CATALOGUE OF DR. BARGRAVE’S MUSEUM
This little booke, with what is contained in it, my cabinet of medals,
antiquities, rareties, and coynes, I give unto the Library of Christchurch, Canterbury, after my death. Apr. 29, 1676.
Dr. John Bargrave, Canon
RARA, ANTIQUA, ET NUMISMATA BARGRAVIANA,
Romae et aliis Italiae locis diversis, nempe 4 Itineribus, collecta, per me Johan. Bargravium, Generosum Cantianum, olim
Coll. Sti Petri Cantabr. Socium, Bello civili,
Anno°, per Rebelles expulsum, restaurato vero Carolo 2°
restauratum; S. T. P. et canonicum Eccles. Metroplit [sic]. Cantuariensem [sic],
1662.
I being 4 journeys from London to Rome and Naples, I
found that where labourers digged either within or without the city, or up and
down the country, amongst the ruins of the old Roman
temples, amphitheatres, theatres, aqueducts, cirques, naumacheas,
baths, &c., to lay the foundations of any new churches,
colleges, monasteries, nunneries, pallaces, or the like, amongst those ruins
those labourers often found great and small statues or images,
-- some of marble, some of brass, --
of the old heathen gods and goddesses, and of divers emperors and emperesses,
and votes or vows presented to them. The Pope’s, and
every Cardinal’s and Prince’s pallaces are nobly adorned with them.
Those labourers likewise dig up, and the plowmen plow up, and those that work in
the vineyards dig up, great numbers of ancient Greek and Roman medals, some
bigger, some less, of gold, silver, and brass, of which there are great
collections amongst the antiquarians at Rome,
and many learned books written upon them in all languages, with the cuts of the
coins, together with the rinverce, or other side of them, which are very
historical. My often seeing of them put me likewise into a humour of curiosity,
and making this collection insuing, which I have now, 1676, in a cabinet in my study at my canonical house,
Canterbury.
Brass Images, &c.
(1). Imprimis, an infant Romulus, in brass, in a
sitting posture, digd out of Quirinus his temple, on the
Quirinal hill, when those ruins were removed to make way for the very
fine, pretty, rich church or chapel of Sta Maria della Vittoria, built in memory of the great
victory the Emperor had over the King of Bohemia near Prague,
where are hanged up in triumph the banners, ensigns, and colours that were there
taken, whereof I remember was, mitres, crosses, the Pope's triple crown,
&c., all turned upside down, with this motto --
Extirpentur.
This agrees with Raymond’s description, p. 105.
The little figure very ancient.
(2). Item, a very ancient Æsculapius, in
brass -- the medicinal god -- in a
long robe, with his baton or knotty staff in his hand, with a snake round about
it, dugg out of the ruins of his temple in the island of the
river of Tyber, where now standeth the hospital of
St. Bartholomey.
(3). A very ancient brass image of Hercules, one foot
broke off, with his club in his hand; esteemed for its good features, and very
like other marble statues and brass medals that I have seen of Hercules, whereof there is one amongst my drawers. This
was dugg out of his temple near the Tyber, at the
foot of the Aventine Hill at Rome -- still
standing, almost all, and made a chappell.
(4). Item, a brass flat piece, with the figure of a man drawing an ox by the
horns; very ancient, being dugg out of another temple of
Hercules that stood upon the Aventine
Hill, on the place where he killed the thief
Cacus, where now standeth a church dedicated to St. Stephen, which by its title beareth the memory of the old story
of Cacus, it being still called Sto Stefano nel Caco.
(5). Item, two old Roman sacrificing priests
in their robes, and patina in hand: the one a very good one,
-- if not ancient, yet cast from ancient; the other
modern.
(6). Hercules Juvenis, with his club and lion's skin;
another of them; both supposed modern.
(7). Item, a maymed Mercury, with one arm
and one legg; ancient, dugg out of his temple.
(8). An ancient brass Dolphin, dedicated to Venus, and dug out her temple. Nam Venus orta
mari.
(9). An handsome ancient busto (as called at Rome) of Augustus -- that is, the head and shoulders
-- in brass.
(10). Item, a Leda, with her swan; supposed to be
modern, but cast from ancient.
(11). A flat brass piece, of several Cupidons scaring one another with a vizard;
being a bachanalia piece, dugg out of the Temple of
Bacchus.
(12). A little key, dug out of the Temple of the
Moon.
(13). Item, a brass wreathed snake, in circles, having a head at both ends;
dedicated to Eternity.
(14). Item, a flat piece of brass, with the rapture of Proserpine by a Centaure.
(15). The knuckles of the legg bone of mutton, which we call a cockal, with
which children use to play; such an one dugg out of the ruins, in brass, that
sheweth the Romans used them in games called
Ludi talarii.
(16). The River of Tyber, carved on a piece of coral;
ancient.
(17). Two Priapisms, in brass, being votes or offerings to that absurd heathen
deity.... modern, from ancient.
(18). A Roman ægle, in brass;
modern.
(19). A piece of a kind of jasper stone, almost like a heart, polished, being a
piece of that famous obelisk that now standeth in the chiefest place of Rome, called Piazza Navona, olim Circus Agonalis, set up there on a most magnificent fabrick, like
a rock, out of which floweth 4 fountains, very large, signifying by the figures
of colossean statues of the 4 rivers of
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, by the hand
of Cavalier Bernino, that famous architect, my
neighbour and friendly acquaintance, -- Pope Innocent the 10th being at that vast expense.
When I was at Rome, 1646, this obelisk lay broken in 4 or 5 pieces, with
the fall of it, in the Circle of the Emperor Caracalla.
It is now called the Circus of Maxentius, or of his
son Romulus.
near St. Sebastian and Metella's Tomb, now a
noble antiquity, and called
Capo di Bove. I took another stone, and with it broke off of the butt end of it this
piece and as much more, and had this polished. The obelisk, as it lay then and
as it is now, is full of Egyptian
hyeroglifficks, of which Father Kercherius, that
eminent Jesuit, and of my acquaintance, hath writt a large folio. All the other
guglios,
The word is properly not guglio, but guglia.
or obeliscs, at Rome seem to be all of
the same sort of stone, and are stupendious to imagine how they could possibly
be hewn in that bigness and hight out of any rock, though it may be they might
afterward be hewn into that pyramidical proportion and shape that they now bear.
