60. Kelsall, Charles.
Phantasm / OF / AN UNIVERSITY: / WITH / Prolegomena. / BY /
CHARLES KELSALL, ESQ. / AUTHOR OF "A LETTER FROM
ATHENS," AND OF "A TRANSLATION OF / THE TWO LAST
PLEADINGS OF CICERO AGAINST VERRES." / "MINIME
MIRUM EST SI SCIENTIAE NON CRESCANT, CUM / "A
RADICIBUS SUIS SINT SEPARATAE." / FRANCISC. BACON,
Nov. Org. Aphor. lxxx. / LONDON: / PRINTED BY J. MOYES,
GREVILLE STREET, HATTON GARDEN, / FOR WHITE,
COCHRANE, AND CO. FLEET STREET. / M.DCCC.XIV.
Large 4to. Half title (1 leaf); title page (1 leaf); dedication (1 leaf);
half title for Part the First (1 leaf); text ([1]-123); 2 engraved plates;
half title for Part the Second (1 leaf); text ([127]-74); engraved plate;
list of engravings (1 leaf); 15 engravings, all folding.
The plates were designed by Charles Kelsall. The engravers were Henry
Moses (No. 47); J. Rolfe; and Charles Wild (1781-1835), an architectural
painter and engraver.
In his Phantasam, Charles Kelsall (fl.1812-20), a writer who used
three pseudonyms - Zachary Craft, Arpinas Laurea, and Britannicus
Mela - as well as his own name, gives his proposals for a new university,
saying that the "great art of education is not to immerse minds in science,
but to store them so far, that an elastic reaction and play of the intellectual
powers may remain" (p. 25).
He suggests that a university should consist of six colleges, for Civil
Polity and Languages, Fine Arts, Agriculture and Manufactures, Natural
Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, and Mathematics. At a proposed
cost of £5,000,000 he would build a complex of these six colleges, each in
a single building in the center of its own courtyard, edged with dormitories,
the courtyards grouped so that there is a large central court containing
a chapel and a library.
He says that his "main object . . . is the architectural disposition
of a new University. . . . With the hope of but rarely violating the
Vitruvian rules, of abiding generally by the spirit of the Grecian school,
and of indulging occasionally in the display of the best parts of the
Italian style, I have undertaken the following designs, and submit them
to the candid decision of the public" (pp. 127-28).
He goes on to describe in neoclassic, but somewhat pompous, terms
the ideal university's senate house, public library, and museum:
The Ionic columns are from the Temple of Erechtheus at Athens, with the
omission of the flutings. The Doric are after Vitruvius, as delineated by
Galiani. The Apollo of Belvedere, and Pallas of Velletri, one of the best
statues of the goddess transmitted from antiquity, stand on each side of the
portico of the Public Library. I know not whether my having introduced two
windows in the intercolumniations of the wings will be approved. The araeostyle
disposition has, however, been there adopted. The windows are rather
larger than I could have wished. [P. 133]
He then suggests that the subjects for the pedimental scultpure of
this group should be "Ptolemy Lagus lays the first stone of the Alexandrian
Library" and "Sylla orders the Library of Apellicon, the Peripatetic,
to be removed to Rome." In spite of these neoclassic directions,
he also gives alternate elevations for his institution in the Saxon and
Norman and Gothic Revival modes (see Plate LVII). The second part
of the Phantasm contains the architectural detail.
The copy received by Jefferson for the University before he made
up the want list was the gift of James Madison, but it has not survived.
A duplicate has been recently acquired, the gift of the Thomas Jefferson
Memorial Foundation.
U. Va.
*LA637.K5.1814
