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

Their infinite variety. 130
It conjures up a vision perhaps more touching than Britton intended, this apostrophe in which the
writings and the portrait are given equal weight and sentience, as presiding gods in the Burton
Street household, the bust receiving in its plaster ear the confidences of the aging and in some
respects disappointed antiquary.
The Shakespeare Appendix guilelessly weaves Britton’s own life into his subject through
accounts of his various expeditions to Stratford-on-Avon and his, mostly unsuccessful,
Shakespearean ventures, starting with his earliest tour of England when, as a young man, he
sought to acquaint himself with the notable sights. At Stratford:
It is true that I saw the outside and the inside of the house in Henley Street (then a real butcher’s-shop) –the Church-
the Bust- and other popular objects; but I was young, and alone, -was uninformed, and had not a friendly and
enlightened prompter to give the “the cue” to inquiry and remark. 131
The lonely young man was replaced some years later by the flourishing and slightly less likeable
antiquary who had ‘associated with actors and authors, and had written on Topography,
Antiquities, Criticism and Fine Arts’, and who returned to Stratford, like Shakespeare himself,
crowned with laurels. 132 Britton’s account of his altered view on this second visit is an apologia
for that romantic antiquarianism which, while it opens up the past through knowledge, also
heightens the sensibility in the present, enabling it to enter into a deeper subjective relationship
with the material remains of history. Not only had his eyes had ‘the film removed from them’ but
‘the heart had acquired new powers of susceptibility and sympathy, and the objects which only a
few years before had been seen with comparative apathy, were now invested with meaning,
beauty, and interest’. 133
Britton’s several engagements with Shakespeare included a biography, which he
contributed to a cheap popular edition of the plays published in 1814 and enlarged four years
130 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p. 5.
131 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p.36.
132 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p.37.
133 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p.37.
263