/ 2008-05-25 00:00:00

Human nature has singular varieties: here was a man who
expended his very existence in gathering up the works of others, and
died without giving to the world one of his own. But Horace Walpole has
done him justice. After Vertue's death he bought his manuscripts from
his widow. In one of his pocket-books was contained the whole history of
this man of one idea: Vertue began his collection in 1713, and worked at
it until his death in 1757, forty-four years.
He died in the belief that he should one day publish an unique work on
painting and painters: such was the aim of his existence, and his study
must have been even more curious than the wonderfully crammed, small
house at Islington, where William Upcott, the 'Old Mortality' in his
line, who saved from the housemaid's fire-lighting designs the MSS. Of
Evelyn's
Life and Letters, which he found tossing about in the old gallery at
Wotton, near Dorking, passed his days. Like Upcott, like Palissy, Vertue
lived and died under the influence of one isolated aim, effort, and
hope.
In these men, the cherished and amiable monomania of gifted minds was
realized. Upcott had every possible autograph from every known hand in
his collection: Palissy succeeded in making glazed china; but Vertue
left his ore to the hands of others to work out into shape, and the man
who moulded his crude materials was Horace Walpole, and Vertue's forty
volumes were shaped into a readable work, as curious and accurate in
facts as it is flippant and prejudiced in style and opinions.
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