KNIGHT, RICHARD PAYNE, eldest son of the Reverend Thomas Knight, of Wormealey Grange, In the county of Hereford, was born in 1750. lie was a weak and sickly child, and his father did not send him to school, or suffer him to learn either Greek or Latin at home. Soon after his father's death, which took place in 1764, he was sent to a grammar-school in the neighbourhood, where he made a rapid progress in the Latin language. After leaving school he did not go to a university, but at the age of eighteen he commenced the study of Greek, which he pursued with great diligence, and which became one of the chief occupations of his life. Shortly afterwards he visited Italy, principally ou account of his health ; and there he seems to have formed the taste for the fine arts, and espe cially for the productions of tho Greek sculptors, which was his moat prominent characteristic. Subsequently to his father's death he inherited the largo estate of Downton, near Ludlow, from his grand father, on which, after his return from Italy, be built a mansion, and he devoted much time to improving and ornamenting his grounds. In 1780 he was elected to servo in parliament for the borough of Leo minster, and in the following parliament of 1784, for the borough of Ludlow, for which he continued to sit until the year 1806, when he retired from parliament. While a member of the House of Commons he acted with Mr. Fox, but he never took any part in debate, nor did he ever interest himself about politics. In 1814 he was appointed a trustee of the British Museum, as the representative of the Townley, family.
Early iu his life he commenced the formation of a collection of antiques and other works of art, to which his large fortune enabled him to make constant additions. It consisted principally of ancient bronzes and Greek coins; and it was preserved in his London house in Soho Square, which contained a large room fitted up for the pur pose. He bequeathed his collection (the value of which was estimated at 50,000/.) to the British Museum. He had originally intended to bequeath it to the Royal Academy. The bill legalising the acceptance of this collectiou by the trustees of the British Museum received the royal assent on the 17th of June 1824. Mr. Knight died in his house in London, on the 24th of April 1824, and ho was buried at Wormesley church, in Herefordshire.
Mr. Payne Knight began at an early age to admire the remains of Grecian art, and hence in his studies of Greek literature his attention was mainly directed to those subjects which illustrate Greek sculptures and coins, namely, mythology and the archaic Greek language. Accord
ingly his first work was 'An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus lately existing at hernia, in the Kingdom of Naples; to which is added a Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its connexion with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients,' 4to, 17S6. (Distributed by the Dilettanti Society.) This illustratiou of the obscene worship of Priapus was severely censured by the author of the 'Pursuits of Literature ; but although it may be doubted whether the subject was worthy of investigation, it is certain that Mr. Knight bad no other object in view than the purely scientific one of elucidating an obscure part of the Greek theology. His next production was ' An Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet,' 4to, London, 1791. This work, which was reviewed by Person in the 'Monthly Review' for 1794 (see his article reprinted in Porson's Tracts,' p. 108, ' Museum Cnticum,' vol p. 489), was chiefly remarkable for an exposure of the forgery of certain Greek inscriptions which Fourmont professed to have found in Laconia. These inscriptions had deceived the most eminent scholars, among whom it is sufficient to name Winckelmaun, Villoison, Valckenaer, and Heyne; and their genuineness was first questioned by Payne Knight, who supported his opinion with an elaborate argu ment : their spuriousness is now universally admitted. (See Boeckh, 'Corp. Inecrip. Grsec.; vol. i., pp. 61.104, whose dissertation has com pletely exhausted the subject.) Mr. Knight next attempted poetry, for which the character of his mind did not at all fit him. In 1794 he published the Landscape,' a didactic poem, in three books, addressed to Uvedale Price, Esq. This poem contains many precepts, marked by sound judgment and good taste, on the subject to which it relates, but there is no largeness of view or depth of thought ; at the eud aro some sagacious remarks on the French revolution, the event of which was still undetermined. Mr. Knight published three other metrical works at subsequent periods of his life. The first was a didactic poem, in six books, entitled The Progress of Civil Society,' 4th, London, 1796, now only known by the witty parody in the Autijacobiu ' (supposed to have been written by Mr. Canning). The second was ' A Monody on the Death of the Right Honourable C. J. Fox,' 8vo, London, 1606-7. The third was entitled ' Alfred, a Romance in Rhyme,' 8vo, London, 1823.