PART II BANKERS AS CREATORS OF LITERA THE TURE I WILLIAM PATERSON 1658-1719 HE founder of the Bank of England, and the author of three volumes of early eighteenth century "works" which, as late as 1859, passed into a second edition, has surely earned a place in this collection. James Godwin in his "Merchant Princes of England," styles William Paterson "the foremost propounder of modern views on trade and finance," his themes touching "all that is most interesting and instructive in the history of British commerce during the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and the first quarter of the eighteenth." William Paterson was hardly a merchant prince, for in his time he met with severe reverses; and, too, he died comparatively poor. So full of romance is this man's career that Eliot Warburton made it the groundwork of his novel "Darien." He came from the Patersons of Dumfriesshire, an adventurous race, and he made |