Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/16

 than as standing alone in their peculiar studies. One of his first measures, when his accession to the crown of Great Britain had increased his influence in Europe, was to interest himself in behalf of Leibnitz and Muratori in their attempts to draw from the archives of the jealous republic of Venice, materials for their gigantic undertakings in the same line. At Cambridge, again, he appears as purchasing and bestowing on the University the invaluable MS. Collections of Bishop More, which have helped to make the Public Library there one of the most useful and famous historical libraries in Europe. Whatever may have been the king's purpose in these several measures, we may safely, I think, affirm that it was not a mere political or official object which determined him when, in 1724, he wished to confer a mark of favour on Cambridge and to hold out an olive-branch to Oxford, to give to his sister foundations the same character of professorships of Modern History. Leibnitz was the most learned man he had ever seen, and perhaps Leibnitz's learning was most intelligible to George I in the shape of the Annales rerum Brunsvicensium. Nor should I omit to mention what, in the opinion of their most adverse critics, ought to be a redeeming point in the later Hanoverian princes. George II refounded and reformed the Chair which I have the honour to fill; under George III began those long and at last successful investigations into the archives of the kingdom and the treasures of our great public libraries, which are now but beginning to bear a promise of abundant interest: under George IV, as king of Great Britain and Hanover, was begun the great series of Monuments of German History, the editor of which was once wont to call himself Historiographer of the Most Serene Guelfic house, and of which the king of Hanover was a patron to an extent double of that of Prussia, and nearly equal to the patronage of all the rest of the German Courts; a great work which has made Hanover its home, and for the possession of which our Library here is indebted to the munificence of king George V.

It is hardly, I think, necessary to look further than the king himself for the influence under which the foundation was first projected; the exact time and the declared purpose of the