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HAMILTON, (THE RIGHT
HONOURABLE SIR) WILLIAM, British ambassador at the court of Naples, and
celebrated for his patronage of the fine arts, and his investigations on
the subject of volcanoes, was born in 1730. Neither biographers nor
contemporary periodical writers have furnished any account of his
education or early habits; all that is commemorated regarding him
previous to the commencement of his public life, is, that his family, a
branch of the noble house of Hamilton, was in very reduced
circumstances. He was in the most difficult of all situations—poor,
highborn, and a Scotsman. "I was condemned," to use his own words, "to
make my way in the world, with an illustrious name and a thousand
pounds." Like many of his countrymen so situated, he had a choice
betwixt semi-starvation in the army, and an affluent marriage—he
prudently preferred the latter; and in 1755 he found himself most
happily settled in life, with a young lady of beauty, connexions,
amiable qualifications, and £5000 a-year. It is very probable that Mr
Hamilton spent his hours in philosophical ease, until his acquisition of
that situation in which he afterwards distinguished himself. In 1764, he
was appointed ambassador to the court of Naples, where he continued till
the year 1800. If his appointment as a resident ambassador for so long a
period, is to be considered as but a method of expressing in more
consequential terms the employment of an agent for advancing the study
of the arts, the person was well chosen for the purpose, and the
interests of the public were well attended to; but if Mr Hamilton’s
claims to national respect are to be judged by his merely diplomatic
duties, the debt, in addition to the salary he received, will be very
small. The reason why a permanent representative of the British
government should have been found requisite in Sicily, is in reality one
of those circumstances which a diplomatist only could explain. The fame
acquired in other departments by the subject of our memoir, has prompted
his biographers to drag to light his diplomatic exertions, yet, although
nothing has been discovered which can throw a blot on his good name, the
amount of service performed in thirty-six years is truly ludicrous. He
entered into explanations with the marquis Tanucci, first minister of
Sicily, regarding some improper expressions used by a gentleman of the
press of the name of Torcia, in his "Political Sketch of Europe." He
managed to keep his Sicilian majesty neuter during the American war. He
acted with prudence during the family misunderstandings between Spain
and Naples in 1784; and finally, he exerted himself in preventing any
mischief from being perpetrated by "an eccentric character among our
nobility," who had made attempts to give much trouble to prudent people,
by his conduct at Naples. But the kingdom of the two Sicilies was but
the shadow of a European power, and was only regarded as it followed one
or other of the great nations whose contests shook the world. It
afforded in its active existence no arena for the statesman or the
soldier. It was in the dust of buried ages that was hid beneath its soil
that the active mind found employment in that feeble kingdom, and these
were the only objects worthy to absorb the attention of the
distinguished person whom we are commemorating.
On his arrival at the
interesting country of his mission, Mr Hamilton repeatedly visited
Vesuvius and Etna, and from a minute examination of the whole
surrounding country, collected numerous important geological
observations, which were from time to time, between the years 1766 and
1779, transmitted to the Royal Society, and afterwards made their
appearance in the transactions of that body, and in the Annual Register.
