A ntiquaries and Antiquities in Eighteenth-Century England

Abstract

The importance of history for eighteenth-century culture has long been accepted as a truism, but historians have been rather slower to recognize the significance of antiquarianism as the essential element in Hume's "historical age." It was antiquarianism that provided the raw material from which the narratives of history could be fashioned. One of the themes that has dominated the recent historiography of the eighteenth century is that of the emergence (or non-emergence) of British nationalism and the cultural construction of national identities as a defining feature of eighteenth-century society. 1 A sense of the past and historic identities were essential features in the imagined communities of eighteenth-century nationalism. However, surprisingly little recognition has been given to the part played by antiquarian scholarship in pursuing the historic origins of these identities. 2 Antiquarianism pervaded many facets of eighteenth-century culture, but the discipline, and in particular the study of English or British antiquities, is not a subject that features largely in most cultural histories of the period. In one of the most recent and wide-ranging publications on eighteenth-century culture, the antiquarian tradition was barely even mentioned in passing. 3 The pursuit of classical antiquities, their collection, and their impact on art and aesthetics have been better served: Francis Haskell has studied the classical antiquaries of both Britain and Europe, while Philip Ayres has recently surveyed the influence of the [End Page 181] idea of Rome and classical culture upon English culture. 4 The antiquarian collectors of Paris and Venice have been the subject of illuminating and extremely suggestive articles by Krystztof Pomian. 5 However, the native antiquaries of the British Isles, those who devoted themselves to the historical remains and monuments of their own country, have in general received less sympathetic treatment and have been consigned to a backwater of pedants. Antiquaries and antiquarian pursuits merit our attention, on one level as a significant aspect of eighteenth-century culture, and, more broadly, to enhance our understanding of the development of national identities, the creation of a national heritage, and the emergence of the ethos of preservationism.