‘An antiquary’, observed the satirical writer Samuel Butler in the 1660s, ‘is an old frippery-Philosopher, that has so strange a natural Affection to worm-eaten speculation, that it is apparent he has a Worm in his Skull. He values one old Invention, that is lost and never to be recovered, before all the new ones in the World, tho’ never so useful.‘

Noel Malcolm reviews ‘Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain’ by Rosemary Sweet.