All full of Egyptian hyroglificks, that
largest of all before St. Peter at the Vatican excepted, which is one intyre precious stone
-- at least, better than marble, and I think (by my piece)
a jasper; and yet is esteemed to be higher by 3 or 4 foot than the
maypole in the Strand at London. Another is
dexterously placed on the Via Flaminia, at the Porto dell
Populo, in a poynt to be seen from 3 of the great streets of Rome. Another dispute is, how it was possible
to transport so vastly weighty things from Egypt to Rome as one of those
stones are, they having then no such ships as we have now, their byremes and
tryremes being but pittiful boats, yet sufficient to make them masters of the
seas in those times. There are several treatises on this subject; and the most
probable that I find is, that they were brought upon warffs or raffts of many
pines and firs, fastened by art together, and, the stones being laid upon them,
they, with a stearer or 2 or 3 at the end of those raffts, came terra, terra, terra (as the Italians term it) along the coast, or, at least, from promontory to
promontory, until they came to Ostia, and so 10 miles
up the Tyber to Rome. Many long and large warfes or rafts of these fir and pine
trees I have found troublesome to our boats on the Danube, the Rone or Rhodanus, on the Rhine, and Elve, down which
rivers an infinite abundance of that tymber passeth daily thus fastened
together, and on some of them they build 2 or 3 little hutts or cabans and dress
their meat. Thus as to these pyramids' transport.
Another of these vast stones layeth all along full of hyerogliphics, in that
which is now Prince Ludovicio's,
formerly Sallust's garden.
This is now erected in front of the church of Sta.
Trinita de’ Monti.
And, to see how Rome layeth under its
own ashes, one walketh in the streets over one of these famous Egyptian obelisks every day, in a little by
passage of a narrow descent that is between Antonina's famous piller and the
Rotunda. I could go directly to it if I were there, but I have forgotten the
name of the place. There one day an antiquarian had me down a poor man’s cellar,
and there showed me 4 or five yards of one of these pyramids.
This now stands on the Monte Citorio.
How far it runneth under ground they know not. It was full of
hieroglyphics, and it pittied me to see how the stone was cut and mangled for
the convenience to set wine vessels on it. The poor man getteth his rent by
showing of it to strangers that are curious -- as I
confess I always was, and would wish every gentleman traveller to be so.
(20). Item, two large loadstones, one armed with steel, in a black velvet case,
which I hanging in my study upon a piece of silk, in a perpendicular thread,
when it standeth still, the north point hangeth still due north; by which I
found that our cathedral of Christ Church,
Canterbury, doth not stand due east and west, but the east end is at
the least 2 poynts of the compass too much to the southward. Now, where it is
generally received that the loadstone draweth iron to it, by this perpendicular
posture of the stone upon a thread, and putting a key or any other piece of iron
to it, the iron draweth the loadstone quite round, as far off as you please, so
that it seemeth there is no compulsion on either side, but a mutual reciprocal
compliance between them both, which we are fain to call sympathy. Now, on the
other side, I have in my cabinet another triangular, unequilateral,
bumped-up, large loadstone that weigheth almost half a pound, which
is a rude thing to look on, but of good value. This is unarmed, but it is
strange to see how great an antipathy there is between the north point of this
stone and the other that hangeth perpendicular in the velvet bagg, this making
that (at a great distance) fly from it with violence as often round as you
please; and, on the other side, there is a great sympathy between the south
point of the one stone and the north point of the other. For this seemeth
strange to me, that every loadstone, be it in pieces bigger or less, have still
their north and south point, according to the two poles axill of the world. With
the hidden qualities of these 2 stones I used sometimes to make sport with young
gentry in telling them their fortunes, &c. as if there had been an
intelligence between them and me – “If so and so, then do so and so.” And truly
it is wonderful to me to think that it was the loadstone that found out America and the Straights of
Megallan, and by virtue of which several nations, especiall[y] England, have almost found out the north-west passage of the West Indies, and so
to go a much shorter cut from England by the
West Indies to the East. And if the Terra Incognita, or the fifth part of the
unknown world, be ever found out, it must be done by virtue of the
loadstone.
(21). Item, a piece of a heavy mineral stone, that looketh like a loadstone, but
hath no such attractive virtue; but at Hall, near Insprugg in
Tiroll, among the hearts of the Alps, I had
the curiosity to be droven in a wheelbarrow almost 2 miles under ground, to see
the labourers there in the gold and silver mines belonging to the Archduke of that country. It was horrid to go thither,
and more horrid to see, but they told us the Emperor and the
Empress, and all the royal family of the house of Austria use out of
curiosity to go thither. I and my companion having on canvass frocks to keep us
from the wet and filth, we having a mountain of the Alps 3 or 4 mile high over our heads, and a torrent of water under
us, and a bridge of boards most of the way. When we came into the vast high
vaults, where hundreds and hundreds of men or Vulcans were at work, one of the
overseers (a genteel person), out of courtesy, would have let us see their art
by blowing up a part of the mine by gunpowder; but we durst not venture it.
Another great mystery to me was, that I saw in the several high vaults, about
the middle, a coggell of wood hanging in a small rope; and I asking wherefore
those bastons or pieces of wood hung there, I wondered the more they told me,
that, as the loadstone in the iron mines directed to the veins of iron, so these
coggells of wood directed them to the veins of gold and silver; and they seemed
to be loth to tell us what sort of wood it was, but at length we were told
(whether truly or no I know not), that it was of a ground ash.
This stone is a piece of the one they digg out of those mines, out of which, by
the force of fire, is extracted the silver and the gould, being separated from
the dross, which is there cast up and down into great hills near the places
where the fornices for melting are.
