The Confessions of a Collector Part 11

The cabinet stood half empty; I felt the reproach; and I proceeded not only to fill it, but to gather tenants for a second--and a third, with an overflow capable of furnis.h.i.+ng one or two more. Such a development might have had comparatively slight significance, because a coin, which is worth a penny, may occupy a larger s.p.a.ce than one, which is worth 10; but in a parallel ratio with the increase in number was the rise in the qualifying standard, or, in other words, I was constantly and heavily adding to my stores, and putting in rigorous force the principle of exclusion. There could be only one result.

Now, in the hope, that certain general particulars, which have cost the writer an infinite amount of trouble to collect for his own benefit and instruction during a series of years, may be acceptable and useful to others, proposing to embark in the same undertaking, I shall reduce the fruit of my own efforts to a summary, indicative of what has seemed to me, after long and deliberate consideration, to be adequate to the purposes of anyone of moderate views, who seeks to a.s.semble together a fairly representative _corpus_ of the various chronological monuments of European rulers and regions and of the successive schools of numismatic art.

Completeness in any given series is by no means essential to the mastery of a competent idea of its character and merits from all ways of looking; and the study of mints and mint-marks is a mere technical detail, which owes its leading interest to its incidental ill.u.s.trations of topography and of the careers of engravers--many of them otherwise distinguished.

Many persons start with the Greek or Roman, or perhaps both, from a belief that they are the most ancient and the most instructive. My first Roman coin was a most disreputable specimen of a very common first bra.s.s of Hadrian, handsomely presented to my son by a captain at a watering-place, and my first Greek a forgery of one of the numberless tetradrachms of Alexander the Great. I was in the _berceaunette_ stage; but I was not quite so long in it as some are. I am indebted to Lincoln & Son for having conferred on me the rudiments (if not something more) of my education in these two very important divisions of every cabinet of any pretensions whatever; and I may at last presume to offer myself as a counsellor of others, who may be situated as I was in my nonage.

It entirely depends on the breadth of a new collector's plan, which is usually influenced by his resources, how far he proceeds in his selection of the Greek coinage, for under any circ.u.mstances a selection it must be.

No individual, no public inst.i.tution, can boast of possessing a complete series in all metals. I resorted to the principle of choosing under each coin-striking region of ancient h.e.l.las a sufficient number of pieces in electrum, gold, silver, and copper or bronze to represent a chronological succession of its products, and I also observed the rule of comprising, if possible, all such as exhibited the portraitures, or at least t.i.tles, of rulers of personal eminence. A numismatist pure and simple attaches, very justly attaches from his special point of view, emphatic weight to many examples, of which the sole attraction and value are their accidental rarity without regard to their intrinsic interest; this is not a wise policy for the private amateur, whatever his fortune may be. Such relics ought to find their resting-place in a public repository, and a full record of them should be preserved in one of the learned Transactions for general reference. How immensely one was pleased to learn that Sir Wollaston Franks had fallen in with a Bactrian dekadrachm; and the satisfaction, so far as I was concerned, was augmented by the news, that he had presented it to the British Museum. If it had been submitted as a purchase or even gift to myself, I should have declined it, as it fails to respond to my postulates. It is merely a voucher.

It is my impression, based on a long experience, that about three hundred Greek coins of all varieties and types will be found to embrace everything of real note, and will provide the possessor with numismatic specimens in all metals, of every region, of every period and style, of each denomination, and of all such great personalities as are known to have struck money, not only within the limits of European Greece, but in the countries and colonies subject to its sovereigns in their varied degrees of power and prosperity or by its cities from their first rude development to their zenith in political influence and commercial wealth. A proportion of gold is highly desirable, particularly the Athenian, Syracusan, and Egyptian; the copper must be very fine and patinated; the silver is the easiest to find, except in certain series. I succeeded in furnis.h.i.+ng myself with the majority of typical examples alike in silver and bronze, and indeed (except under Attica) in the most precious metal. I could never meet with more than a single Athenian specimen--a [Greek: emiekton]; but the most beautiful and fascinating productions are the gold tetradrachms and octodrachms of the Ptolemies, so rich in their portraiture, costume, and design. Three or four of these gems suffice for a moderate programme.

