The cardinal4 event of that period was the institution of the Royal Society in 1660, the year of the Restoration. The most conspicuous5 bent3 of the intellectual world was in the direction of physical science, and ‘the great work of interpreting nature was performed by the English of that age as it had never before been performed in any age by any nation[7].’ This was the23 period in which a national Observatory6 was established at Greenwich (1676). To this period belong the chemical discoveries of Boyle, the botanical researches of Sloane, and the classifications of Ray. In every department of knowledge enquiry was roused, and with it the genius of theory, whose movements were sometimes hasty and erratic7. But this tendency was gradually counteracted8 by the deepening conviction that sound knowledge must be based on careful observation, and the need of museums began to be recognized. The Ashmolean Museum was built by the University of Oxford9, in 1683, to receive Elias Ashmole’s collection of curiosities, the formation of which had originated with the Tradescants. The architect was Sir Christopher Wren. Altogether it was a time of new ideas and new institutions.
When the Jewel was found, in 1693, it fell into the hands of persons who belonged both socially and intellectually to the foremost ranks. The first recorded owner was Colonel Nathaniel Palmer, of Fairfield House, in the region of the Quantocks. Of this house and this family some particulars will be related in the ninth chapter.
24
The first notice of the Jewel was published by Dr. Hans Sloane, a Fellow of the Royal Society, eminent10 as physician, natural philosopher, and antiquarian. He was elected Secretary of that Society in 1693, the year in which the Jewel was found. Whether by reason of the new cloud of political and religious trouble which brooded over the land in the latter years of James II, or from whatever cause, so it was that the Philosophical11 Transactions had been suspended for the past six years, and they were resuscitated12 by the new Secretary, who was himself an active contributor. This remarkable man lived to a great age, and when he died, in 1752, in his ninety-second year, his museum was bought by the Government, and this purchase was the origin of the British Museum; for until the middle of the eighteenth century the idea of a national library and museum had never been entertained in England.
The same Act of Parliament (26 Geo. II) which directed the purchase of the Sloane museum also directed the purchase of the Harleian collection of manuscripts which had been made by Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, whose25 name is also memorable13 in the study of the Alfred Jewel; for it was from an engraving14 furnished by Robert Harley, and made from a drawing of his own, that the first of the three figures in Hickes’s Dissertatio Epistolaris was printed.
The first published notice of the Jewel appeared in the Philosophical Transactions (No. 247 in 1698), and it was contributed by Dr. William Musgrave, Fellow of New College, physician in London, and an active member of the Royal Society, and author (1709) of Antiquitates Britanno-Belgic?. He also contributed to Hickes’s Thesaurus the second and third figures of the Jewel which are there engraved[8].
These were the eminent persons who prepared the material for the elaborate account which Hickes (1705) gave of the Alfred Jewel in the first volume of his Thesaurus. For the minuti? of the description he was particularly indebted to Harley and Musgrave, who appear to have been occasional visitors at Fairfield House.
The first impression which prevailed as to its design and use was that it might be an amulet15. This was Dr. Musgrave’s first opinion. But26 afterwards he followed Hickes in supposing it was a pendant to a chain or collar of state, and Hickes even says (but here he must be simply repeating the expressions of his informants) that the cross-pin in the socket16 seems adapted to such a use.
The boar’s snout is developed into a tubular ending which furnishes a socket with a cross-pin, manifestly asking a peg17 or (as artisans speak) a stert; and when this observation was maturely appreciated, it generated two inferences: (1) that there was no provision for attachment18 answering to the above theory; and (2) that in the position imagined, the picture would hang upside down.
These criticisms opened the way for new observations and new conjectures19. The antiquary Hearne interpreted the Jewel as if it were designed to be fixed21 at the extremity22 of a roller on which a manuscript was rolled, as a suitable ornament23 for some ceremonious presentation. But this hypothesis neglected the fact that the Jewel is made with an obverse and a reverse, a front and a back, which renders it quite unfit for such a position as Hearne had assigned to it.
27
By Francis Wise and Samuel Pegge, chief antiquarians of the eighteenth century, it was imagined that our Jewel might have adorned24 the top of a stilus or ancient pen for writing upon a waxen tablet. In refutation of this theory it sufficed to observe how awkward and unwieldy an ornament it would prove to the penman.