(22). Ten miles, almost, round about Rome,
under the vineyards and cornfields, are hollow caves, streets, rooms, chappells,
finely paynted, &., which is called Rome
underground, or the Catacombe, wherein to the poor Christians in the
times of persecution fledd to hide themselves, to perform the Christian duties
of preaching and prayer and sacraments. And some of these underground streets
were for their burials, -- not on the flat, as we bury on
the ground, but the corps were at their length immuralld in theca's, or, as it were, in hollow shelves dug into the
wall on both sides; and it is a horrid place to go to, and dangerous, for fear
of damps, for which we had little bottles of essences and spirits to put to our
noses, and tynder purses (as the mode is), with flint, steel, and match, to
lighten our torches and candles when they went out. My curiosity held me there
about 3 hours at one time in one of these cymeteries; I going down a pair of
stayre, and so walked some streets in Rome
underground, a second story deep, until we came to water, which made
us return. But the best and freest from danger, and easiest to be seen, are
those at St. Agnese, out of the Porta St. Agnese,
where in half an hour I came to a street that I could tell 10 stories of corps
high; and so all along, about 30 or 40 in length. I and other gentlemen with me
observed that, though there were divers epitaphs and writings, with
P°, Xto, P°, X°, with a turtle dove and an
olive branch in its beack, and a palm branch, with P°
†°, yet, I taking all along on the one side, and my
companions on the other, we could meete with never an Orate
pro anima -- praying for the souls of the dead
not being then known, in the primitive times, there being no such thing as
purgatory then known in the world, -- that being of a
later invention, to bring a vast revenue to the Pope or Camera Apostolica.
From this Rome underground I brought a very
fair small ancient lamp, and a small bottle with a long neck
-- both of them of a very fine red earth; which, by Dr. Plott, I sent as a present to the cabinet
of Oxford Library. One other earthen lamp,
and a glass bottle with such a long neck, and a broken one in two pieces, I have
in my cabinet. These bottles are called lachrymatorij, or
tear-bottles, because the friends and relations of the defunct were
in ancient time accustomed at the funeral to carry each of them a lachrymatorio
in his hand, to save his tears that he shed for his deceased friend, and then
leave those bottles behind them with the immuralld corps. David seemeth to have allusion to this ancient custom when
he saith, Psalm 56, 8, “Thou hast put my tears into thy
bottle.”
(23). Another thin piece of jasper stone, unpollished, it being sawn off of that
piece of the guglio, pyramid, or obelisc that standeth
now in the Piazza Navona at Rome; of which I
have spoken at large, page the 7 [118], &c., where you
may be satisfied about those wonderful obeliscs.
(24). Paste antiche Romane
incognite, -- several pieces of a flat ancient
Roman paste (as they term it) unknown,
-- i. e. that the art of it is lost or forgotten. These
several pieces I pict up amongst the antiquarians. They are of all sorts of
colours, as you may see where they are broken. They are on the outside rude and
rough, but, being polished, it looks like a precious stone, as you may see by
several small pieces of them that I caused to be polished, and cut in the figure
of a heart. One green, with spots like stars; the other a plain blew. They seem
to be a kind of glass, or rather of that material of which enamell is made; but
whichsoever the matter is I know not. But they put an esteem upon them, and I
[was] made pay dear for them.
(25). Small cinders and pummy stones of Mont Aetna, in
Sicily, where I never was; but I had them from my Lord of Winchelsy, my noble friend, who hath bin there.
(26). Several pieces of cinders, pummystone, and ashes of the Mount Vesuvius, near Naples, which was 4 times the poynt of my
reflection, -- I facing about for England from the topp, or crater, or voragine (as they term it) of that mountain; of which I have spoken at
large in my
Itinerario d’ ltalia
.
See the Introduction to this volume. Raymond says, “This mountain was
the ultima meta of our voyage to Naples.”
(p. 163.)
(27). Several rude pieces of mountain chrystall, as they grow sexanguler always
among the Alps; amongst which there is one is a very
clear, handsome, elegant piece, something longer than my middle finger, 4 or 5
inches compass, sexangular, inaequilateral, cylindrical, pyramidical.
The same article is described on a separate paper as “a cristall as it
naturally groweth, sexangular, which I met with on the Penine Alps, on the Sempronian Mount, now called Mount Samplon.” Sir Henry Wotton, among his bequests, mentions
“a piece of crystall, sexangular (as they grow all), grasping divers
things within it, which I bought among the Rhaetian
Alps, in the very place where it grew.” (Walton’s
Lives, 109, ed. Oxf. 1824.) For the passage of the Simplon,
as it was in those days, see Raymond, p. 248.
This I met with amongst the Rhaetian Alps. One
would wonder that nature should so counterfett art. There is no man but [that?]
seeth it but would veryly believe that by tools and art it had binn put into
that figure. I remember that the Montecolian man that sold it me told me that he
ventured his life to clamber the rocks to gett it. Where it grew I cannot say;
but where it was, it was covered, he said, with long sedgy grass growing about
it, under the dripp of an higher rock, where the snow continually melteth and
droppeth; and so all the mountayn chrystall is increased ab
extra by an external addition, and groweth not from any rock.
(28). Item, a small gold Salerno ring, written on the
outside, not like a posey in the inside, but on the out --
Bene scripsisti de ME, Thoma.
The story of it is, that Thomas Aquinas, being at
Salerno, and in earnest in a church before a
certain image there of the blessed Virgin
Mary, his earnest devotion carried him so far as to ask her whether
she liked all that he had writ of her, as being free from original sin, the
Queen of Heaven, &t.; and
intreated her to give him some token of her acceptance of his indeavours in the
writing so much in her behalf. Upon which the image opened its lipps, and said,
Bene scripsisti de ME, Thoma.
Salerno layeth a little beyond Naples, on the Mediterranean sea; and the
goldsmiths of the place, for their profit, make thousands of these rings, and
then have them touch that image which spake. And no marchant or stranger that
cometh thither but buyeth of these rings for presents and tokens. An English marchant gave me this at Naples. The Schola Salernitana
was anciently famous for physicians.
(29). Item, a gold ring, with the cutt of an ancient Graecian head on a garnet stone set in it. An° 1650,
being the year of jubilee, I had the honour to conduct the Earl of Chesterfield, Phillip Lord Stanhop, into Italy; and at Rome he
presented me with this stone, telling me that it was sold him not only for a
Graecian head, but for Aristotle’s. I sett it in gold at Rome, as the jeweller advised me, in that
transparent posture as it now hath, that so, the stone being pelluced, the head
is much the plainer to be seen both ways. The side next to the finger will soil,
and must sometimes be cleaned. The cutt is certainly a very very ancient intaglio, (as they use to call such cutts at Rome), melting away the g in the pronunciation,
and pronouncing it almost with a ll
-- intallia.