It was the design of Sir William Hamilton, to point out in these
observations such evidence as might lead geologists to a better
comprehension of the influence of subterraneous fires on the structure
of the earth, and to display the first links of a chain of reasoning,
which it was his hope future industry might make complete. It was his
opinion that the land for many miles round Naples, was not, as it was
generally supposed, a district of fruitful land, subject to the ravages
of flame; but a part of the surface of the globe which owed its very
existence to the internal conflagrations by which it was shaken. In
illustration of this he considered Etna to have been formed by a series
of eruptions, at protracted periods, as the smaller eminence of Monte
Nuovo, near Puzzuoli, had been formed by one eruption of 48 hours’
continuance. Among other minute circumstances, he discovered that the
streets of Pompeii were paved with the lava of a former age, and that
there was a deep stratum of lava and burnt matter under the foundations
of the town, showing that the earliest eruption of history was not the
first of nature, and that the labours of man might have been more than
once buried beneath such coverings. As illustrations of these valuable
remarks, the author collected a magnificent assortment of the various
descriptions of lava, which he lodged in our national museum, that
naturalists might be able to trace a connexion betwixt these immediate
productions of the volcano, and other portions of the crust of the
globe. These remarks were afterwards digested and systematized, and
produced, first "Observations on mount Vesuvius, mount Etna, and other
volcanoes of the two Sicilies," published in London in 1772. The next, a
more aspiring work, was published at Naples in 1776, in two folio
volumes, and called "Campi Phlegraei, Observations on the Volcanoes of
the two Sicilies, as they have been communicated to the Royal Society of
London, by Sir William Hamilton." The numerous plates in this
magnificent work of art, from views taken on the spot by Mr Valris, a
British artist, are faintly engraved in little more then outline, and
coloured with so much depth and truth, that they assume the appearance
of original water-colour drawings of a very superior order. They are
illustrative of his favourite theory, and represent those geological
aspects of the country which he considered peculiarly applicable as
illustrations. It is to be remarked, that neither in his communications
to the Royal Society, nor in his larger works, does this author trace
any complete exclusive system. He merely points out the facts on which
others may work, acknowledging that he is disposed to pay more respect
to the share which fire has had in the formation of the crust of the
earth, than Buffon and others are disposed to admit. "By the help of
drawings," he says, "in this new edition of my communications to the
society, which so clearly point out the volcanic origin of this country,
it is to be hoped that farther discoveries of the same nature may be
made, and that subterraneous fires will be allowed to have had a greater
share in the formation of mountains, islands, and even tracts of land,
than has hitherto been suspected." Many men of eminence at that time
visited Sir William Hami1ton, and marked the progress of his
discoveries, and among the rest Monsieur Saussure, professor of natural
history at Geneva, who accompanied him in his investigations, and
acceded to the arguments he derived from them. During the course of his
communications to the Royal Society, it was the fortune of the author to
have an opportunity of witnessing Vesuvius in eruption.
In October, 1767,
occurred the eruption which is considered to have been the
twenty-seventh from that which in the days of Titus destroyed
Herculaneum and Pompei. The mountain was visited by Hamilton and a party
of his friends during this interesting scene, which has afforded
material for one of the most graphic of his communications. But a
grander scene of devastation attracted his attention in October, 1779,
when the unfortunate inhabitants of Ottaiano had reason to dread the
fate described by Pliny. Of this memorable eruption our author
transmitted an account to Sir Joseph Banks, which he afterwards
published as a supplement to his "Campi Phlegraei."
Previously to the period
of the last event we have mentioned, the subject of our memoir was
connected with the preparation of another great work, for which the
world has incurred to him a debt of gratitude. He had made a vast
collection of Etruscan antiquities—vases, statues, and fresco paintings,
partly dug from the earth, and partly purchased from the museums of the
decayed nobility, among which was that great collection now deposited in
the British museum, which had belonged to the senatorial house of
Porcinari. Of the most precious of these remains of antiquity, Hamilton
allowed the adventurer D’Hancerville, to publish illustrated plates,
liberally allowing the artist to appropriate the whole profits of the
work. "Long since," he says "Mr Hamilton had taken pleasure in
collecting those precious monuments, and had afterwards trusted them to
him for publication, requiring only some elegance in the execution, and
