-Lettre de juil. 1717 (sans lieu) : … Habent sane Vir Celeberrime etiam Angli gazas rerum tum naturalium tum artificialium instructissimas, quas vero catalogis describe atque etiam in publicum fieri, illi non multum laborant. Eminent ex ijs, nobilissimi Sloanij Collectio 4 magna conclavia refertissimua Sua Copia occupans, quam vicibus saepius reiteratis, ex quo Sloanij in Societate Regia Collega factus fui, vidi atque etiam ejus supellectilem nummariam una cum doctissimo Massono percurri. … Porrò quae D.i Andreae Fo\u/ntayne equitis nuper ex itinere Italico reducis, attentionem etiam merentur quae habent inter Magnates Pembrokius Devonshirius & Sunderlandius Duces et Comites. Kempius etiam multa habet, et inter ea egregium quem credit Baalpehorem, in mumijs varias Deorum et Dearum icunculas et in urnis sepulchralibus egregias personarum effigies, quae una cum cineribus sepositae fuerunt. Lararium item omnium ut crediderim instructissimum. is vir primum plebejus atque illiteratus laudabili sua curiositate omnium horum jam est peritissimus. Sunt et plurima alia quae materiam uberrimam suppeditare possunt conficiundo thesauro Britannico, qualem nunc meditator, ut prospectu operis impresso videre licet, quidam Haym, origine Romanus, commoratione Anglus. Opus quinque tomorum in f. sed illum praeprimis nummos sectaturum autumo.
[The English also, Most Celebrated Sir, have very rich collections of both natural and artificial things, which they do not indeed make much effort to have described in catalogues of to be published. Pre-eminent among them is the Sloane collection, which occupies four large rooms fully crammed with his abundance, which I saw, returning many times after I was made a Fellow of Sloane’s Royal Society, and also I ran through his coin collection with the very learned Masson. … Further, the things which Sir Andrew Fountaine, Knight, brought back from his journey to Italy deserve a mention, as do those which, among the grand, the Dukes and Earls of Pembroke, Devonshire and Sunderland possess. Kemp also has many things, and among them an exceptional Baalephor (which he believes), various little images of gods and goddesses on mummies and exceptional portraits of people on burial urns, which were placed sepatately together with the ashes. It is besides a chapel of everything and, in my opinion, very rich. This man was originally of low birth and uneducated, and is now, thanks to his admirable curiosity, very expert in all these things. There are also very many other things which can supply very rich material for the completion of the British Treasury, which is now being contemplated, as can be seen from the printed prospectus, by a certain Haym, a man by origin from Rome, but by residence English. The work is in five volumes in folio, but I can confirm that he will look out the coins in the very first ones.] (Paris, BnF, Fonds français 17712, f°172r-v ; Callataÿ 2015, p. 316, II.26 – full translation by Andrew Burnett).
