THE E S.D. OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 3130, 9 December 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE E S.D. OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

(Tit-Bits.) Wint is tha value of the national collection h'm.-.rt within the stately building m Great I'i.ttll Street? Scientifically, the answer wi uM not be difficult—incalculable. Materially, however, it is different! but few people have any more idea of the worth of any of the objects than had the millionaire whose action indirectly inspired the discovery of the facts which form the subject of this article. "Mada my pile m Klondyke, and 1 reckon I'm quit," he said to the writer, from which remark the reader will readily assume he was an American. "I'm having a house built, and T have con?; to Europe to get' some things to furnish it. I don't want many things, you kn:w. bu: what I have I must have good. A fs-.v gooil bjoks, a few good autographs, a fiiw gco',l engravings, for a picture gallery will cj:ne too hign for me, and some of those ii;th curios, a few pots and vases, ant! suchlike things that make a house look nic i'he h'tst thing I want is a Bible, but it rnu-t h; something really fine." fco off we ..cnt to the reading-room of the British Museum, that great round room, surrounded with forty miles of shelves on which repose books whose number no mortal man has ever counted, but which a conservative estimate places at something over two millions, and which is growing at the rate of about a tenth of a million volumes every year. " How much is a Bible?" said the millionaire. " Here is a copy of Ceverdale's Biblo, price £1000." The millionaire looked at me; perhaps I misinterpreted his look. f(fi' I hastened to inform him that he could have something better still. " Here is THE MAZAIHX BIBLE. : This copy, if you are lucky, you may buy elsewhere at £4000, but if you a re not lucky you may have to pay £5000, a sum which indeed was given not very long ago for one of these rare books." " Anything dearer still?" asked the millionaire, laconically, and the astonishment had not gone out of his tone. " Yes, there's something more expensive still m the way of Bibles. It's one of the three or four most expensive books m the world, and probably the most valuable single object m the whole Museum. It's the Codex Akxandrinus, a manuscript Bible which dates back to the fifth century ; and if it were put up to auction — which it never could be, for anything once m the Museum remains there — would fetch " "What?" asked the millionaire. " Half a million, certainly, perhaps a million, perhaps a million and a half. No one can tell, but even you would be a much poorer man than you are if you could buy it." "Dollars?" gasped the millionaire. "Pounds sterling," I replied. " That's too rich for my blood," exclaimed the millionaire. " And what about a Prayer Book?" "The first Prayer Book of Edward VI. would cost £150, and a Psalter, if you fancy the Mainz Psalter, the second book known to. have been printed with a date, will run you into £3000 ; while ' the fifteen Oas aijd other prayer? " -fill cost another £1200 jLo £1500." • ; , " I irhould like to have a good ' Shakspere,' if I could afford it," said the millionaire, hazily. "A" first folio will cost you £800 for, a fair copy, though you may get something net q>)ifl; &> good for half that sum. If you Wriiit. something really fine, however, you n:\irt bj p'C'i'arod to put up £1500." "I Uiir.-k I will take a quarto," said the millionaire. "How much?" "From £20 to £500, according to their condition, and the Museum has each play m quarto, which you might, if you ware lucky, get for £200 each, so that a great hole might be made m £10,000 for Shakspero'a plays alone." THB MILLIONAIRK WU'EI) HIS FORKHKAIK and looked around him at the library. "If I were to buy book* at this rate I should not be able to buy bread m a very little while. I promised my little daughter ' Fables,' and my little son ' Robinson Crusoe,' How much?" * : F...r ihs former £1000 and £100 for the later." I rop'.ird. ■ " And what rbout Dickens and Thackeray and Soil? Wh;»t must I pay for them?" " Pic'.ovick,' £30; ' Sketches by Boz,' neariv es ipvc '• ; and £3 each for ' DaVid O^peifiel ■•' ' M.i:t:n Chuzzlewit,' ' Nicholas Nickleby.' ' JLister Humphrey's Clock,' and so on. "'Vanity Fair' will cost you £20; ' Floreat Zephyr ' from £56 to £90, while the others will average, say, £4 each. As for Scott, the first edition of ' Waverley ' will C(.