(30). It.,Confetti di Tivoli, a box full of sugar plums of
the town of old Tybur, now called Tivoli. They seem to be so like sugar plums
that they will deceive any man that only seeth them, especially when the
counterfeit amand and muske comfeits, made out of the same materials, are mixed
amongst them. But the things themselves are nothing but the gravel or sand of
the river Teverone, that runneth by Tyvoly (10 miles from
Rome), and entreth into the river of Tybur.
The plumms are of a chauchy or brimstony matter.
(31). Some of the floore of brimstone from that horrid sulfurious mountain at
the other side of Naples called Sulfaterra, near Puteoly, now called Puzzuolo.
(32.) A bow ring of Persia, cutt out of an agate
stone, which must be worn on the right thumb, with poynt upward. With this they
draw at ease the strongest bow, and then, letting the bent thumb go, the arrow
hath the greater violence.
(33). Item, Aëtites, Lapis Aquilaris, or the
eagle stone, which I bought of an Armenian
at Rome. They differ sometimes in colour.
This is a kind of a rough, dark, sandy colour, and about the bigness of [a] good
wallnut. It is rare, and of good value, because of its excellent qualities and
use, which is, by applying it to childbearing women, and to keep them from
miscarriages.
Some directions for the use of the stone are here omitted.
. . . . It is so useful that my wife can seldom keep it at home, and
therefore she hath sewed the strings to the knitt purse in which the stone is,
for the convenience of the tying of it to the patient on occasion; and hath a
box she hath, to put the purse and stone in. It were fitt that either the dean’s
or vice-dean’s wife (if they be marryed men) should have this stone
in their custody for the public good as to neighbourhood; but still, that they
have a great care into whose hand it be committed, and that the midwives have a
care of it, so that it still be the Cathedral Church’s
stone.
(34). A very artificial anatomy of a human eye, with all its films or tunicles,
by way of turnery in ivory and horn; together with the optick nerve which
runneth into the brain, from which nerve the eye receiveth all its several
motions. This excellent piece of art hath, when it is opened, fourteen pieces in
it; but are, indeed, but a little more parcels in themselves than half so many.
When you take them in sunder, the best way to keep them in order is to lay them
all in a row, and then you shall find that the first piece and the last are in
nature but one tunicle, and by art two, if you join them together; each half
(but one) hath its correspondent -- the corneus with the
corneus, the two black ones likewise the same, and so the rest. The little apple
of it also is included in two half tunicles. The usual way of anatomizing an
eye, longways, by turning the films flat over one another, could not be so
visibly imitated by art; but this, or roundway, was the invention of the
College of Physicians at Padoüa, where an
artist of High Germany imployed his skill in
turning according to these doctors’ orders, and at length produced this
excellent piece of art -- this anatomy of the human
eye.
I have one also of an oxes eye, but that is very rude, gross, and not exact.
I bought this eye at Venice of a High Dutch turner, and, for the proof of it, I
went a double share in two anatomies, of a man’s body and a woman’s, chiefly for
this eye’s sake, and it was found to be exact.
(35). Item, a fair large toadstool or mushroom of stone, very weighty, which is
not a mushroom petrified, but grew always a stone, in this shape and figure. I
bought it of an Armenian at Venice, who had many more of them to sell, of
several sorts of colours and bigness, and divers other stones of pretty forms
and figures.
(36). Stylus Romanus. The antiquarian that sold it me
avowed it to be truly ancient; but thousands may daily be made, this being but a
piece of steel about the length of one’s middle finger, like a bodkin, with a
blunt point at one end and a flat on the other end, the edge rabated on both
sides, so that with the one end one may make an impression upon paper or the
bark of trees, and with the other end one may easily rub out or make smooth what
had been written. So that vertere stylum was as much as
to recant of such and such things as he had formerly written.
(37). Item, a large piece of sea-horse tooth, said to be good against
poison, next to an unicorn’s horn.
(38). Lusus Naturae, a kind of a periwinkle’s shell,
This was, of course, a fossil shell.
and divers other fashion stone shells, which I had out of the curiosities
of art and nature at Douay
The name of this place ought to be written Doué.
(not that in Flanders), 3 or 4
leagues off from Saulmur, or the river Loyre, in France, where there is an ancient
amphitheater.
(39). A pretty little padlock and key of guilt mettle, and a piece of coral,
given me by a nunn, -- whose guifts are commonly costly,
for you must return the double.
(40). Item, a pretty kind of nun’s work purse, made of greenish silk, and a
carved work mother of pearls shell, presented me likewise by a nun, for which I
paid for double, according to custom.
(41). Item, a pair of common Italian cards,
which have, instead of our 4 sorts, 4 other names -- (1)
Denari, (2) Coppe, (3) Spade, (4) Bastoni
-- money, cups, fauchions or swords, and clubbs (or rather
cogils); and, having the same number with ours, one may play all the English games with them, as well as the Italian.
(42). Item, Monsieur Demarests’
Jean Desmarets, for whom see Bayle,
x, 236, seqq. ed. Paris, 1820; or Nouv. Biographie
Générale.
learned and ingenious pack of cards, called Jeu d’
Armoire de I’Europe, composed, as I was told in France, upon this occasion. Cardinal
Mazarine being in place of a guardian to the now reigning King of France, in his minority, (Louis XIVth,) and the king
being grown up to the age of years in which he took delight to play at cards,
he, that the king, at his playing of cards,
might also learn something else of worth and knowledge in his very play, put
this virtuoso, Monsr Desmarests,
to invent a pair of cards that might have that effect; upon which he invented
these cards, which, having the ordinary marks of hearts, clubs, spades, and
diamonds, he maketh hearts to be France, and
the king to be king of hearts; clubs to be
Italy, and all its principalities; spades
to be the northern parts, -- Germany, England, Denmark, Sweden, &c.; and diamonds to be Spain, Portugall, and all
their territories. This done, when the king went to play at cards, a fair mapp of Europe was to be laid upon the carpet, and, when the cards
were dealt unto the king, he was not to
play his game at cards until he was first instructed in blazonry, geography, and
history of this or that card he had in his hand, --
blazoning the arms as it is upon each card; then, to find out the place in the
mapp of Europe that the card signified; and,
lastly, to tell some little history of that place; and then, to play the
ordinary game. So that the king learned
armory, geography, and history, all at playing of cards, there being a little
book of Mr. Desmarests, which belong to this pack of
cards, to teach his majesty how to use
them. It is in French, with my cards.
