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4 - The Antiquary in the Field: Empathy with the Army of Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2023

Humphrey Welfare
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
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Summary

THE LONG WALK AND THE FORERUNNERS: GORDON AND HORSLEY

What signifies that knowledge, say some, which brings no real advantage to mankind? And what is it to anyone, whether the Roman walls pas’d this way or that? Or whether such a Roman inscription is to be read this way or another? To this I would answer: there is that beauty and agreeableness in truth, even supposing it to be merely speculative, as always affords on the discovery of it real pleasure to a well-turned mind: and I will add, that it not only pleases, but enriches and cultivates it too.

Thus John Horsley, a Dissenting minister, schoolmaster and scientist in Morpeth, Northumberland, who was a correspondent of Colin MacLaurin and of some of the most prominent antiquaries of the day: William Stukeley, Roger Gale and Sir John Clerk of Penicuik. Horsley was the author of one of the greatest of British archaeological books, Britannia Romana, published in 1732, in which it is clear that truth for Horsley was bound up with the accuracy of record. The second part of his book, in which he catalogued for the first time all of the inscriptions that had survived from Roman Britain, was for him the most important one and, he wrote, it was also

the most expensive and tedious. Several thousand miles were travelled on this account, to visit ancient monuments, and re-examine them, where there was any doubt or difficulty. A short trial was sufficient to convince one how many originals had remained till then undiscovered, and how few had been published with due accuracy. And therefore I omitted no care nor pains that was necessary to copy these with the greatest exactness, which was the principle design of the work.

He believed that this pursuit of irrefutable evidence was of cultural importance because ‘The youth in every polite nation are generally imployed in acquiring some skill in the Roman language, antiquities, and customs; and an acquaintance with these is supposed to be essentially necessary to a learned education.’

This had certainly been the belief at Lanark Grammar School where William had worked his way through a full Classical curriculum and where he and his peers had had images of the past imprinted upon their imagination.

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General William Roy, 1726-1790
Father of the Ordnance Survey
, pp. 115 - 167
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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