*t £78, but a very good edition iniiy be bought for £5 a volume. But modem books are cheap, except m the case of such men as Mr Kipling, for whose ' Schoolboy Lyrics ' only the other day £130 was paid, and the books from the Kelmscott Press, which would cost £500 to £600. " If you really want something expensive m the way of books you should buy those that were printed by Caxton, m which tli« Museum is very rich, having practically duplicates of the sixty which it possesses. ' The (lame and Play of Chess,' which was for long supposed to be the first book printed m England, is worth at least £1000, and so is 'The Life of Our Lady,' by John Lydgate; Tvhi'e ' The Recueil des Histories ' stands at the top of the list, being worth £2000. Averaging them at only £500, which is considerably below the mark, it would need £60,000 to get the Museum collection." '" I think we'll leave them where they are," said the millionaire, and we went to look at manuscripts. " What is the most expensive of the let?" he ;isked, when we stood m TIIK MANISCKII'T-HOOM. " 'The Bedford Book of Hours,' which is worth at least £10,000, but illuminated manuscripts fetch anything up to £700. and even more, and manuscripts of C'fesar or Cicero, of the tenth century, are worth £400 to £500 ; but all classical manuscripts have fallen m value compared with what they used to be. The manuscript department, too, is rich, for it contains no fewer than 48,000 volumes, 6-5,000 charters and ; rolls- which each are worth from £1 for j an ordinary- specimen to £100 for a special one — 15,000 detached ' seals and casts of seals,' and 800 Greek and Latin papyri." "Autographs?" said the millionaire, as lit; j looked at the collection on tho table. " How ' much for that?" IU- pointed to the gem of the collection -trip writing i>f William Sbakspere. the greatest name m the literature of the world. " There are very few extant," I said, " and thin would fetch perhaps £1000." 'I Ik- :ji ll'f/iia're whistled, ;ir>d pointed to the plan oi tin; Battle of the Nile m Nel- £•>:.'.-■ vr:ti;:!£. "O"io i.iiTiihvd and fifty pounds," I *aid, " hv.l a hr.rr way retell' £200." The milILiuire poiuiei. to those that interested ,

ILiuire poiuiei. to those tli.-it interested

. - — j him, and I answered him m money according to the value of the auction, rooms. • Heniy VIII., and Elizabeth, and Charles 1., from £10 to £50 apiece. Those letters of Shelley and Swift, £50 each to £60. Thackeray" and Dickens, about £14 each ; Hofarth, Gainsborough, and Reynoius, £40 to £50 each ; Cardinal Wolsey, £100. " Magna Charta!" he exclaimed. I shook my head. "£IO,OOO, £50,000, £100,000, all the money m your purse, for it's priceless," and we passed on> to THK PRINT COIXiKCTION, to look at the Rembrandts, of which the Museum boasts, perhaps, the finest collection m the world. There are something like. 300 of them on exhibition. " That is the most valuable of them all," and I pointed to the portrait of Arnold Tholinx, one specimen of which has been sold for over £1500. " ' Christ Healing the Sick,' " he exclaimed, pointing to the engraving which everybody knows. "One thousand three hundred pounds; the 'Christ before Pilate,' £1150; and the portrait of Kphraim Bonus, the Jewish physician, £1000. For something like a complete collection of the engravings of this artist you will need to spend not less than £100,000. After Rembrandt, probably Albiecht Durer takes second place m the list of values, his ' St Jerome m his Chamber costing from £400 to £600 ; the • Knight and Death,' about £400; while among mezzotints, Wheatley's ' Cries of London ' is worth £850, and a first state of the Ladies Waldegrave, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, m fine condition, is worth £1000." " And how many engravings might there be up here?" "At least a quarter of a million, I replied, as we passed out. "I am fond of collecting coins, exclaimed the millionaire. I smiled, and led the way to the coinroom. ... "That is the most expensive coin m tne , world," and I pointed to the medal which Charles I. gave to Bishop Juxton on the morning of his execution. "It cost £700 only a short time ago." We went over to a case by a. window. I indicated a silver crown. " Five hundred for that, It's the Petition Crown, and derives its name from the fact that is was submitted by Thomas Simon to Charles 11. as better work than that which was being produced by the man who was m charge of the Mint, 'and he petitioned to be restored to that office, which he had held under Cromwell. Next to these, THK MOST KXr-KSSIVE COIXS are Greek silver and Roman gold, for which it is quite a common thing to pay front £50 to £100, although they may run up to £400, or even £500, while English coins will run up to as much as £100 each. The metal of which a coin is composed has nothing to do with determining its value. It would be difficult for anyone to price the value of this single- collection, but as it contain? at least a quarter of a million specimens, it is certainly