Nevertheless, this idea had a career, winning a momentary25 plausibility26 from the assumption that Alfred’s ‘?stel’ was a stylus. In Arch?ologia ii there is a letter signed ‘S. Pegge,’ from which I extract the following:—
‘It is not certainly known to what use this valuable curiosity ... might be put: but among other conjectures Mr. Wise imagines, and very probably, it might have been the handle of a stylus. And if one should say it was one of those styli which the king sent along with his translation of Gregory’s Pastoral, it would be no great absurdity27.... It may here be alleged28 that the king sent his present to the cathedral churches: but, with submission29, this does not imply that he might not also send the like to the two monasteries30 of his own foundation, this of Athelney and the other at Shaftesbury; it is28 most probable he would send a book and a stylus to both those places, and if he did, this jewel in my opinion bids fair to be the handle or upper part of the stylus which was presented by him to the House of Athelney where it was found.’
Collinson, the historian of Somersetshire (1791), in a passage to be quoted below (chapter ix), designates it an amulet, and this was probably the way in which it was usually regarded in the eighteenth century. To this Pegge (in the article cited above) objected as follows: ‘Dr. Musgrave once thought it might be an Amulet, but Alfred never ran (that we know of) into such vanities.’
Passing now to the nineteenth century, Mr. Philip Duncan, in his Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum, advanced the theory that it might have been mounted on the top of a staff (after the manner of a Roman eagle), and that it was carried into battle as a standard to animate31 the courage of warriors32. This exquisite33 bijou, of materials so brittle34 as enamel35 and crystal, cased in a delicate web of golden filigree36, looks strangely inappropriate for the29 fury of battle and the interchange of hard knocks.
And indeed this theory was never suggested to its author by the reason or probability of the thing, but by certain texts which at that time were in better esteem37 than they are now, especially the hagiography of St. Neot, wherein it was said of this saint that he went before the king in war, carrying a palm and guiding him to victory, to all which the palm-bearing figure in the Enamel seemed to correspond. And this also explains why that figure was supposed to represent St. Neot.
In like manner, Hickes was carried away by a passage in pseudo-Ingulph to abandon his first and best interpretation38 of the enamelled Figure, and to adopt the idea that it may have been intended to represent St. Cuthbert[9].
All these speculations39 on the design and use of the Jewel are unsatisfactory and, considering the eminence40 and ability of the propounders, strangely poor in the craft of interpretation. If this surprizes us in an age when the minds of men were so much awakened41, we should30 remember that the new movement was chiefly in the direction of physical science, and that little progress had as yet been made in the analysis of human history and the science of historical criticism.
From these abortive42 attempts at interpretation, we gather that this singularly elaborate phenomenon of a Jewel had the effect of setting curiosity and imagination awork in the minds of those who contemplated43 it, and that some theory, however precipitate44, became a sort of necessity. To this category must be added a more recent conjecture20, which, as it proceeded from a highly honoured source, as it was persistently45 and circumstantially argued out, and as it has been widely accepted, demands a chapter by itself.
[7] Macaulay, History, c. iii.
[8] Appendix A.
[9] Appendix B.
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1
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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2
wren
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| n.鹪鹩；英国皇家海军女子服务队成员 | |
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3
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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4
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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5
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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6
observatory
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| n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台 | |
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7
erratic
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| adj.古怪的，反复无常的，不稳定的 | |
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8
counteracted
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| 对抗，抵消( counteract的过去式 ) | |
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9
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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10
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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11
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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12
resuscitated
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| v.使（某人或某物）恢复知觉，苏醒( resuscitate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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13
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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14
engraving
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| n.版画；雕刻（作品）；雕刻艺术；镌版术v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的现在分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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15
amulet
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| n.护身符 | |
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16
socket
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| n.窝，穴，孔，插座，插口 | |
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17
peg
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| n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定 | |
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18
attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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19
conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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20
conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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21
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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22
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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23
ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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24
adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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25
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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26
plausibility
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| n. 似有道理, 能言善辩 | |
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27
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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28
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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29
submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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30
monasteries
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| 修道院( monastery的名词复数 ) | |
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31
animate
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| v.赋于生命，鼓励；adj.有生命的，有生气的 | |
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32
warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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33
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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enamel
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| n.珐琅，搪瓷，瓷釉；(牙齿的)珐琅质 | |
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filigree
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| n.金银丝做的工艺品；v.用金银细丝饰品装饰；用华而不实的饰品装饰；adj.金银细丝工艺的 | |
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37
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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38
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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39
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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40
eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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41
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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42
abortive
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| adj.不成功的，发育不全的 | |
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43
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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44
precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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45
persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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