What foundation this knowledge of the king’s may have bin
This word seems superfluous.
layde as to his present wars, I know not; but now, l’
espé à la maine (his sword in his hand), Lorraine is the 3 of hearts, the 17 provinces of the Low Countries is the 3 of spades,
the Elect Palatine is the 6 of spades, the canton of
the Swizzer is the 2 of spades, Catalonia is the 4 of diamonds, &c., and the terrible
game of war goeth on. It had binn happier for Europe that he had never learned this Jeu d’
Armoires than that it should have bin the occasion of his shedding so
much blood. However, the king of spades, the Emperor and his northern allies,
maintain the game against the king of hearts; and what card will be trump we
know not at the end.
(43). Item, the skin, head, and legs of a cameleon, perfumed and stuffed. The
creature was given me alive in Africa, and it
liveth (not by the air, as the report goeth, but) by flies chiefly, as the
Moores taught me how to feed it in this manner, by laying in the cage, or
sometimes out of the cage in which I kept it, upon a paper some sugar and
sweetmeats, which allureth the flies to come to it. The creature hath in its
gorge or gola a toung that lieth 4 dobled, with a small
fibulus button at the end of it, which hath on it a viscous matter. So soon as
it seeth the flies at the sweetmeats it darteth forth that toung at a great
distance, and with the viscous matter pulleth in the fly to her mouth, and
eateth it; and so it will do many, one after the other, so that while we sailed
homewards all along the Africa shore, and
came out of the Mediterranean Sea by the Streights of Gibralter into the Atlantick Ocean, and then turning northward by Spain and Portugall
-- all that time (I say) that we were in those hot and
southerly climates, although it was in January
1662, there were store of flies, and the creature fed on them
heartily, and lived well. But as we sailed homeward into the more cold and
northern climates, as the flies failed us, so that decayed, and at length for
want of flies it died; and I had the chirurgeon of the shipp embalm it, and put
the skin as you see it.
It seemeth to be a kind of lizard, but is as slow in pace as a tortes, winding
its tail about the sticks of the cage, to help and secure its gradations. The
ribs and the back are boned and scaled like fish. Although the story of its
living by the air be fabulous, yet the other story of its changing itself into
all colours is very true, as I have seen this of all manner of colours, like
silk, and sometimes changeable colours, as the sun happened to shine upon it;
and sometimes I have seen it coal-black. But the story is false that
it hath a pellucid body, like cristal, and so it will be the colour of scarlet
or any other cloth that you lay it upon. No, no such thing; but one way to make
it change its colours was to anger it, and put it into a passion, by touching of
it with a stick or a bodkin, or the like. Then it would fetch great breaths,
many one after another, by which it made itself swell very much, and in its
swellings out came the colours of all sorts, which changed as it was more or
less provoked to anger. And when the passion was over, it would look as pale as
a clout. It hath no eyelids, and therefore never winketh; but when it sleepeth,
the ball of the eye being as round as round can be, it turneth that ball quite
round, the inside outward, and so sleepeth. Matthiolus on
Dioscorides sayth that it layeth eggs as a tortes doth, and is bred
of those eggs.
(44). Item, the finger of a Frenchman, which
I brought from Tholouse, the capital of Languedoc,
in France. The occasion this: there is, amongst others, a great
monastery of Franciscans, with a very fair large church and cloisters, the earth
of which place is different from all others in this, that all the dead men and
women’s corps that are buried there turn not into putryfaction and corruption,
and so into earth, as in all other places; but, on the contrary, the bodies that
are buried there in the space of 2 years are found in the posture that they were
laid into the grave, dried into a kind of momy, being all entire and whole,
dried to almost skin and bone, -- the nerves or sinews and
tendons stiffly holding all the body together, that you may take it and place it
standing upright against a wall. And in the vaults whither these dried corps are
removed there are abundance of them, like so many fagotts, and as stiff and
strong. Among which they shewed us the corps of a souldier, that died by the
wound of a stabb with a dagger in his breast, upon the orifice of which one of
his hands lay flatt, and when they pulled away the hand, the wound was plainly
seen; but let the hand go, and it returned to its place with force, as if it had
a resort or spring to force it to its proper place. I pulled the hand away
several times, and the nerves and tendons were so strong that the hand returned
with a lusty clap upon the wound. There likewise they shewed us the corps of a
physician (of their acquaintance), which, when they put a clean piece of paper
into one hand and a pen into the other, when he stood in such a posture as if he
had seriously been a-writing a dose or prescription. The monks told
us that in one vault the principals of their order stood all in a row, in the
habit of the order, according to their seniority. They proffered me the whole
body of a little child, which I should out of curiosity have accepted of, if I
had then been homeward bound; but I was then outward bound for the grand tour of
France (or circle, as they call it), and
so again into Italy.
(45, 46). Item, two cylinders, with their wooden boxes, --
the one of steel, which is most usual in England; the other of foyled isinglass, which I met with often in
High Germany, from whence I brought this.
The isinglass having a foyle of quicksilver and pewter put behind it, like a
lookingglass, will afterward easily bend to the cylindrical piece of wood that
you would fasten it to, and rendereth an excellent lustre, better than the
steel. There are several uses of them in opticks. I used them with some several
pictures, which are artificially painted like the greatest confusion of
irregular lines and lineaments that may be. But, a cylinder being placed upon
the square fitted for its pedestal, all the reflections of that seemingly
confused work meet in the cylinder, and make a well-shaped, very
handsome picture, in its due points and proportions. As to one of these
cylinders belongeth, from the confusion on the plain, in the cylinder, an
emperor on horseback on a white horse (which I brought from Rome, but they may be had in England).
