LITERARY ANECDOTES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. ONE of the earliest publications from Mr. Bow yer's press in the year 1732 was, "Marmorum, Arundellianorum, Seldenianorum, aliorumque, Academiæ Oxoniensi donatorum*; unà "The antient marbles that form the most authentic history of Greece, collected by Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, and given to this University by his grandson Henry Duke of Norfolk, were first illustrated with a learned comment, the year after they came over, by Selden.-Philip Earl of Arundel, father of the noble collector, was the greatest Antiquary in Europe, except Ferdinand de Medici. Persecuted by the intrigues of a jealous Court, to which his own father the great Duke of Norfolk had fallen a victim, he was preparing to retire from England, and indulge his only ambition, the study of polite literature. Elizabeth remanded him, and, not content with a heavy fine and imprisonment, had him tried for treason. Being unable to convict him of any thing but Popery, she left him to languish nine years in prison, where he sunk under her displeasure and his own austerity. Among the celebrated Libraries of the age in this kingdom his was the completest in the antiquarian way. His son Thomas inherited his spirit and taste, with better fortune. Too much of a patriot to be esteemed by James, too little of a parasite to cringe to his favourite, too honest and disinterested to have many friends in their parliament, he could not attain to the seals after the great Bacon, who drew his last breath in his house at Highgate. In Charles's first parliament he was instrumental to the establishment of the fundamental privileges of the peerage; and the King seems to have observed his father's conVOL. II. B duct cum variis Commentariis et Indice; secunda Editio," duct towards him, advancing him to employments unimportant in themselves or in which he was not left free to act. After presiding with unimpeached impartiality at the trial of the favourite minister, as the storm of civil distractions gathered round, he retreated from a scene where moderation could not be heard, to pursue those studies to which he had always given the preference at home. The friend and patron of his late contemporaries, he introduced the elegance and arts of Greece and Rome into this angle of the world; superior to ambition, with abilities and re-venues equal to its largest views. Clarendon, without intending him so much honour, has drawn in his character the picture of an independent English nobleman.-William Petty, afterwards knighted, whom the Earl sent into Asia in quest of antient monuments, bought these of a Turk, who took them from the agent of the famous Peiresk, who had paid fifty pieces of gold for them, and was afterwards thrown into prison, and cheated of them. Petty lost one ship-load of his collections, and narrowly saved himself. After the Earl retired to Italy; 1641, many of these curious monuments, which lay at Arundel house in the Strand, were stolen, or cut up by masons and worked into houses. Above 130, which was scarce half, surviving this calamity, Henry Howard, earl marshal, grandson to the noble collector, when he pulled down Arundel house, made a present of them to this University, at the instigation of John Evelyn, esq. of Baliol. They were ranged in the wall surrounding the court of the Theatre, marked with the initial letter of the donor's name, and a pillar erected with an inscription under his arms. Upon Selden's death, 1654, his executors added his collection of antiquities, Sir George Wheeler gave those he had collected, chiefly at Athens; and the University bought several other marbles of merchants who brought them over. Those parts of the Earl of Arundel's Collection which were not sent to Oxford were preserved at Tart hall, or Stafford house, near St. James's-park gate, by Buckingham house, where some of the statues were buried in the court-yard during Oates's plot. (See an account of their dispersion in Mr. Theobald's letter to Lord Willoughby, inserted in “Historical Anecdotes of the Howard family, by Charles Howard, 1769." 