DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1041#0128
successors.
History of the Society of Dilettanti in
leaving a name to be battened upon by literary and
historical scandal-mongers. With all his vices, he
was a man of unquestionable ability, and a true
and industrious servant of his sovereign and his
country. The last survivor among the original
members was William Ponsonby, Earl of Bessborough,
who did not quit the scene until 1793.
The leading place which had at first been held in New sprit
the councils of the Society by such men as these was amows the'r
gradually assumed by successors of a somewhat
different stamp. The first Dilettanti had been
a company of gay and brilliant carousers, animated
both by the passion and the fashion for art, but
professing no special knowledge of their own. They
wrote no essays and delivered no oracular opinions
upon the subjects in which they took a common
interest. What they did was to select the best men
they could to carry out the work they desired to see
accomplished, and in most instances to testify to their
sense of the workers' merits by electing them in due
course members of the Society—a highly coveted
social distinction. The work done, they presented
it to the world at large in as handsome and complete
a form as they could, displaying thereby not only
their true enthusiasm for the subject, but a generous
and honourable public spirit. But from the beginning
of the period on which we are now entering (about
1780-1820) the guiding spirits of the Society were
chiefly drawn from the special group of cultivated
amateurs whose accession to their ranks has just been
mentioned. Some of these gentlemen were not
content to be merely patrons and collectors, but
must needs take the tone of savants and professors.
To their minds the pursuit of antiquarian knowledge
was a perquisite of wealth and influential position,
History of the Society of Dilettanti in
leaving a name to be battened upon by literary and
historical scandal-mongers. With all his vices, he
was a man of unquestionable ability, and a true
and industrious servant of his sovereign and his
country. The last survivor among the original
members was William Ponsonby, Earl of Bessborough,
who did not quit the scene until 1793.
The leading place which had at first been held in New sprit
the councils of the Society by such men as these was amows the'r
gradually assumed by successors of a somewhat
different stamp. The first Dilettanti had been
a company of gay and brilliant carousers, animated
both by the passion and the fashion for art, but
professing no special knowledge of their own. They
wrote no essays and delivered no oracular opinions
upon the subjects in which they took a common
interest. What they did was to select the best men
they could to carry out the work they desired to see
accomplished, and in most instances to testify to their
sense of the workers' merits by electing them in due
course members of the Society—a highly coveted
social distinction. The work done, they presented
it to the world at large in as handsome and complete
a form as they could, displaying thereby not only
their true enthusiasm for the subject, but a generous
and honourable public spirit. But from the beginning
of the period on which we are now entering (about
1780-1820) the guiding spirits of the Society were
chiefly drawn from the special group of cultivated
amateurs whose accession to their ranks has just been
mentioned. Some of these gentlemen were not
content to be merely patrons and collectors, but
must needs take the tone of savants and professors.
To their minds the pursuit of antiquarian knowledge
was a perquisite of wealth and influential position,