I found fifty pounds inadequate to the purchase of even three. There is a particularly charming one of Ptolemy III., and no one must forget that great, if not very good, lady, the Cleopatra of history, whose portrait appears both on her brother's and her own coins in Egypt and on those of Mark Antony in the Roman consular series. To any collector aiming at the not unreasonable object of securing her likeness it may be useful to mention, that her veiled or deified bust accompanies certain bronze pieces of moderate price and excellent quality.

The writer has attentively scrutinised the catalogues of all the sales of Greek and Roman money, which have taken place in his time, and the conclusion to be drawn from the descriptive accounts and the realised figures is so far a consolatory one for the great majority, who cannot afford to go beyond a comparatively low figure. For it becomes clearly apparent that the costliest pieces are not the most powerful in their appeal to us on historical or artistic grounds. Remember that we have to take into account these points of interest: history, with which is closely embodied religious cult, biography, topography, and art. A thoroughly well-meaning dealer exclaims, if you challenge the quotation for some indifferent specimen of a not too remarkably executed _tetradrachm_ or _drachma_:--'But look at the rarity! the last one sold for so much.' And I am sorry to say, that this plea too frequently prevails. I have always turned a deaf ear to all attempts to induce me to acquire on any terms coins, which were not highly preserved, whatever their scarcity of occurrence might be. I preferred to examine them in other hands, or even to contemplate engravings derived from superior examples.

Let a person in my position lay down for himself this principle for his guidance:--My s.p.a.ce is limited; my means are the same; the material or means of supply, as time goes on, is infinite and inexhaustible; no collection in the universe is complete; therefore, incompleteness being a relative expression, I will take here and there, from this sale or that, from this or that place of business, just as many coins as serve to gratify my love of the beautiful, my reverence for great names, my curiosity to hold in my hand pieces of currency which, alike in the case of Greece and Rome, united with their monetary import and use symbols of an earnest religious faith and proud records of national achievements by sea and land.

To possess an even extensive a.s.semblage of such monuments I found in my own experience, and others may do the same, that a man has not to be quite a Croesus; nor in truth is it peremptory to insist in such extreme measure as I have on faultless beauty of state. I may have been too luxurious, too dainty. At any rate, all which contributes to render coins of all periods and kinds serviceable and agreeable is within the reach of individuals of very straitened purchasing powers. But it is necessary to guard against disproportion, which is very likely to arise in all sections from the occurrence of the products of _trouvailles_ in tempting condition at a modest tariff.

My recommendation is to avoid even the semblance of duplicates, where the sole difference is the date or the mint-mark, or possibly a slight variation in the legend. My natural sympathy is with the poorer collector, who has perchance to exercise a little self-denial to enable him to carry out successfully and profitably his hobby; the rich have only to buy and to pay; and those, who may choose to follow in my footsteps more or less, will soon discover, as I did, that to arrive at a satisfactory result under pecuniary disadvantages is a task demanding knowledge, discretion, and patience.

Of the pa.s.sions of the human mind that which directs us to a certain object or aim, if not to more than one, with irresistible vehemence, and holds us bound within its range as by a spell, is one of the strongest, most ancient, and most unreasoning. My own life during the past thirty or forty years, or in other words the best part of my career, has been mainly engrossed by the pursuit of two or three fancies; the serious business of existence seems to have been a secondary question; and the most substantial testimony to my earnestness of purpose and (I have to own) my thorough subjection to the influence of the taste, is to be found in my irresponsive surroundings and my sacrifice of other interests to what my less sentimental friends would call an _ignis fatuus_.

CHAPTER XV

Literary Direction given to My Numismatic Studies and Choice--The Wallenstein Thaler--The Good Caliph Haroun El Reschid--Some of the Twelve Peers of France who struck Money--Lorenzo de' Medici, called _The Magnificent_--Robert the Devil--Alfred the Great--Harold--The Empress Matilda--Marino Faliero--Ma.s.saniello--The Technist thinks poorly of Me--My Plea for the Human, Educating Interest in Coins--The Penny Box now and then makes a Real Collector--How I threw Myself _in Medias Res_--First Impressions of the Greek Series--My Difficulty in Apprehending Facts--Early Illusions gradually dissipated--What Const.i.tutes a Typical Greek and Roman Cabinet--And what renders Great Collections Great--Redundance in Certain Cases defended--Official Authorities except to My Treatment of the Subject--Tom Tidler's Ground--The Technical _versus_ the Vital and Substantial Interest in Coins--My Width of Sympathy Beneficial to Myself and likely to prove so to My Followers--Outline and Distribution of My Collection--Autotype Replicas and Forgeries--Romantic Evolution of Bactrian Coinage and History--Caution to My Fellow-Collectors against Excessive Prices for Greek Coins--Wait and Watch--Mr Hyman Montagu and His Roman Gold, and the Moral--The Best Coins not the Dearest--Our National Series--Its Susceptibility to Eclectic Treatment--A Whimsical Speculation--An Untechnical Method of Looking at a Coin--A Burst Bubble--The Continental Currencies--Their Clear Superiority of Interest and Instructive Power--The Writer's Att.i.tude toward Them.