The other, that I out of curiosity used to imploy, was in a very pretty
experiment that I learned at Nurimberg and Augsberg,
in High Germany, in making, by reflection of the sun’s beam, as fair
a rainbow as ever was seen in the sky, to be seen in a dark room
-- the darker the better -- which I
have done hundreth of times before many of quality, who have taken delight to
see it. It is best done where there are close wooden shuts to the windows. It is
done thus: the room being made very dark, there must be left only an auger hole,
where the sunbeam may come clearly in through the shut, --
the kesment being taken away, or a pannel of glass broken for the purpose, that
the sun may be clear. Then lay to that hole a common prism or triangular
artificial crystal, that casteth all kind of colours; the sun, without it,
casteth through the hole a round spot of light, either upon the next wall, or on
the floor; then that triangular crystal, being put to the hole, turneth that
sunbeam into a round spot of divers glorious colours; then put a couple of small
nails for the prism to rest upon, and keep that glorious spot; which done, take
a cylinder, and hold it about a foot distance from the coloured spot, full in
the sunbeam, or at what distance you find most convenient, and that will cast
the reflections of that spot all round about the dark room, on the seeling and
walls, in as perfectly various colours as ever you saw the rainbow. Upon which
there happened a pretty passage to me once, which happened at Utrecht, which was this: there lived one Myn Here Johnson,
Cornelius Jansen “in 1636 and the next following years resided with
Sir Arnold Braems, a Flemish merchant at Bridge [Place], near Canterbury.” (Dallaway’s note in
Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in England, ii. 10, Lond. 1828.) His portrait of
Dean Bargrave is in the
Deanery at Canterbury, and was lent for
the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866.
an extraordinary eminent painter, of my former acquaintance in England. I showed him this artificial rainbow;
he asked me how long I could keep it; I told him that I could keep it 2 or 3
hours: “Then," saith he, “I will send for my pallat of coulors, and draw it, for
I have binn after endeavouring to draw one in the fields, but it vanished before
I could finish it.” Upon which I laughed. He asked me why I laughed; I told him
that he should see anon why I laughed, but assured him that I could keep the
rainbow 2 or 3 hours; upon which he sent a servant for his pallat of coulors,
and, being come, he tempered them to his purpose in the light. Then I darkened
the room, but he could not see to paint, at which I laughed again, and I told
him his error, which was, that he could not see to paint in the dark, and that I
could not keep the rainbow in the light, at which he laughed also heartily, and
he missed his design.
Item, a picture in a frame, of confused work; but a cylinder being placed on the
square for its pedestal, there you shall see an emperor on horseback, and, if
you moove your head up and down, the horse will seem to trott.
(48), An optick instrument of wood, turned round, and hollow within, and
blacked, which serveth instead of a dark room; the small optick glass at the
little end casting the shadows or figures and coulors of all outward objects
upon a piece of clean paper fastened in with a hoop at the great end, with a
covering over it, having a round hole in the middle, through which you may see
all the reflections of the outward object as plain as may be; so that one may
design them or paint them on the paper as they are represented, reversed, or
their heels upward, and then, taking the paper off, it may be turned to the
object’s right posture, and not upside down. But the sun must shine clear upon
the outward objects when they are to be fully and well represented, otherwise
they are but dull. If the paper be very clean, and oyled over with good oyle,
the species and colours are more perfect. The objects that are in motion, and
those various, look the prettiest on the paper. As I happened to see it set
against a large market place at Vienna, in Austria (the
Emperor’s court), where I bought it, the busy people in the market,
and all their several coloured clothes, both of men and women, made me stand
still and wonder what it meant. I went by the shop several times on purpose to
see it, and at last I went into the shop and bought it, the owner showing me the
use of it. With this instrument you may see the jackdaws fly about
Bell Harry steeple,
i. e. the central tower of Canterbury
Cathedral.
when the sun shines, in any room of your house that hath a window that
way.
(49). Item, a larger circular optick glass, about 4 inches diameter, made almost
for the same purpose with the former, to receive outward specieses into a dark
room; only this glass representeth them 4 times as bigg as the other, and at a
much farther distance, which must be always observed as to the reception [of]
the specieses. As this glass in a dark room, being placed to the hole, will
render the reflexed species of the outward object full and large at a good
distance, on a sheet of paper, or a fine napkin, or a large tablecloth, all the
houses, windows, chimnies, trees, steeples, &c. that the sun shineth
upon, and may be seen through the oager,
i. e. auger.
all will be fairly represented on that paper or tablecloth or napkin.
I bought this glass of Myn Here Westleius, an eminent
man for optics at Nurenburg, and it cost me
3 pistolls, which is about 50s
English. The gentleman spoke bitterly to me
against Father Kercherius, a Jesuit at Rome (of my acquaintance), saying that it had
cost him above a thousand pounds to put his optic speculations in practice, but
he found his principles false, and shewed me a great basket of glasses of his
failings. He shewed me wonderful strange glasses, some oval, some round, some
square, some convex, some concave, which produced strange deceptions of the
sight, unspeakable. As I well remember, when I put forth my hand to one glass,
there came an arm and a hand out of the glass, as long as mine; and when our
hands met, I seemingly could put finger to finger, palm to palm; and when I went
to clasp hands together, I grasped nothing but air. Then, drawing my sword, and
at a farther distance thrusting the point towards the glass, out from the glass
came a sword and an arm, as to my sight, into the room; and we met, point to
point, two or 3 paces from the wall, into the chamber which was strange to me;
and at length he made my whole person seemingly to come out of the glass into
the room to meet me.
Another large glass he had, which, being hanged at one side of the room, and a
fair perspective picture of the inside of a church, with its arches and pillars,
hanged at the other, at a due distance, the species do so strangely come out
from the glass that you seem to be walking in a church. Remove that picture, and
place in its room a fair garden, with oranges and lemon trees, and fountains and
walks, &c., and by the reflex of that glass, in the middest of the
room, one seemeth to walk in a garden, and so in a grove, &c. For
these glasses he asked me, for one 200, for the other 150, pistolls; and I think
I should have given him his money, if my quality and purse had had a proportion
suitable for such a purchase.
(50). Item, another optick glass, sowed into a piece of paceboard, to hang at a
hole in a dark room, to the same purpose as the former.
(51). Westleius, of
Neurenburg in High Germany, his optick wooden eye, which is only to
set in the light into a darkened room, for the same use as formerly, only, as
the sun removeth, so the wooden eye may be turned about to the sun, to keep the
beams the longer on the optick glass.
