The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE
worthiness, he would like to be able to justify it to himself.
This I have quite failed to do, except in so far as, by the
mere accident of seniority, I happen to represent, however
unworthily, the honourable traditions of the Department of
Coins and Medals in the British Museum. It is of that
Department then that I must speak.
have been of all sorts.
Its officials, doubtless,
" There be of them that have left
a name behind them, to declare their praises. And some
there be, which have no memorial, who are perished as
though they had not been, and are become as though they
had not been born." But even those who are forgotten
have probably left their mark, though its origin may be
now unrecognized, on the body of tradition and on the
accumulated mass of work which has been turned out
by the Department since it was first organized. When I
first entered the Museum, after a brief initiation into the
mysteries of Greek numismatics by an old official of the
Medal Koom, Professor Percy Gardner, Stuart Poole had
just retired, and Barclay Head had succeeded him as Keeper.
It is perhaps difficult for one who has been closely associated
with such an attractive personality as Head's to view his
services to scholarship in true perspective ; but I do not
think I am exaggerating when I say that his work had
something of the classic quality. By that I mean that as
time goes on, although you may discover that he was mis-
taken in this or that detail, or even in something more than
a detail, even in some view of considerable import, yet his
method was so sound, his judgement so sane, and his
thought so clear, that you learn more from his rare mis-
takes than from the uninspired accuracy of a hundred other
men. It was a fine thing for any young man to start his official
career under Head. It is possible that the inception of the
Catalogue of Greek Coins was due to Poole ;
but it was the
work of Head and Gardner that raised it to the position
which it won at the very front of all undertakings connected