Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

artefacts can be expressive of character, social status and, indeed, morality and that Britton has
made a self-conscious decision to deploy them to such effect.
Figure 58 John Britton, mezzotint after John Wood, 1845
For some antiquaries, even those who were, unlike Lingard, collectors, the popular image
of their natural habitat could be an irritant. Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s breathless account of
Francis Douce’s rooms no doubt captures something of Douce’s spectacular collection but owes
as much to literary and artistic conventions as to observation.
It will delight you, I am sure, to hear that Prospero is yet in the full exercise of his ‘enchanter’s wand’…His maplewood
bookcases rejoice the eye by the peculiar harmony of their tint, -with the rich furniture they enclose. Here a bit
of old bright stained glass –exhibiting the true long-lost ruby tint: -there, an inkstand, adorned in high cameo-relief,
by the skill of John of Bologna…the rarest China cups… chess-men…used by Charles V and Francis I on their
dining together… the very staff with which Regiomontanus used to walk on his house-top by moonlight… Magic
lore, and choice Madrigals…and the parchment roll which Handel wielded in beating time on the first representation
of the Messiah. 24
Apart from the maple-wood instead of the more usual oak this is a by-now familiar
agglomeration, with old and new, the intrinsically valuable, the associationally interesting and
the figure of the antiquary-as-wizard all combined in splendid chaos. So typical is it that it comes
24 Dibdin, Bibliophobia, p.45.
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