(52). Item, a rare antiquity and curiosity: two Chinese books, in quarto, printed in the Chyna language upon I know not what material,
-- I think either silk, or rather on the barks of trees,
It is the ordinary Chinese
paper.
-- every leaf being double, and having in every
page an ill-favoured design or drauft of picture. They were left me
as a legacy and curiosity by one that had formerly binn my fellow traveller.
(53). Item, some shells of the strange dieülle musell, bred in the
heart of a stone. Thus one, or rather several, times at Rochell I walked out to the sea-side near the
Dige, where I met with fellows who with beetles and axes
and wedges were by the sea-side, as the tide went off, a cleaving of
great stones. I asked them what they were doing and what they meant to cleave
those stones. Their answer was, that they worked for their living, and that they
were searching for dieüles, that is, for a sort of muscel
shell-fish in those stones. I stood by, and saw then that, as the
stone cleft, they found 1, 2, 3, or 4, some bigger some lesser. I asked them
whether that they were good to eat. With that they ate them raw, as one doth an
oyster, and I found them good meat, and afterwards sent them to our lodgings;
and I saw them several times in the market to be sold, being very good
well-relished fish. The stones from which they are taken are full of
holes, according to their proportion, some bigg some lesser.
(54). Item, an Indian tobacco pipe of
leather to wind about one's arm, with a wooden pipe at the end of it, to be
cleaned by washing it.
(55). Several pairs of horns of the wild mountain goats which the High Dutch call gemps,
the Italians
camuchi, the French
shammois, from whence we have that leather. I had them
amongst the Alps, the people telling me strange
stories of the creature, what strange leaps they would take amongst the crags of
the rocks, and how, to break a fall, they will hang by the horns, and, when they
have taken breath, they unhook themselves and take another leap at a venture,
and sometimes they will have great falls without any hurt, they still lighting
upon their horns. Some of these horns are polished, and serve for several
uses.
(56). A prohibited Venetian dark lanthorn,
with a concave piece of steel at the back of the inside, which must be always
kept very bright, and a convex half-globe of a crystaline glass on
the outside; then a piece of wax candle being put in between them, the
reverberation of the light from the steel through the crystal sendeth forth such
a radiant light in a dark night that you may read anything at a great distance.
It hath bin a murthering instrument with a pocket pistol and a poisoned stiletto
-- the revengeful party meeting and watching his adversary
in the streets, on a sudden casteth such a dazeling brightness in his eye that
he is astonished, whilst the other useth his instruments to kill him.
(57). Item, a Venetian stiletto poisoned
without poison; that is, it is as bad as poisoned by reason that these oval
little holes worked on the body of the steel of the stiletto maketh it give an
uncurable wound, by reason that a point or tent, with its oils, balsalms, or
otherwise curing salves, cannot reach the inward scars and inequalities of the
dagger’s hollow figures, and so it is impossible to cure such a wound.
(58). Item, a cravat, a shass or girdle, and a small pair of gaiters of curious
work, by the inhabitants of the north-west
(whether passage or no passage) of America, in the West Indies, made
of porcupine quills very artificiously. In Italy there are butchers’ shops particularly for venison, in which
shops are every week hanged up store of these porcupines; but we foreigners did
not much approve of the meat. The cravat, &c., with divers other
things, were sent me by one Mr. Tymothy Couley, now a
marchant in London, by way of gratuity, he
being one of the 162 slaves that I redeemed from Argeers, when I went thither by King
Charles 2 commission and 10,000lb of hierarchical
money, 1662, for that purpose. Amongst
the chains of the redeemed I kept only this man’s, which I have now by me, and
intend to have it hanged up over my grave in
memorandum.
(59). Item, a pair of red leather pleyted buskins and 2 pairs of sleepers, with
iron on the soles, such as the great ones -- the
Bashaes, the Agaàs, the Yabashawes, and Bulgabashaes
-- wear at Argeers.
(60). The picture in little of Shaban Agaà il
Grand d’ Algeers, or the King of Argeers, to whom I delivered his
Maties (Charles
II.) credential letter, and with whom I had chiefly to do in points
of difficulty, though I bought slave by slave from each particular Turkish patron, as one buyeth horses in Smithfield. A poor painter, an Italian slave, stood privately to draw me this picture at
several times when I had audience of Shaban
Agaà. It is ill work, but the clothes and mode is like
him, as he (and as all the country doeth,) sat cross-legged on a
Turkey carpet on a bench, I sitting at
the turning of the bench by him, with my hat on, in my clerical habit; I finding
him mostly very courteous. But in a 500lb business, that he
would have had me pay for slaves that had made their escape, we were both very
hot, and had like to have broken the peace, but at length my reasons prevailed.
But at the end of all, when all the slaves were redeemed and sent on board his
Maties
man-of-war that attended us, it was a thousand to one but
that the peace between us had binn broken, and I and my fellow commissioner,
Dr. Selleck, had bin made slaves. It was but a
greine in a pair of golden scales, whether aye or no --
they having that night brought in an Englishman as a prize; but by God’s blessing, and much difficulty, I played my part so well with
threatening, that we got off. But poor consul Browne
paid for it; for we were no sooner gone from their coasts but they broke the
peace, and took all the English as
formerly.
This Mr. Browne, the consul, went over in the same
man-of-war with us, and we dieted and lay at his house. He
had formerly lived long among them, and had their Lingua
Franca perfectly. However, we were no sooner gone but they seized on
all he had, shaved his head, and made him a slave, where he helped to draw
timber and stones to a fortification, receiving so many blows a day with a
bull’s nerve, until he was beaten to death, and his body cast out upon a
dunghill; which doubtless had binn our fortune if God had not binn pleased to bless us for the good work that we had
done.
All the difficulties lay upon me, by reason that my brother commissioner had
never binn beyond the seas, nor could speak a word of their language, and so
understood not his danger until it was over.
On the back of the drawing (which is on parchment), is the following
inscription: "Shaban Aga il Grand d’ ALGEERS. The
King of Argeers, to whom I delivered his Maties letters credential,
when in 1662 I went his Maties
commissioner for the redemption of the English captives there with hierarchical and cathedral
money, with which I redeemed and brought home with me all, viz. 162
slaves. John Bargrave, Gent., of Kent.
