NOTE..

This Catalogue describes the printed books (over 18,000 volumes), part of the collection bequeathed to the Department of Science and Art by John Forster Esq., LL.D.

Another volume, containing a catalogue of the remainder of the bequest-manuscripts and autograph letters, paintings and other works of art, and modern pamphlets-will appear hereafter.

Mr. Forster died in 1876, and Mrs. Forster having generously signified her intention not to avail herself of the power of reservation given to her by her husband's will, the bequest came into the possession of the South Kensington Museum in 1876-7.

In the Handbook of the Dyce and Forster Collections will be found a popular sketch of both bequests, with descriptions of many of the most remarkable pictures, prints, books, manuscripts, &c., illustrated by engravings and fac-similes.

JOHN FORSTER.

In the midst of his many services to literature Professor Henry Morley, in compliance with the request of the authorities of the South Kensington Museum, contributed to the Handbook of the Dyce and Forster Collections an excellent summary of Mr. Forster's Life, which, like the sketch of Mr. Dyce's Life by Mr. Forster, was intended for those who desired to learn something beyond general notoriety of the benefactor to whom they owed the bequest. It would be idle to recapitulate facts which are accessible to everyone, but, following the thread of Professor Morley's narrative, it may not be out of place to prefix to the Catalogue of the Forster Library a brief supplementary account of the formation of its founder's literary tastes, of the habits of his literary life, and of particular traits in his character which may further assist the readers of the books to frame a just conception of the remarkable person who collected them.

Forster was born at Newcastle, April 2, 1812. His father was a butcher, as was the father of another Newcastle celebrity, Akenside, the poet. The town was fortunate in the possession of an admirable Grammar School, and there Forster was educated when the Rev. Edward Moises was head master, and rose to be its foremost scholar. "Mr. Moises," says Alderman Harle, "was very proud of Forster. I remember "in the summer of 1826 as a small boy visiting Mr. Moises "at his house in Jesmond Bank. His whole conversation "turned that summer night, as he sat in his garden, on the "merits of the youth Forster, and the witty speeches of Mr. "Wentworth Beaumont during the long election at Alnwick." Forster was then little more than fourteen. In the ordinary course of things his family, not wealthy, and engaged in trade, would doubtless have chosen for him some mercantile or other local calling, but his singular proficiency in school learning induced his uncle, a bachelor, who had realised an independence, and

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afterwards met with reverses, to send him to Cambridge, where he had only to continue building on the superior foundation he had already laid in Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, to be secure of scholarships first, and of a fellowship afterwards. His receipts from college and university endowments would soon have covered his expenses. But it happened to him, as to most other men who have been distinguished in letters, that contemporaneously with his school education, he was carrying on an education of his own that had greater attractions for him. While yet a boy at Newcastle he was, says Alderman Harle, "an in"tense student of Byron and Scott, an enthusiastic antiquary, " and collector of ballad poetry, and was always seen with a book under his arm." He followed in the usual track of literary aspirants, and endeavoured to imitate what he admired. On May 2, 1828, when he was just turned sixteen, there was performed at the Newcastle Theatre a play of his composition called Charles at Tunbridge; or, the Cavalier of Wildinghurst. In this piece, which was crude in construction, and could not be otherwise, the influence of the historical part of Scott's novels is manifest throughout, and its merit is what befitted Forster's precocious youth, an assimilation of some of the salient qualities of his model.

A little later, October 1828, he went to Cambridge, being in the middle of his seventeenth year, which was an earlier age than was customary in recent times. But though only not a boy he was there his own master, and free to choose between ancient and modern learning. University competition allows small latitude for divided studies, nor did it suit Forster's ardent temperament, unless under compulsion, to diverge largely from his ruling passion. He quickly made his decision, withdrew from Cambridge the same year he entered, and took up his residence in London.

The respective pursuits of Dyce and Forster, old and intimate friends, are well represented by their libraries, which have appropriately met together in the South Kensington Museum. The choicest books in the collection of Dyce belong to the departments of classic and dramatic literature. He had contracted in his boyhood a passion for the theatre. The propensity in his manhood chiefly resolved itself into an leaborate study of the dramatists of the Elizabethan era, and he spent years over the text of those he re-edited. The classics of his youth were not less dear to him. The Latin and Greek

he had acquired at the High School in Edinburgh he extended at Oxford; and to the end of his days he enjoyed the companionship of scholars by profession, and remained a delighted reader of ancient authors in their original language. This privilege of following his tastes unrestricted he owed to the possession of an income sufficient for his modest style of living, and which was consequently in its effects equivalent to a fortune. It was a felicity denied to Forster. His uncle's help was not an inheritance, and he was dependent for his future on his profession. With leisure he would probably have reverted at times to the studies in which he had excelled under Moises. But he was compelled by the exigencies of the hour to drop them on leaving Cambridge, and never again had an opportunity to renew them.

Forster did not at the outset adopt literature for a calling, which would have appeared to his family too precarious a career for a youth not eighteen. The splendid prizes of the bar, with its attendant oratory, were allurements sufficient to extinguish any bitter regret for the partial abandonment of his literary predilections. He immediately entered the Inner Temple, November 1828, and attended the law lectures of Professor Amos at the London University. In 1830 he took a more decided step and became a pupil in the chambers of Mr. Thomas Chitty, a distinguished special pleader, in whose family that legal eminence was hereditary which has been perpetuated, with added lustre, in the person of his son, Mr. Justice Chitty. Mr. Chitty was accustomed to say to parents who brought pupils to him, It is useless for them to come to me unless they can eat a peck "of saw-dust every day." Those who judged from appearances would naturally infer that Forster relinquished law for literature because he could not bring himself to eat the daily peck of saw-dust. This was not the case. He not only applied himself in real earnest to the task, but displayed a native aptitude for grasping the principles, the precision, and nice distinctions of law. He promised equal excellence in the rhetorical part of his profession. He belonged to a debating society, in common with his friend Whiteside, a fellow-pupil with him at the London University, and afterwards Chief Justice of the Irish Queen's Bench, and Alderman Harle states that Forster " was considered "the better declaimer of the two." In one particular—the zeal with which he would have espoused the interests of his client he would not have been surpassed by any advocate