and from him to Strype, and so to West. There too, were to be found the collections of Bishop Kennet and those of Le Neve and others learned in heraldic lore; with the papers of Sir Julius Cæsar, the Master of the Rolls of the first James and the first Charles; of Petyt on Parliaments; with selections from the Patent Rolls; and a mass of other documents in which the past history of England might be read from the time of Henry VI. to the time of the Star Chamber, and from the time of the Star Chamber to the reign of George III. When Shelburne—then Lord Lansdowne—died, those who reigned in his stead had the same opinion of the value of MSS. as Sandwich, and the story is still told how only the zeal of an auctioneer saved the papers of Sir Julius Cæsar from falling into the hands of an enterprising cheesemonger,[1] who had made a private bargain for them at the price of £10. The whole collection was then brought to the hammer and purchased by the British Museum with the first sum of money ever voted by Parliament in aid of the Library.
Occasionally Shelburne visited London with Barré, now become in every sense of the term his aide-de-camp, and the centre of the group of "the little knot of young orators"[2] which was wont to gather in Hill Street, or in small clubs, mixed with literary men older in years and of various political opinions. He is also heard of travelling in France and Belgium with Mr. Dunning. "Lord Shelburne," Sir James Porter writes from Brussells, "passed through here. This Lord has parts and conception, and has applied; and I should think might have made his way, if he had not kicked down his pail of milk."[3] It was through Bute that Shelburne had, in all probability, come to know Johnson.[4] Through Johnson he came to know Goldsmith and Reynolds, to the last of whom he sat for his portrait in March 1764, and again in 1766.
- ↑ See for further details Edwards' Memoirs of Libraries, i. 468, 524.
- ↑ Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., i. 110.
- ↑ Sir James Porter to Mr. E. Sedgwick, from Brussells, January 4th, 1765. Hist. MSS. Commission Reports, Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part vi. Beaufort Papers, 342.
- ↑ Boswell, iv. 120.