worth several millions at least. But anyone mighc easily «pend a hundred thousand pounds on Greek, Roman and English coins, and yet get nothing like a complete collection ; while every schoolboy m the land would have to possess a similar sum to procure a facsimile of the collection of stamps which is owned by the Museum." As we left the coin room my friend turned aside for a few moments to look at some of the choice objects of art, among the Greek and Roman antiquities, and first sought out the famous cameo which was purchased from the Marlborough collection only a short time ago for £3300. " Not my money," said the millionaire. " Perhaps not," I replied, " but another millionaire was willing to go as high as £7000 a few days before the sale for it, but afterwards decided not to pay for it. There are only two larger ones m the world, one m Vienna and one m Paris." "I'd like to have one of those terra-cotta vases," he said. " You might for £400 or £500, if you could get one m the open market ; the Museum is so rich m these, that four volumes of catalogues are necessary to contain their record." In the middle of the next room he paused m front of the famous bronze head. " When it was bought m 1873, it was said to cost £6000," I volunteered. " And this head of Sleep, with wings rising from the temple, is one of the iinest m the world, and is worth at least £5000." We turned to another case, and I pointed out THE BRON'ZKS OF SIRIS, two little bits of metal between 6in a.nd 7in high, which are now- worth about £4000, SO exquisitely are they wrought, while what they would fetch were they m a perfect condition no connoisseur would venture to say. My friend desired to see .some statues. We passed down the grand staircase, and going through the gallery immediately on the left of the entrance, paused m front of the bust of Caesar. " Only £500 or £600/ I said. " How much for the lot m here?" be asked. "Say £50,000, and you get a bargain," I replied. Then he came to the Elgin Marbles, arid he stood amazed. " The Government paid Lord Elgiu £35,000 for all the sculptures of the Parthenon m 1816, but the single figure of Theseus would fetch at at least £100,000 were it put up for sale to-day," I said. " What would all the Elgiu Marbles be worth?" he asked. " I asked that question once, and the answer I got was, ' Sell up all the other museums m Europe, and still you will not have enough money.' " As we went back we paused for a moment m the gallery, of ancient antiquities, and stopped before the Rosetta stone, the key by which so many locks of the ancient wond were opened. : " That was got at the price of much human blood m Egypt m 1822, but nothing less than a quarter of a. million would buy! it now." We turned to the three great Assyrian bulls, and the lion. " Two hundred thousand apiece," I volunteered, and presently we stood at the great black basalt sarcophagus of Nectanebus. ! " I'd like to have that for a bath," he said. i " You'd have the most expensive m the world," I answered, " for it is worth £50,000. If, however, you prefer a less splendid specimen, here is the sarcophagus of Ankhnesneferabra, which is only worth a trifle— £ls,ooo." " I call this an expensive room," said my friend. " Let's go and see some mummies. I'd like to buy that ! MUMMY OK CLKOI'ATRA, [ have heard so much about." "You can easily, for it's not the great Cleopatra, but a Roman lady who lived m Egypt, ajnd she is only worth £100. , If you want something more choice, go through this door and look at the mummy of Menkauran, whom the Greeks call Mykerinos, a king of the fourth dynasty who built the third pyramid at Gizeh, and who lived about B.C. 3633." '' " That thing !" said the millionaire, contemptuously. " Why, it's sill falling to pieces." '' Very likely," I replied, " but it's falling to pieces to the tune of £75,000, and that skeleton over there of Herl, an official who lived about 1000 years later, whose bones have been treated with bitumen to preserve them, is worth about as much." • I had no notion this place was so valuable," said the millionaire. " No more do most people," I replied ; " and remember, you haven't seen a thousandth part of the things that are hero, and you haven't looked at the historical cylinders of the Assyrian Kings, which ;ire probably wnrtli something like £25,000 apiece." A typewriter for pJiortiliand that has lately b"<*n invented has only six keys. The type or chanicUM-s are dots and da-shes, and by ringing the changes on these it is possible to make a long alphabet. The keys can be worked simultaneously, the lines !x.'(fin and end automatically, "and a> long roll of paper can be used. It is claimed that n-itii the help of this machine shorthand can be written at a very great speed. ■ ,