My own sectional arrangement obeyed my doubtless peculiar training as a man of letters rather than a numismatist, and side by side with my peremptory instruction to myself as to quality I kept steadily in view the importance and charm, as it seemed to me, of comprising in my plan all those coins, which existed in the various series relating to celebrated historical personages and events. The dealers ignore this aspect of the question; they merely concern themselves with what is rare or common, dear or cheap. I negotiated a thaler of Wallenstein; the price was rather high; but I agreed to take it on account of the celebrity of the man. The vendor had never heard of him; he knew it only as an uncommon piece! You purchase a small gold coin of 'El Reschid'; the hand, which is held out to receive the money for it--not so much over the metal--is not conscious that it may have been actually through those of the striker, the hero of the _Arabian Nights_, nor forsooth does he care. No one will probably offer a s.h.i.+lling more for it for such a reason.

It may occur that an insignificant, ill-struck coin of base metal appertains to Milon of Narbonne, or Roland, nephew of Charlemagne and the Orlando of the poets, or to Richard of the Lion Heart; one examines its credentials, and yields it a place of honour. I obtained in a lot of Italian copper a small quattrino, as it is called, with _Lav. Medices Dux_ on one side and _Pisavr_ on the other: what was it but money issued in 1516--and that year alone--by Lorenzo de' Medici, called the _Magnificent_, as Duke of Pesaro? It may be equally predicated of Arthur of Bretagne, the possible prototype of the hero of Romance, Arthur of Little Britain, and of Robert of Normandy, called _Le Diable_, that their personal surpa.s.ses their numismatic distinction; for in the latter way they survive only in monuments of the poorest material, aspect, and style.

Nor is it very different with the coins of Alfred the Great, of Harold, who fell at Hastings, of Henry Beauclerc, of Stephen, of the Empress Matilda, in the English series, and with such continental celebrities as the hero-Doges of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, Marino Faliero, and Francesco Foscari; or as King Robert of Sicily, Gaston de Foix, Joanna of Naples, Ma.s.saniello.

Yet, on the contrary, there are splendid medallic evidences of others both in ancient and modern times; and it appears to redeem a cabinet from the imputation of being a portrait-gallery of Ill.u.s.trious Obscure, if we leaven its contents with the effigies of men and women, whose names are familiar to all fairly educated people.

This principle, then, collaterally influenced me in my selection, and made me anxious to omit no record of consequence ill.u.s.trating a historical individual or incident. I aimed at approximating to a collection of medals, as far as the Coin would permit. I also affected the earliest examples of each country, bearing a note of the year of issue and of the current value; and altogether my project became quite powerfully tinctured by my prepossessions and lessons as a book-student. I looked with comparative lukewarmth at the technical side, and I apprehend that I enjoy an indifferent repute among my more learned contemporaries, who pride themselves on their familiarity with mechanical and official details. All these points are excessively important and interesting in their way; and I have entered into them a good deal in my two numismatic publications. I was disposed in my private capacity to regard the human const.i.tuents of these remains of former ages; and I promise that it will repay the trouble of investigating the ill.u.s.trated works of reference, in default of possessing the objects themselves, by shewing how similar motives have swayed rulers and States from the outset in regulating the costume of their coinage, how they have habitually made it a political vehicle, and how the annals and fortunes of the country are to be read on its changing and varying face as in the pages of a volume.

It is the more to be lamented on that account, since it may not suit everybody to collect coins, that the pictorial feature in nearly all numismatic undertakings is the most imperfect and misleading and in the old-fas.h.i.+oned or cheap books amounts to little better than caricature. I grant that there is the proud l.u.s.t of owners.h.i.+p; but the discs of metal are of no real relevance outside the story, which they are able to tell us, if or when we are qualified to read it. All the rest, in a high sense, is but bullion, is it not?--and the criticism emphatically applies to heterogeneous a.s.semblages of obsolete currencies, formed without taste, and held without fruit.