12mo.) Many very fine statues, &c. were removed to the bottom of the garden of Arundel house, and placed under a colonnade; in pulling down which, by the carelessness of the workmen employed to build the new streets thereabouts, many received much damage. Sir William Fermor, however, purchased the best of them. Those that were too much injured to deserve a place at Oxford or Easton-Nestor, near Towcester, Northamptonshire, the seat of the Earl of Pomfret, when the site of Arundel house was converted into a street, were begged by one Boyden Cuper, who had been servant in the family, and removed them to Cuper's gardens, where they were much abused. Here Aubrey lost sight of them; but when Dr. Rawlinson published his History of Surrey, folio; which was begun in 1728, and contains Surrey, he inserted, vol. V. p. 283, eight plates of beautiful fragments of statues and bas-reliefs (all which were copied in the "History of Lambeth, 1786)." Mr. Waller of Beaconsfield, and Mr. Freeman of Fawely, gave Cuper 751. for them 1717, and divided them between them. Dr. Stukeley says, the antique statues at Thorp, near Peterborough, came out of the Arundel Collection. (Itin. Cur. I. 79.) The statue of a Roman senator, which in its mangled state shewed a fine drapery, and was lately in the garden at Somerset-house, is believed to have come out of this Collection.-The rest having been removed by the Duke of Norfolk to a piece of ground on the opposite side of the river, were, upon that ground being converted to a timber-yard and wharf, buried under the rubbish brought to raise it from the foundation of St. Paul's. Mr. Theobald's father, who held the yard 1712, digging foundations, turned up many fragments, which his son gave to Lord Burlington. A bas-relief stands under an obelisk at Chiswick. The late Lord Petre digging there afterwards found six trunks, some colossal statues, with fine drapery, which are now at Worksop. Mr. Theobald cut some blocks of grey marble, which had probably contained inscriptions, into slabs for his house, the Belvidere, at Lambeth; and made a piece of a column a roller for his country-house at Waltham, Berks. A colossus of Apollo, whose head is at Oxford, is said to lie under the houses in Arundel-street (Stukeley, Itin. I. 30); and I think I have somewhere read that an entire small obelisk is covered by the houses of one side of that street. Mr. Aislabie, who inhabited one of the new-built houses here, found a broken statue in his cellar, which he carried down to his seat at Studley Park in Yorkshire. The Society of Antiquaries have Dr. Milles's drawing of a sarcophagus, of white marble, belonging to Mr. Rogers, apothecary, of Howard-street, 1742. Theobald says this sarcophagus was in the cellar of Mr. James Adamson, who lived in the corner-house on the left hand going into the lower part of Norfolk-street, 1757.-The Earl endeavoured to procure the obelisk since erected in the Piazza Navona, and would have removed several other statues had not the Pope opposed it. (Evelyn's Numismata, p. 65.) Clarendon says he paid for them, but was not allowed to fetch them away. (I. 56.) The remaining curiosities lodged at Tart hall, afterwards Stafford house, were sold by auction about the year 1750; and there Dr. Mead bought his fine head of Homer, purchased at his sale for 1361. by Brownlow Earl of Exeter (uncle of the late Marquis), who reposited it in the British Museum. 175 sheets. This beautiful volume (of which only 300 copies were printed on a crown paper, and 8852 0 114 Soiety of Antiquaries Minutes. Mr. Walpole (Anecd. III. 83), says Mr. West had the printed Catalogue (which was miserably drawn up) with the prices, and that the sale produced 65351. The rich collection of medals was gathered by Daniel Nisum (Evelyn, Numismata, p. 245). The cameos and intaglios were by Mary Duchess of Norfolk bequeathed to her second husband Sir John Germayne, whose widow having offered them to the British Museum for 10,000l. gave them to the present Duke of Marlborough. The Cupid and Psyche engraved by Bartolozzi, is in the first edition of Bryant's Antient Mythology, vol. I. The same gem was also engraved by Sherwin for the second edition of that work. Mr. Adam Martin shewed the Society of Antiquaries, 1752, two hundred wax impressions of gems and seals by the Earl of Arundel. Sir Andrew Fountain took an exact list and description of them all. (Society of Antiquaries Minutes.)