the condition, that the work should appear under the auspices of his
Britannic majesty." The work accordingly was published at Naples, under
the title of "Antiquites Etrusques, Greques, et Romaines." The abbe
Winckelman mentions, that two volumes of this work were published in
1765, and two others the year following. Along with the author of a
notice of Sir William Hamilton’s Life, which appeared in Baldwin’s
Literary Journal, we have been unable to discover a copy of the two
former volumes of this work, or to find any reference to them on which
we can repose trust, nor do we perceive that the two latter volumes bear
the marks of being a continuation, and neither of the after editions of
Paris, 1787, and Florence, 1801 and 1808, which might have informed us
on this subject, are at present accessible to us. The two volumes we
have mentioned as having seen, contain general remarks on the subjects
of the plates, in English and French, which both the imaginative matter,
and the language, show to have been translated from the latter language
into the former. The plates, by far the most valuable part of the work,
introduced a new spirit into the depiction of the useful remains of
antiquity, which enabled the artist who wished to imitate them, to have
as correct an idea of the labours of the ancients, as if the originals
were before him. The terra-cotta vases predominate; some of these are
votive offerings.....others have been adapted for use. A general view of
the form of each is given, with a measurement, along with which there is
a distinct facsimile of the paintings which so frequently occur on these
beautiful pieces of pottery; the engraving is bold and accurate, and the
colouring true to the original. This work has been the means of adding
the bold genius of classic taste to modern accuracy and skill in
workmanship. From the painter and statuary, to the fabricator of the
most grotesque drinking cup, it has afforded models to artists, and is
confidently asserted to have gone far in altering and improving the
general taste of the age. During the exertions we have been
commemorating, Hamilton was in the year 1772, created a knight of the
Bath, a circumstance which will account for our sometimes varying his
designation, as the events mentioned happened previously to, or after
his elevation. The retired philosophical habits of Sir William Hamilton
prevented him in the earliest years of his mission from forming
intimacies with persons similarly situated, and he lived a life of
domestic privacy, study, and observation of nature. But fame soon forced
friends on his retirement, and all the eminent persons who visited his
interesting neighbourhood became his guests. One of his friends, the
French ambassador at the court of Naples, has told us that he protected
the arts because the arts protected him, and enriched him. The motives
of the characteristic may be doubted. A love of art fascinates even
mercenary men into generosity, and the whole of Sir William Hamilton’s
conduct shows a love of art, and a carelessness of personal profit by
his knowledge, not often exhibited. Duclos, secretary of the French
academy, on visiting Naples, has drawn an enthusiastic picture of the
felicity then enjoyed by Sir William Hamilton—his lady and himself in
the prime of life, his daughter just opening to womanhood, beauty, and
accomplishments; the public respect paid to his merits, and the internal
peace of his amiable family; but this state of things was doomed to be
sadly reversed. In 1775, Sir William lost his only daughter, and in
1782, he had to deplore the death of a wife who had brought him
competence and domestic peace. After an absence of twenty years, he
revisited Britain in 1784. The purpose of this visit is whispered to
have been that he might interfere with an intended marriage of his
nephew, Mr Greville, to Miss Emma Hart. If such was his view, it was
fulfilled in a rather unexpected manner. It is at all times painful to
make written reference to those private vices, generally suspected and
seldom proved, the allusion to which usually receives the name of
"scandal;" but in the case of the second lady Hamilton, they have been
so unhesitatingly and amply detailed by those who have chosen to record
such events, and so complacently received by the lady herself and her
friends, that they must be considered matters of history, which no man
will be found chivalrous enough to contradict. This second Theodosia
passed the earlier part of her life in obscurity and great indigence,
but soon showed that she had various ways in which she might make an
independent livelihood. Some one who has written her memoirs, has given
testimony to the rather doubtful circumstance, that her first act of
infamy was the consequence of charitable feeling, which prompted her to
give her virtue in exchange for the release of a friend who had been
impressed. Be this as it may, she afterwards discovered more profitable
means of using her charms. At one time she was a comic actress—at
another, under the protection of some generous man of fashion; but her
chief source of fame and emolument seems to have been her connexion with
Romney and the other great artists of the day, to whom she seems to have
furnished the models of more goddesses than classic poets ever invented.