Canon of Christ Church,
Canterbury. An Italian slave, a painter, drew me this rude piece at Argeers, very like as to face and habit. The
copies of which in large I gave, one to his Matie Charles the Second, who
hanged it in his private closet; another I gave to my patron, Archbishop Juxon; a third to Archbishop Sheldon; and a fourth I kept for
myself, in memorandum of that Christian and noble imploy, 1662.”
(61). Item, a fair book in folio, with the effigies of Alexander the 7th, and all the College of
Cardinals at that time -- A’n° Dni
1658 -- to my
knowledge very well cut, and exceeding like. I had occasion to have audience
with several of them, and have writ what authors say of them in my hand.
(62). Item, a large folio in Italian, of
medals, by Don Antonio Agostini, arcivescovo di
Tarracona, -- full of cuts of medals, with the reverse,
writt by way of dialogue, In Roma.
(63). Item, a small turned instrument of wood, of about a handful, with a turned
furrow in it for a cord that will bear a man’s weight; it being useful in time
of war for a prisoner to make his escape, by sliding down by a wall of any hight
on a cord that shall not gall the hands, but the person may slide faster or
softlier as he pleaseth, by griping or loosening this instrument. It was given
me at Augsburg by a High-Dutch captain.
(64). Item, a manuscript in Italian, in
folio, being the conclaves or intrigues of the elections of 13 Popes, beginning
at Giulius the 3d, and
ending with Paulus Quintus; bound up only alla rustico, as the Italians call it, in pastboard. At the end, Di
Roma, iixx Maggio, MDCV.
Five of them are translated into English, in
loose sheets of paper.
(65). Item, a little manuscript in 5 sheets, unbound,
Nos. 65 and 66 are now bound together. See the
Introduction.
Supplimenti d’alcuni Cardinali, che sono omessi nella
STATERA in Stampa.
(66). Item, a little manuscript in 6 sheets, unbound, Instruttione del Sigr
Balij di Valence, Ambr
del Re Christianissimo, al suo Successore.
(67). To hang upon my cabinet. My own picture upon copper, in little and in seculo, between my nephew and my neighbour, drawn at
Siena, 1647, by the hand of Sigr. Mattio Bolognini,
as written on the back side.
(68). To hang upon my cabinet. My own picture upon copper, in little and in seculo, drawn at Rome by a servant of my good friend Sigr.
Giovanni Battista Caninij, an° 1650, the year of Jubely, as it is written on the back
side.
NVMISMATA
BARGRAVIANA
Medalloones or Greate
Medalls
Coppies which I had by
fauor from Originalls.
1. A Julius Cæsar in brass.
an Oual.
2. Roma, with a head peece. brass.
an Oual.
3. A large Rownd Bacchanalian
of the feast of the Gods. brass.
4. The 3 Graces naked. brass.
5. A Round. History of Traian and
his Son. brass, in a woden
frame.
6. An Excellent featured peece
in Ouall. brass. whome I know not.
7. Thales. brass.
8. Solon brass Socrates.
9. Louis 14th K. of France. brass.
10. The Queene Mother of
France, and L 14th. brass.
11. Alexander VII, with a sol-
dier and a lion. brass.
12. Alexander VII, with his
Vatican Cloister. brass.
13. Such as are laide in the
foundation of the new
Stately Towne howse of
Lions in France. brass.
These following are Exquisite
coppies but in Ledd.
M. T. Cicero. 14
ΣΟΛΩΝ ΣΑΛΑΜΙ.15.
16. L. Junius Brutus.
17. Luc. An. Seneca.
18. Vera Solonis Effigies.
19. L. Cor. Sulla Cos.
20. C. Marius. VII. Cos.
21. Cn. Pompeius Magnus.
22. Cyrus Rex Persarum
23. M. Junius Brutus.
24. Aristippus Cirenensis.
25. Aristippus Cirenensis.
26. Monsr de Liergue Judge Cri-
mimal of Lions, a greate vir-
tuoso, with a large Chamber
full of Antiquities, and varie-
ties. my worthy friend.
The 4 Eminent Architects,
Sculputures and Peintors.
27. Mich: Angelus Bonarotus.
28. Vera Titiani Effigies.
29. Raphaelis Urbinus.
30. Julius Romanus.
31. 32. Two young faces. I
know not whoe.
33. The French 2 mother.
34. The Towne howse of Lions.
The Curious moulds in ledd
in 8 peeces of Roman history.
35. Diui Julij wth his Lituus.
brass
36. Augustus cū Concordia. brass.
37. [GREEK TEXT]
Of Moderne and Ancient
Medalls of God, silver and brass
betweene 4 and 500. In 13
drawers, which fashion of
cabinets for coynes and Medals.
I learned of the Jesuites li-
braries.
It. The first 17 Cæsars in theire
order, whereof Otho is hard to
get. Among the rest there may
be more.
It. Janus. very Ancient.
It. Augustus cū Agrippa. Coll.
Mem. now Nimes in France.
It. Hercules withe the 12 figures
of the Zodiac
It. Titus. Gold.
It. Athens owle wth Minerva.
It. Alexander, wth Bucephals heade
and 3 ???? for Sicily. Siluer. Ancient.
[The following items are on detached papers:]
(69). [Ribbons with the inscriptions Altezza della B.
Vergine -- Altezza del Bambino,
&c.] From Madonna di Loretto, for curiosity
-- to know the folly.
(70). For curiosity, because sold in the shops at Rome, so that for 2s. 6d. I had these 34 (pretended) reliques of saints’ bones.
(71.) The native Virginian money, gold,
silver, pearls, brought over by Mr. Alexander Coocke,
that, being thrust out of his living at Dunkester,
in Yorkshire, by the rebels,
See the Introduction, p. xxviii.
went over chaplain to Sr Tho.
Lonsford, and at the King’s Restauration was made minister of Chislet, near Canterbury, in Kent, by Archbishop Juxon. The black, that is the gold, the name
forgot.
The long white, their silver, called Ranoke.
The small white, their pearl, called Wapenpeake.
The wife and daughter of Mr. Cooke gave me them as a
present at a new year’s time.
JOHN BARGRAVE, Præb. Cant., 1673.