—In Lord Onslow's grotto, at West Clandon, Surrey, is an Arundelian marble representing a tall person holding a scroll, and taking a shorter man by the hand, before a pillar surmounted by an image; behind the tall figure a horse's head, and two boys below. Inscription, Ο ΔΗΜΟΣ ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΝ ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΥ TOY MHTPOANPOY: supposed by Mr. Spence to be some jockey of Argos in Peloponnesus, admitted by a genius or officer to the freedom of the city. Mr. Webb gave the Society of Antiquaries a bad drawing of it by John Russel, 1758. This marble was engraved with Mr. Spence's account of it in the Gentleman's Magazine, April 1772, p. 176. Compare Prid. lxvii. Mait, exlii. Mar. Ox. cxlvi. Two reliefs in the latter (cxxxv. and exxxviii.) have the horse's head, which is a funeral emblem, and the inscription is frequent there when the parties were buried or honoured with an epitaph at the public expence. Compare also a funeral monument in Count Caylus, tom. VI. pl. lxin. 1.-The statues belonging to the Pomfret Collection being part of the inheritance of the eldest branch of the family, since dukes of Norfolk, fell into the hands of the Duchess who was divorced 1699, and being by her sold to the last Earl of Pomfret's father, were some time preserved at his seat in Northamptonshire; but in 1755 given by the late Countess Dowager of Pomfret to this University. These, with the antient inscriptions collected by Sir George Wheeler, and Messrs. Dawkins, Bouverie, and Wood, during their travels, some of which Dr. Rawlinson bought out of Lord six copies on a large writing medium*) was published by subscription†. The history of this elegant volume is thus given in a contemporary Review; and was probably written by our learned Printer: "The Marmora Arundelliana were first published by the great Selden in 1628. In the year 1676, Lord Oxford's or Kemp's Collection, and various fragments of our own antiquities, have been áll united together, and engraved by Millar, at the University's expence, in "Marmora Oxoniensia. Ox. 1763." fol. a work the design of which will immortalize the University, the nation, and the age. The inscriptions are transcribed with great exactness, revised by Mr. Richard Chandler of Magdalen college, who prefixed an historical preface, and a short account of each with critical notes; and a copious index by Mr. Loveday, gentleman commoner of Magdalen." Gough's Anecdotes of British Topography, vol. II. pp. 127-131. * In a letter printed in vol. I. p. 191, Mr. Maittaire tells Lord Oxford that " he repents of having printed so many copies as 300, when 200 might have sufficed." It appears by an advertisement, that 150 sheets were wrought off in August 1729; and that, though the work contained at least half as many more sheets as were at first proposed, the price to subscribers (which was two guineas and a half) was not increased. To others, it was raised to three guineas. "My copy of Selden has, Typis et Impensis Guilielmi Stanesbeii, MDCXXVIII. Others have, Apud Joannem Billium, 1629."-In this Work Mr. Selden was assisted by R. James and Patrick Young, at the desire of Sir Robert Cotton. They began with the treaty between the Magnesians and Smyrneans to stand by Seleucus, whom all his subjects, except the last, had deserted, till his ill fortune brought them round again. Copies of this being soon solicited, Selden, to prevent the inaccuracy of transcribers, printed it with twenty-eight other Greek. and ten Roman inscriptions (some of them his own) under the title of " Marmora Arundeliana; sive saxa Græcè incisa ex venerandis priscæ orientis gloriæ ruderibus, auspiciis & impensis herois illustrissimi Thomæ comitis Arundelliæ & Surriæ, comitis marescalli Angliæ, pridem vindicata & in ædibus ejus hortisque cognominibus, ad Thamesis ripam, disposita. Accedunt inscriptiones aliquot veteris Latii ex locupletissimo ejusdem vetustatis thesauro selecta; auctariolum item aliunde sumptum: publicavit & commentariolos adjecit Joannes Seldenus. I. C. Lond. 1629." 4to. That a single edition of such curious matters, which too were rare then, should not be bought up greedily at home and abroad, doth no great honour to the taste and learning of times which we are apt to admire. There is certainly another edition in the third volume of the magnificent edition of his Works in 1726, perhaps without any additions, which is extraordinary, as |