a thorough gentleman, and no mean scholar.' He devoted
his life to his favourite pursuit, the formation of his collections; and
Edwards, in his _Lives of the Founders of the British Museum_, tells us
that--'For almost forty years it was his daily practice to walk from his
house in Queen Square, Westminster, to the shop of Elmsly, a bookseller
in the Strand, and thence to the still more noted shop of Tom Payne, by
the "Mews-Gate." Once a week, he varied the daily walk by calling on
Mudge, a chronometer-maker, to get his watch regulated. His excursions
had, indeed, one other and not infrequent variety--dictated by the calls
of Christian benevolence--but of these he took care to have no note
taken.... The ruling passion kept its strength to the last. An agent was
buying prints, for addition to the store, when the Collector was dying.
About four days before his death, Mr. Cracherode mustered strength to
pay a farewell visit to the old shop at the Mews-Gate. He put a finely
printed _Terence_ (from the press of Foulis) into one pocket, and a
large paper _Cebes_ into another; and then--with a longing look at a
certain choice _Homer_, in the course of which he mentally, and somewhat
doubtingly, balanced its charms with those of its twin brother in Queen
Square--parted finally from the daily haunt of forty peripatetic and
studious years.' Mr. Cracherode is also mentioned in the _Pursuits of
Literature_, by T.J. Mathias:--

'Or must I, as a wit, with learned air,
Like Doctor Dibdin, to Tom Payne's repair,
Meet Cyril Jackson and mild Cracherode there?
"Hold!" cries Tom Payne, "that margin let me measure,
And rate the separate value of the treasure."
Eager they gaze. "Well, Sirs, the feat is done.
Cracherode's _Poetae Principes_ have won."'

Mr. Cracherode, who was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society
of Antiquaries, and a Trustee of the British Museum, died at Queen
Square on the 5th of April 1799, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He
bequeathed the whole of his collections to the nation, with the
exception of two books. A copy of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible was
given to Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, and a _princeps_ Homer,
once the property of De Thou, to Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ Church;
but these volumes ultimately rejoined their former companions in the
British Museum.

The library formed by Mr. Cracherode is marvellously rich in choice
copies of rare and early editions of the c