Volume 1

The Farington diary / edited by James Greig.

  • Joseph Farington
Date:
[1922?-1928]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Farington diary / edited by James Greig. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be a criterion from which the Academy, though not a literary body, might form a judgment of the respective estimation in which the works stood.” Gillies also said that if he were not elected it would do him great injury, owing to a suspicion of his holding democratic principles. On June 5 Boswell told Farington that, as he was going to Scotland in a fortnight, he was very anxious to suspend the election rather than Gillies should be elected in his absence. Later, on June 14, Farington records that: “ Boswell has had a conversation with Sir Wm. Chambers on the subject of filling Mr. Gibbons vacancy. The King told Sir Wm. that unless the election was unanimous He would not sanction it. That he never approved of these appointments in the first instance, and wd. not allow such a question to divide the Academy.” The election was postponed and did not indeed take place until the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Royal Academy on December 10, 1818, when William Mitford, author of the “ History of Greece,” was unanimously elected to fill the professorship of Ancient History, formerly held by Goldsmith and Edward Gibbon. Thus a period of 25 years elapsed between the death of Gibbon and the appointment of Mitford, the candidate favoured by Boswell, who died in 1795.—Ed.] VOL. I. 4