(1838–68), are noticed elsewhere? . Anecdotes and Traditions,
relating to early English history and literature, was published for
the same society by William John Thoms, who founded Notes and
Queries in 1849, and edited Stow's Survey of London in 1875.
In 1834 the Surtees society was founded in honour of Robert
Surtees, author of a History of Durham published between 1816
and 1840. The purpose of the society was the publication of
ancient manuscripts bearing on the history and topography of
northern England. Among its active members were the brothers
James and John Raine ; canon Greenwell, who published several
works connected with the antiquities of the county and bishopric
of Durham ; and George William Kitchin, late dean of Durham,
who, in the early part of his career, had prepared the catalogue
of the library of Christ Church, Oxford.
The ten years from 1834 to 1844 were, in a special sense, the
age of the birth of book-clubs and book-societies. Thus, the
Camden society, already mentioned, was founded in 1838; and the
1 Cf. vol. XIII.
XIV
## p. 355 (#379) ############################################
Xv]
England
355
year 1840 saw the foundation of the Parker society, which had for
its main object 'the reprinting, without abridgment, alteration,
or omission, of the best works of the Fathers and early Writers
of the Reformed Church, published. . . between the accession of
Edward VI and the death of Elizabeth. ' The fifty-three volumes
-
published by the society ended with a general index in 1855.
The Percy and Shakespeare societies were founded in the same
year, and the Aelfric and Chetham societies in 1842. Of the last
two, the former had for its object the publication of Old English
and other documents illustrating the early state of England; the
latter, the printing of 'remains, historical and literary, connected
with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester. ' The
Caxton society, founded in 1844, aimed at bringing out works
illustrative of the history and miscellaneous literature of the
Middle Ages. ' The Sydenham society, founded in memory of the
English physician Thomas Sydenham, lasted from 1844 to 1858,
when it was succeeded by the New Sydenham society. The
Hakluyt society, for printing rare and unpublished voyages and
travels, was founded in 1846 ; the Early English Text society
in 1864; the Ballad and the Chaucer society in 1868; the
Harleian in 1869; the Wyclif in 1882; the Oxford Historical
society in 1882; the Selden society, for publishing ancient legal
records, in 1887; the London Bibliographical society and the
Viking club in 1892; and the Navy records society in 1897. The
Scottish book-clubs will be duly mentioned in the sequel. One
of the most generous contributors to the Scottish, as well as the
English, book-clubs of the middle of the nineteenth century, was
the scholarly and accomplished bibliographer, Beriah Botfield"
A project for a Corpus Historicum of early English history
was formed by Henry Petrie, keeper of the records in the
Tower. One large volume was published in 1848, with a
preface by Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, who had been trained
under Petrie, and had already edited the Close Rolls, the Patent
Rolls, the Rotuli de oblatis et finibus, the Rotuli Normanniae,
the Chester Rolls, the Liberate Rolls and Modus Tenendi
Parliamentum (1846). His Descriptive catalogue of materials
relating to the history of Great Britain and Ireland filled three
volumes. He edited William of Malmesbury, continued John Le
Neve's Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, compiled an English syllabus
of documents in Rymer's Foedera and wrote memoirs of Henry
Bickersteth, Lord Langdale.
1 A list of his contributions will be found in the bibliography, vb.
17 35 $ ::.
Porn
29. tiful ferns saa 1:51
ses
1
23-2
## p. 356 (#380) ############################################
356
Literary Antiquaries [CH.
Lord Langdale was succeeded as master of the rolls by Sir
John Romilly, who held office from 1851 to 1873. It was under
his authority that the celebrated Rolls series came into being.
Early in the nineteenth century, at a meeting held at Spencer
house, it had been resolved to recommend the publication of a
complete collection of the sources of English history to the age
of the reformation.