# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Knight, Richard Payne

​KNIGHT, RICHARD PAYNE (1750–1824), numismatist, born in 1750, was the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Knight (1697–1764) of Wormesley Grange, Herefordshire, rector of Bewdley and Ribbesford, Worcestershire, by his wife, Ursula Nash. Thomas Andrew Knight [q. v.], F.R.S., was his younger brother. Knight was called Payne after his grandmother, Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew Payne, and wife of Richard Knight (1659–1745), the founder of the Knight family, who acquired great wealth by the ironworks of Shropshire, and settled at Downton, Herefordshire. Richard Payne Knight being of weakly constitution as a boy was not sent to school till he was fourteen, and did not begin to learn Greek till he was seventeen. He was not at any university. About 1767 he went to Italy, and remained abroad several years.
Knight again visited Italy in 1777, and from April to June of that year was in Sicily in company with Philipp Hackert, the German painter, and Charles Gore. Knight kept a journal, which, under the title of ‘Tagebuch einer Reise nach Sicilien,’ was translated and published by Goethe in his biography of Hackert (Goethe, Werke, xxxvii. 1830, pp. 146–218, cf. pp. 320–4; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. iii. 473). In 1785 he again travelled southwards, and in that year laid the foundation of his fine collection of bronzes by the purchase of an antique head (‘Diomede’) from Thomas Jenkins, the dealer at Rome (Spec. Ant. Sculpt. i. pl. 20, 21). When in Italy Knight spent much time at Naples, where his friend Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803) [q. v.] was the British envoy. About 1764 Knight had inherited the estates at Downton, Herefordshire. He ornamented the grounds, and there erected from his own designs (severely criticised by Britton, ‘Toddington,’ 1840, 4to, p. 21) a stone mansion in castellated style. A view is given in Neale's ‘Seats’ (1826, 2nd ser. vol. iii., ‘Downton Castle;’ cf. Dict. of Architecture, Architect. Publ. Soc., s.v. ‘Knight, R. P.’). Knight invited Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton to Downton Castle in 1802 (Duncumb and Cooke, Hereford, iii. 170). In London, he had a house in Soho Square (Walford, Old and New London, iv. 500), and used one of the large rooms as his museum. In 1780 he became M.P. for Leominster, and from 1784 to 1806 sat for Ludlow. In the House of Commons he acted with Fox, but took no part in debate.
Knight's first published work was ‘An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus lately existing in Isernia; to which is added a Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its Connexion with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients,’ 1786, 4to. The book was severely attacked by Mathias in the ‘Pursuits of Literature’ (Dial. i.), and Knight endeavoured to buy up the copies of his offending publication (cf. Allibone, Dict. of Engl. Lit. art. ‘Knight, R. P.’). Professor Michaelis (Anc. Marbles, p. 122) says that the book is blameworthy, apart from the unpleasantness of its subject, for its adoption of the mythological fantasies of D'Hacarville, whose acquaintance Knight had made in 1784 at the house of Charles Townley. In 1791 Knight published ‘An Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet,’ London, 4to, with nine plates, reviewed by Porson in the ‘Monthly Review’ for 1794. Knight was the first to question in this work the genuineness of the Greek inscriptions stated to have been found by Fourmont in Laconia (Boeckh, Corpus Inscr. Gr. i. 61–104). He was the first to edit the ‘Elean Inscription’ (ib. No. 11). In 1808 he printed privately fifty copies (London, 8vo) of his ‘Carmina Homerica, Ilias et Odyssea.’ This consists of Prolegomena, the text being added in the later edition of 1820, 8vo. His object was to restore the text to its supposed original condition, and he introduced the digamma and various early forms. Knight printed privately ‘An Inquiry into the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology’ (London, 8vo, reprinted in ‘Classical Museum,’ pp. xxiii–xxvii, and in ‘Specimens of Ant. Sculpt.,’ vol. ii.; new ed. by A. Wilder, New York, 1876). Knight also wrote for the ‘Classical Museum,’ the ‘Philological Museum,’ and in the ‘Archæologia,’ and contributed to the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (August 1810) an article on Barry, and a severe critique (July 1809) of Falconer's ‘Strabo,’ a publication of the Clarendon press. Copleston of Oriel defended the Oxford press and Oxford scholarship in a ‘Reply’ (Oxford, 1810), and a controversy ensued (see the joint article in Edinb. Rev. April 1810, pp. 158–87, by Sidney Smith, Playfair, and Knight, who wrote pp. 169–77). Knight was also the author of two didactic poems: ‘The Landscape’ (London, 1794, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1795), a protest against the gardening methods of Brown and Mason; and ‘The Progress of Civil Society’ (London, 1796, 8vo), written in a quasi-Lucretian vein, which was parodied in the ‘Anti-Jacobin.’ Knight's bad poetry and sceptical principles ​were attacked by Walpole (Letters, ix. 462, ‘22 March 1796’) and by Mathias (Pursuits of Lit.)
[Burke's Landed Gentry, s.v. ‘Knight of Wormesley;’ Penny Cyclopædia, ‘Knight, R. P.;’ Edwards's Lives of the Founders of the Brit. Mus. pp. 389, 401–12, 460; Michaelis's Ancient Marbles in Great Britain; Brit. Mus. Cat., and authorities cited in the article.]
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