To the first volume of that work Mr. Payne KNIGHT had already prefixed his _Preliminary Dissertation on the Progress of Ancient Sculpture_. After showing that of Phœnician art we have no real knowledge other than that which is to be derived from the study of coins, and that thence it may be learnt that the Phœnicians had artisans, but not artists, he goes on to survey Greek art in its successive phases. That art, at its best, finds, he thinks, a typical expression, or summary, in the saying ascribed to LYSIPPUS: ‘It is for the sculptor to represent men as they seem to be, not as they really are.’ He dates the culmination of Greek sculpture as ranging between the years _B.C._ 450 and 400, and as due to the national pride and energy which were excited by the defeat of XERXES and the events which followed. He thinks that what was gained, by the artists of the next half-century, in ideal grace, and in the fluent refinements of workmanship, was obtained only by a loss of energy, of characteristic expression, and of originality—the εθος of art. In the works of LYSIPPUS and his school (_B.C._ 350–300), he sees a brief resuscitation of the vigour of the former period, combined with much more than the grace of the latter, to be followed only too swiftly by those desolating wars ‘in which the temples were destroyed, their treasures of art pillaged, and artists, for the first time, saw their works perish before themselves.’ In the ‘_Dissertation_,’ as in the ‘_Inquiry_,’ there are many statements and many reasonings to which subsequent discoveries have brought a tacit correction. [Sidenote: MR. PAYNE KNIGHT AND THE ELGIN MARBLES.] The passage in the former about the Elgin Marbles had to be corrected by the evidence of the author’s own eyesight. His examination before the Commons’ Committee of 1816 was an amusing scene. The key-note was struck by the witness’s first words. To the question ‘Have you seen the marbles brought to England by Lord ELGIN?’ he replied, ‘Yes. I have looked them over.’ But on this point, enough has been said already in a previous page. Both to the _Edinburgh Review_ and to the _Classical Journal_ Mr. KNIGHT was a frequent and valuable contributor. It was in the latter periodical that his Prolegomena to HOMER were first given to the world, although he had printed a small edition (limited to fifty copies) for private circulation, as early as in the year 1808.[66] His latest poetical work, the Romance of _Alfred_, I have never had the opportunity of reading. Richard Payne KNIGHT died on the twenty-fourth of April, 1824, in the 75th year of his age. He bequeathed his whole Collections to the British Museum, of which he had long been a zealous and faithful Trustee. He made no conditions, other than that his gift should be commemorated by the addition to the Trust of a perpetual KNIGHT ‘Family Trustee.’