Mr Greville, a man of accurate taste, had chosen her as his companion,
and the same principles of correct judgment which regulated his choice
probably suggested a transference of his charge to the care of Sir
William Hamilton. His own good opinion of her merits, and the character
she had received from his friend, prompted Sir William soon after to
marry this woman, and she took the title of lady Hamilton in 1791. At
that time both returned to Britain, where Sir William attempted in vain
to procure for his fair but frail bride, an introduction to the British
court, which might authorize, according to royal etiquette, her
presentation at the court of Naples. But this latter was found not so
difficult a barrier as that which it was considered necessary to
surmount before attempting it. The beauty and, perhaps, the engaging
talents of lady Hamilton procured for her notoriety, and notoriety
brings friends. She contrived to be essentially useful, and very
agreeable, to the king and queen of the Sicilies; and procured for
herself their friendship, and for her husband additional honours. Her
connection with lord Nelson, and the manner in which she did the state
service, are too well known; but justice, on passing speedily over the
unwelcome subject, cannot help acknowledging that she seems here to have
felt something like real attachment. The latter days of this woman
restored her to the gloom and obscurity of her origin. She made
ineffectual attempts after the death of her husband to procure a pension
from government. Probably urged by necessity, she insulted the ashes of
the great departed, by publishing her correspondence with lord Nelson,
followed by a denial of her accession to the act, which did not deceive
the public. She died at Calais in February, 1815, in miserable obscurity
and debt, without a friend to follow her to the grave, and those who
took an interest in the youthful daughter of Nelson, with difficulty
prevented her from being seized, according to a barbarous law, for the
debts of her mother.
But we return with
pleasure to the more legitimate object of our details. There was one
subject of importance on which some prejudices on the part of the
Sicilian government, prevented Sir William Hamilton from acquiring that
knowledge which he thought might be interesting and useful to his
country. A chamber in the royal museum of Portici had been set aside for
containing the manuscripts, of which a small collection had been found
in an edifice in Pompeii; and on the discovery that these calcined
masses were genuine manuscripts of the days of Pliny, the greatest
curiosity was manifested to acquire a knowledge of their contents. The
government was assailed by strangers for the watchfulness with which
these were kept from their view, and the little exertion which had been
bestowed in divulging their contents: the latter accusation was perhaps
scarcely just; some venerable adherents of the church of Rome did not
hesitate to spend months of their own labour, in exposing to the world
the sentences which an ancient Roman had taken a few minutes to compose.
The public were soon made sufficiently acquainted with the subject to be
disappointed at the exposure of a few sentences of the vilest of
scholastic stuff; and the narrow-mindedness of which Sir William
Hamilton had to complain, has been since discontinued, and England has
had an opportunity of showing her skill in the art of unrolling papyrus.
To acquire the information, for which he found the usual means
unavailing, Sir William Hamilton entered into an agreement with father
Anthony Piaggi, a Piarist monk, the most diligent of the decypherers, by
which, in consideration of a salary of £100, the latter was to furnish
the former with a weekly sheet of original information, which, to avoid
ministerial detection, was to be written in cipher. The contract seems
to have been executed to the satisfaction of both parties, and Sir
William procured for father Anthony an addition to his salary, equal to
the sum at which it was originally fixed; and on the death of the father
in 1798, he bequeathed all his manuscripts and papers to his patron. Sir
William Hamilton, on his visit to Britain in 1791, was created a privy
councillor. The circumstances which in 1798 compelled him to accompany
the Sicilian court to Palermo, are matter of history, and need not be
here repeated. In the year 1800, he left Sicily, and soon afterwards,
accompanied by captain Leake, and lieutenant Hayes, undertook a journey
through Egypt, visiting and describing with great minuteness the city of
Thebes, and the other well-known parts of that interesting country. The
notes collected by him on this occasion were published after his death
in the year 1809, under the title "AEgyptiaca, or Some Account of the
Ancient and Modern State of Egypt, as obtained in the years 1801 and
1802, by William Hamilton, F.A.S." – "This work," says the Edinburgh
Review, "will be found an excellent supplement to the more elaborate and
costly work of Denon. His style is in general simple and unaffected: and
therefore, loses nothing, in our opinion, when compared with that of
some of the travellers who have gone before him." Sir William Hamilton
died in April, 1803,.in the 73rd year of his age. His death
deprived the world of two great works which he hoped to have lived to
prepare, on the subject of the museum of Portici. |