This feeling, and the persuasion that the most extensive and long-established collections in the world are more or less incomplete, actuated me, so soon as I had graduated far enough to lay down regulations for my own use and to decide once for all on treating Condition as primary, and historical and personal interest as covetable _succeedanea_, which lightened and seasoned the rest.

Most of us have heard, among the famous Greeks and Romans, of Philip and Alexander of Macedon, Darius of Persia, Pyrrhus, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Augustus, Nero, and the Antonines; and it is customary for school-boys to explore the recesses of the penny box in shop or on stall in quest of pieces of bronze bearing the effigies of these ancient celebrities. School-boys have done this during centuries, and many of them have done nothing more. But here and there the child is father to the man, and the proprietor of a celebrated cabinet has it in his power to range over a life-long past wealthy in profitable and pleasant recollections, and to exhibit to his friends as a curiosity the humble piece, which first seduced him.

In the present case the pursuit dated from a maturer period, and I was debarred from such a privilege. I have learned much from coins; but I came to the study with a fair tincture of preparatory knowledge, and while I entertained becoming reverence for the great names of antiquity and of the Renaissance a.s.sociated with it, I was old enough to be aware how many other claims it had on our attention and regard.

I turned to the ancient Greek series, I recollect, with the vague impression that it consisted of objects, which appealed to all persons of taste--an impression, which had been experienced by thousands before me, and which is perhaps generally due to conversation with more erudite acquaintance rather than to books. Works of reference come later. They did so with me. I had overheard talk of the grandeur and charm of design, the antiquity, the familiar names and myths; and perhaps someone let me see one or two, which struck me as curious, or some engravings of the school, which preceded autotype and other allied processes.

The end of it was that I bought a few inexpensive examples of Lincoln, and afterward, when it came to the turn of the Roman money, I was attracted by the beauty and cheapness of the Family or Consular series and by the ease, with which the second and third bra.s.s were obtainable. But it demanded a longer time than I care to own to enable me to perceive the affinity between the republican silver _denarii_ and the productions of the professedly h.e.l.lenic school. If I had mingled with collectors, or consulted books or experts, I should have learned far more quickly and perfectly my self-set lesson. But I have never been gregarious or clubable; and I pursued my own way with the result that I committed an abundance of mistakes, yet not half so many as I deserved from my unbending persistence in depending on my personal researches and judgment.

This dogged opinionativeness and hard tone of mind have proved disadvantageous through life. I quitted school much more ignorant, I dare say, than I needed to have done, because it was not my cue or bent to comprehend what the teachers delivered, or to relish the methods, which they pursued; and the single point, which I brought away from my attendance at a twelve months' course of lectures on Law and Jurisprudence at the Inner Temple, was the persuasion that in a particular line of argument, in which I happened to follow the lecturer, he was wrong. I hold a very kind note from Dr Phillimore, thanking me for my correction.

One of my numismatic illusions was the uniform low rate, at which the Roman consular _denarii_ and other coins of that cla.s.s, as well as the imperial currencies, could be secured in course of time. I soon found that a piece had only to be rare, or in gold, or rather exquisitely patinated, to stand out in high relief, and make a serious inroad on one's resources.

I have been fairly watchful and enterprising during the best part of twenty years, and my Greek and Roman collections still await several clear _desiderata_, not because those _desiderata_ are scarce and expensive, but because they are typical. I possess about 400 pieces, perhaps, in all metals; five-and-twenty more would render my two series substantially representative. I shall get what I want by waiting. What I have suffices meanwhile to gratify my sense of that artistic and ideal genius, for which my elders had prepared me, so far as the Greek and Roman consular go, and my feeling for all that Rome has left behind it in grand personalities, splendid achievement, and records of thought and custom.

