I have placed the Cotton at the close of the Library series, though we have no proof that it was in fact erected later than the other three which also bear the date 1757, because a curious history attaches to the discovery of the model here reproduced.

At the beginning of February, 1924, I was asked to look at a terracotta bust just sent for inspection to the National Portrait Gallery, which bore a label, in writing about a century old, stating that it was the portrait of Harvey, the discover of the circulation of the blood, and had long been in the possession of his descendants.

A week or two later, I saw it again, and soon afterwards revisited Trinity Library to refresh my memory of the Roubiliacs. To my amazement, I instantly recognised the “Harvey” terracotta as the original life-size model of the bust of Sir Robert Cotton. The explanation is clear enough. The name of Harvey was attached by tradition to the terracotta, not as the donor but as the subject of the bust. That donor, Eliab Harvey, was in fact a descendant of the learned Harvey, and his possession of the terracotta, which he must have obtained from Roubiliac himself, led to the portrait being subsequently and erroneously identified by the family as that of their distinguished ancestor.