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

John Britton’s Penates
Figure 49 Walter Scott at Shakespeare's Tomb, possibly by William Allan
John Britton was neither urbane nor disingenuous enough to make any secret of his
passionate desire to attach himself personally to Shakespeare. The Bullock cast appears in the
background of his portrait and in the Appendix on the poet in the Autobiography he includes ‘A
Farewell Tribute to the Memory of Shakspere’ in which he announces that the poet’s reputation
is unchanging, like ‘the tides of the sea, or the alternation of the seasons’. 129 Britton’s undoubted
enthusiasm for poetry was not matched by his judgement either as a writer or as a critic and it is
typical of him to have chosen as images of permanence two natural phenomena that are
characterised by cyclical change. It was as an antiquary and an autodidact anxious to escape his
origins and enter the world of learning that he loved and cared for Shakespeare, whom he seems
to have experienced as an almost supernatural presence:
My penates are the Writings and the Bust of Shakspere –both of which I often contemplate and admire with honest
devotion; for the latter has my confidence, whilst the former have a Divinity within them which is devoid of all
sectarianism, and independent alike of climate, country or creed.
Time cannot wither them, nor custom stale
129 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p.5
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