It cannot be fruitless or irrelevant to repeat that the magnitude of the most famous collections is chiefly owing to the presence of numberless varieties and sub-varieties of coins--even of unimportant ones. A man makes a principle of acc.u.mulating every year of the bronze money of the present reign, or farthings of every conceivable description, or maundy money. _Cui bono?_ This is a course of policy which should be reserved for the public inst.i.tution and the numismatic chronicler. I have a gold _stater_, perhaps of Philip of Macedon, an electrum one of Cyzicus or Lampsacus, a silver tetradrachm of Alexander the Great, and another of the Athenian Republic; I do not covet all the more or less slightly variant examples, which may exist. It is different, where the coin is remarkable in itself, and the type is distinct, as, for instance, in the contemporary and posthumous money of Alexander of Macedon, in the progressive improvement in the currency of Athens, in the specimens of Syracusan medallic art, which shew the stages, through which it pa.s.sed; and in the pieces, which have preserved to us the likeness of such celebrities as Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and which vary in certain physiognomical details. Here there is a more or less intelligible plea for repet.i.tion or redundancy. But in avoiding the admittance of practical duplicates I flatter myself that I have avoided a troublesome and costly error, which punishes you in two ways--when you acquire and when you realise. I have sometimes speculated why it is that _I_, for one, shut up books on coins after a short consultation and turn to the things themselves--the tangible realities. There must be somehow a cross with the magpie in one's blood. The only kind of publication of a numismatic complexion, which strikes me as endurable, is that which is written on sympathetic lines, in a broadly appreciative temper and spirit. The dry calendars compiled by official experts, and the catalogues of auctions, are hard reading. They are mere lexicons or printed transfers.

Yet when I endeavoured to follow in the footsteps of one or two earlier writers, who gave wise prominence (as I thought) to the human and living interest resident in coins of all ages and countries in former times, I was reproved by the learned as too _literary_ in my style, although in my larger book I afforded ample scope to the technical aspect of the question, and merely a.s.serted my view by making it an independent section in distinct type. But the true cause of offence or disagreement was and is my presumption as a layman in trespa.s.sing on the preserves of Tom Tiddler.

It has been objected to my unusual width of range that it precludes full justice, as it is the fas.h.i.+on to call it, to any of the series. The reply to this, however, is obvious, and has already in fact been given. Unless a private cabinet is formed with a special eye to the official study of a group of coins or of the monetary products of a region, the object should be, not exhaustive treatment, which in the first place is impossible, but eclectic, which tends to familiarise the holder with the policy and progress of all nationalities in all parts of the globe from time to time in rendering _media_ of exchange objects of interest, instruction and beauty, as well as of use.

A man emerges from the latter plan with a clearer and broader appreciation of the subject and its manifold bearings than he does, if he draws the line at a country, at a period, or at a type. It may be a just source of pride to be able to say that you are the existing repository of so many examples or varieties, of which no one else can boast the owners.h.i.+p; but, looking at the ultimate aim, it is not clear where the solid advantage lies.

My appurtenances in this direction embrace: 1. Greek and Roman; 2.

Continental; 3. English and Scotish; 4. American; 5. Oriental. The last-named occupy a s.p.a.ce proportionate to the narrowness of their appeal to my sympathy. The money of the ancients, more especially that of Greece, when one casts one's eyes on its portraiture, symbols, legends, fabric, and costume, I treasure as everlastingly impressive testimony to the force of soil, climate, and social and religious conditions, and as the basis of every essay of any pretensions in collecting. The difficulties and dangers are unusually great, as the disparities of estimated value are great; and the liability to error and deception are manifold. The wholesale official system at home of multiplying autotype copies of rare and valuable pieces originated in a sound idea; but has been carried too far, and forms an inducement to impose reproductions on inexperienced persons already perplexed by encountering casts and other forgeries; and then, again, the Greek and Roman series are a constant mark for the ingenious foreigner, who has busied himself, as we have all heard, ever so long since in fabricating for enthusiastic admirers of the antique the almost unfailing _lacunae_ in their cabinets. Some cla.s.ses of coins are more subject to falsification than others. The Athenian gold and the Bactrian silver are very favourite game for the Gentile, the Jew, and the Mahometan alike.

They forget their religious antagonism in a fraternal community of aim.

I have referred to the Bactrian coinage as having been extensively forged.

But there has strangely acc.u.mulated, since those days, when the surviving number was almost computable on the fingers, a vast chronological monument, disclosing to our eyes a marvellous Oriental legend of mighty rulers and long, prosperous reigns, coins their only historians. I was favoured by the Museum authorities with an early glance at the magnificent purchase from General Cunningham of his Bactrian numismatic collection for 3000, by virtue of a special parliamentary grant; and this has at once placed our national cabinet in a most satisfactory and enviable position in this respect.

