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Diamonds covered in cobwebs Antiquarians may have been derided as musty, dusty scholars, says Noel Malcolm, but they were vital in shaping history as a subject

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20040307
Author:NOEL MALCOLM

Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain

by Rosemary Sweet

Hambledon & London, pounds 25, 473 pp

pounds 25 ( pounds 2.25 p&p) 0870 155 7222

"AN ANTIQUARY" , observed the satirical writer Samuel Butler in the 1660s, "is an old frippery-Philosopher, that has so strange a natural Affection to worm-eaten speculation, that it is apparent he has a Worm in his Skull. He values one old Invention, that is lost and never to be recovered, before all the new ones in the World, tho' never so useful."

This was a comic stereotype with a long history. It was still going strong in ...

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