Of the money of upward of thirty kings of this region--the ancient Affghanistan--the silver is now copiously represented, but not so the gold or the copper. I tell the story of the 20-_stater_ piece, in the most precious metal, of Eukratides, King of Bactria, in my _Coin-Collector_. Of the copper or bronze I have long owned a very beautiful example, probably of Heliocles; in _my_ state these latter productions are peculiarly rare.

Never was such a case of Time drawing Truth out of a well; and we have not reached the end of the matter yet. There will be further discoveries.

Here is a conspicuous instance of the peril attendant on giving extravagant prices for coins of supposed rarity. There are among the Bactrians silver tetradrachms and smaller denominations, which can be bought for fewer s.h.i.+llings than they once commanded sovereigns. My obolos of Demetrius, for example, cost 15s.; it is valued by Mionnet at 16. But you must exercise particular caution in this direction for the reason, which I have a.s.signed. I shall be entirely satisfied, if I succeed in procuring a selection affording a competent idea of the prevailing character and costume of the whole, of which the earlier reigns are immeasurably the more desirable; a complete sequence is out of the question; even the British Museum under the most favourable conditions does not possess it--perhaps never will.

I really think that with the poorer coin-collector it is the same as with his a.n.a.logue in the book market. The most beautiful and most interesting objects in the Greek and Roman coinages are well within his means of attainment, if he chooses to wait and watch, provided that he cares to do what the present deponent did, do his best to eke out his deficiency of resources with acquired knowledge and discrimination. In that case he may rise one morning the owner of an a.s.semblage of these delightful and educating remains, and may ask himself the question, in what manner and degree it differs from those most famous and most frequently quoted in our numismatic records. He will find that what he lacks in common with all, who have not bottomless purses, are just the rare denominations or values, or types, of which he may probably possess examples substantially identical--perhaps in superior condition.

Take the Roman gold of the late Mr Hyman Montagu. That gentleman suddenly conceived it to be his mission to become master, not merely of all the really interesting coins in that metal and series; but it was peremptory that he should outdo everybody else, and be able to proclaim that he had every gold piece struck by every obscure and insignificant ruler down to the fall of the empire; and I believe that he was gratified. He could plead nothing for his project beyond its completeness; and that very feature was its weak point. Think how infinitely preferable it is to select the best; they are to be had at moderate prices; they appeal to everyone, who has a fair degree of culture; and they occupy less room. The rarities are usually of poor work and fabric as well as of princes, who reigned just long enough to stamp their names and effigies on a circular disc of gold. Mr Montagu, however, felt bound to draw a broad line of distinction between humbler aspirants and himself; and he erected this monument to his memory.

It is much the same thing with the Greek in all its varieties and ramifications, of which, no less than of the Roman, I furnish a comprehensive sketch in my _Coin-Collector_. The money of ephemeral rulers and governments, or high and unusual denominations, like the Syracusan medallion or 10-drachma piece form the trying part and aspect of an undertaking. I soon discovered that I could command even with a slender purchasing power all that was essential to enable me to comprehend the monetary story of the most remarkable, and one of the greatest, empires of the ancient world. When I turned over the pages of the Carfrae, Ashburnham, Montagu and Bunbury catalogues, it was easy to perceive how these grand collections a.s.sumed such bewildering and fatiguing proportions; and I saw to my surprise that, rather than forego a particular item, condition was often waived.

I thought that I discerned, for private connoisseurs as distinguished from great inst.i.tutions like the British Museum, a radical error of judgment and policy here, and I congratulate myself on having avoided it.

Condition, on which I shall have something more to say by-and-by, I could and can understand; and as I have never regretted losing a dear coin, I have never regretted letting a poor one pa.s.s. But I have seen with complacency my rich friends s.n.a.t.c.h out of my hands some things, which I should have been content to have at my estimate; and if I am patient they will fall to me another day. I take what comes, and am thankful. At one of the numerous Montagu sales a piece realised 2, 10s. I dare say that it pa.s.sed through one or two hands; but it became mine at last for half-a-sovereign.

I must change the scene. I was never led away in respect to the money of the United Kingdom, not even by patriotism, so far as to find funds and accommodation for every const.i.tuent part of every series within these lines. If I were not an Englishman, I should declare unreservedly that a less interesting, more monotonous, and worse executed body of material than the coinages of England, Scotland, Ireland, and their dependencies, with certain emphatic exceptions, does not exist. It has asked all my loyalty to overcome an instinctive repugnance to the uncouth abortions struck as currency by our British, Anglo-Saxon, and many of our Anglo-Norman, progenitors. You may contemplate the entire gallery and succession in numismatic books, with autotype reproductions of these caricatures. A heavy proportion of them are barbarous and feeble imitations of Greek, Roman, and mediaeval patterns. Perhaps in art and style they resemble most closely the Gaulish and Visigothic series. If we reserve one or two types of Offa of Mercia and Alfred the Great, the commonest are the best, because they were struck under the authority of sovereigns, whose power was established. I put to myself the question at a very early stage, how many representatives was it necessary for me to a.s.semble before me of these cla.s.ses or schools of production? The answer is readable in the presence of fifty or sixty Britons, Saxons, Danes, and Normans; and I have no courage to swell their ranks. When I look at them, I can find nothing to justify the cost of their maintenance but the weak little sentiment, that these pieces of gold, silver, copper, or tin pa.s.sed from hand to hand, when the part, where I am a dweller, was a dark, swampy forest, with a few squalid huts dotted here and there, and that one or two of these bits of money may have been in the pouch of Cymbeline, or Krause (_vulgo_ Carausius) or Alfred. In fact, I have a silver penny of the royal Cake-Burner, which weighs two grains more than any other known; it was Colonel Murchison's; but possibly it had previously belonged to the king himself!

Seriously speaking, our native currencies acquired their value and rank only, when the French and Low Country types began to attract notice and emulation; and I should be satisfied with drawing the line at Edward III.

as a commencing point and at Anne as a finis.h.i.+ng one. The view is by no means original; I have met with several, who averted their eyes from the peculiarly humble and uncouth beginnings of the British people in this way; and the late Mr Montagu parted long before his death, on the ground of their dearth of interest, with the whole of his Hanoverian collections.

Between these extremities there is undeniably a rich field for choice.

Numismatists have always, I apprehend, regarded me as a heretic, for the simple reason that I attached, in the absence of some specific ground, no importance to mint-marks or to minor differences. I have accustomed myself to take a coin in my hand, and estimate it on its merits. I am able to see what ruler or State it represents, its period, its style, its value. It may bear on its face a striking portrait of some ill.u.s.trious personage--a potent sovereign, a distinguished soldier, a great lady--of whom the lineaments are nowhere else extant. It may be money of necessity, narrating to us, as fully as it can, a tragic or a n.o.ble story. It may be the first piece which was struck by a famous individual or place, or the last--perchance out of church or college plate with the original border of a dish remaining to commemorate a crisis. All these and other similar characteristics are broad and clear. But I have always been impatient of the stress laid by experts on an inverted letter in the legend, an added or omitted dot, or some such fantastic and puerile refinement.

These _minutiae_ do not const.i.tute the primary use and significance of the coin as a source of study and instruction. A cabinet formed on a practical principle yields the best and most lasting fruit. You have only to scan the pages of the numberless printed works of reference to become aware that in the English and Scotish series the slight variations among products of the same issue are interminable, and individuals are found to enter with avidity and at a lavish outlay into such trivialities. Not I.

From the remotest period of our own history we have coined in England itself only seventy denominations in all metals; and I computed in my _Coin-Collector_ that about 1530 pieces would substantially represent all the different reigns and clearly distinct types of the United Kingdom, not including the Anglo-Gallic money which is not very voluminous.

Whatever may be thought of the practice of acquiring virtual duplicates in the more ancient currencies, its extension to the Georgian and Victorian eras is absolutely unreasoning and futile. There is no plea for it on the score of art, history, or curiosity. It is only the other day, that patterns and proofs of George III. and IV., William IV. and her present Majesty were carried to prices, which would have secured in the aggregate some of the finest and costliest examples of Greek workmans.h.i.+p or the great rarities and _desiderata_ in the English series itself--the Oxford and Pet.i.tion crowns, the florin of Edward III., the triple sovereign of Edward VI., or even the half George n.o.ble of Henry VIII. But the bladder has been p.r.i.c.ked, and the nonsensical craze has visibly subsided. It had its rise, no doubt, in compet.i.tion among two or three wealthy, but poorly informed, gentlemen, who soon grew tired of a desperately expensive and foolish amus.e.m.e.nt. Naturally the artificial quotations brought to light h.o.a.rded specimens; and supply and demand changed places.