Chapter II (1)

INTRODUCTION TO BOOK III (_Continued_):—GROWTH, PROGRESS, AND INTERNAL ECONOMY, OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM, DURING THE PRINCIPAL-LIBRARIANSHIP OF SIR HENRY ELLIS.

‘It is expedient that the Trustees should revise the salaries of the
Establishment, with the view of ascertaining what increase may be
required for the purpose of ... obtaining the whole time and services
of the ablest men, independently of any remuneration from other
sources; and that, when such scale of salary shall have been fixed, it
shall not be competent to any Officer of the Museum, paid thereunder,
to hold any other situation conferring emolument or entailing duties.’

REPORT FROM SELECT COMMITTEE ON BRITISH
MUSEUM, 14 July, 1836.

_Internal Economy of the Museum at the time of the death of Joseph_
PLANTA.—_The Literary Life and Public Services of Sir Henry_
ELLIS.—_The Candidature of Henry_ FYNES CLINTON.—_Progress of
Improvement in certain Departments.—Introduction of Sir Antonio_
PANIZZI _into the Service of the Trustees.—The House of Commons’
Committee of 1835–36._—PANIZZI _and Henry Francis_ CARY.—_Memoir
of_ CARY.—PANIZZI’S _Report on the proper Character of a National
Library for Britain, made in October, 1837.—His successful labours
for Internal Reform.—And his Helpers in the work.—The Literary
Life and Public Services of Thomas_ WATTS.—_Sir A._ PANIZZI’S
_Special Report to the Trustees of 1845, and what grew
thereout.—Progress, during Sir H._ ELLIS’S _term of office, of the
several Departments of Natural History and of Antiquities_.

[Sidenote: BOOK III, CHAP. II. HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM UNDER SIR H.
ELLIS.]

When Sir Henry ELLIS was appointed to be the successor of Mr. PLANTA (20th December, 1827), the British Museum was still composed of but four departments, in conformity with the organization of 1809. It was publicly open on three days in each week, but only during forty weeks of every year. This was a great improvement of the previous arrangements, as we have seen, under MATY and MORTON. [Sidenote: CONDITIONS OF MUSEUM ACCESSIBILITY AT COMMENCEMENT OF MR. ELLIS’S RULE.] But Mr. PLANTA’S most conspicuous improvements lay in the (admittedly more important) direction of access to the Medal, Print, and Reading-Rooms. To his administration, students in all these departments were much indebted. Sir Henry ELLIS was to witness and to carry out, very efficiently as Principal-Librarian, some more extensive modifications of the old system of things; but he, in his turn, was to be quite eclipsed (so to speak) in the character of Museum improver, by his successor in office. And it was, in fact, to the latter that such among the conspicuous improvements of the last twenty years of Sir Henry’s official administration as related to the Department of Printed Books—and in no department were the improvements more striking—were pre-eminently due.

Sir Henry ELLIS (who has but so recently departed from amongst us) entered the service of the Trustees, as a temporary assistant in the Library, in the year 1800, having had already three years’ experience in Bodley’s Library at Oxford. When coming occasionally to London during his employment at Oxford he would see Dr. Charles MORTON, who had helped to organize the Museum almost fifty years before. The _public_ life of those two acquaintances spread, conjointly, over a period of a hundred and twenty years.[23]

Had it never fallen to the lot of Henry ELLIS to render to the Public any service at all, in the way of administering and improving the National Museum, he would still have earned an honourable niche in our literary history. His contributions to literature are, indeed, very unequal in their character. [Sidenote: THE LABOURS IN LITERATURE OF SIR H. ELLIS.] Some of them are fragmentary; some might be thought trivial. But very many of them have sterling value. And his archæological labours, in particular, were zealous and unremitting. He began them in 1798. He had not entirely ceased to add to them in 1868. In the closing year of the eighteenth century he was giving furtherance to the labours on British history of Richard GOUGH. In the sixty-eighth year of the nineteenth century he was still taking an intelligent and critical interest in the large undertakings of Lord ROMILLY and of Mr. DUFFUS HARDY, for affording to future historians the means of basing the reconstruction of our national history upon the one firm foundation of an exhaustive search of our national records.

The fourth Principal-Librarian of the British Museum was born at Shoreditch, in London, on the 29th of November, 1777. He was of a Yorkshire family long settled (and still flourishing) at Dewsbury. Henry ELLIS was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School, and at St. John’s College, Oxford, where he graduated B.C.L. in 1802. His first book (but not, perhaps, his first publication) was the _History of the Parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch_, printed in 1798. He became F.S.A. in 1800; one of its Secretaries in 1813; and its Director in 1854. To the _Archæologia_ he was a contributor for more than fifty years. In 1800, he sent to the first Record Commission a Report on the Historical Manuscripts at St. John’s. For the same Commission he wrote, in the year 1813, and the three following years, an _Introduction to Domesday Book_. Of this he would speak very modestly in after-days, saying: ‘I have worked on _Domesday_ for years; but only in making an opening into the mine. Other men will have yet to bring out the metal.’ For the second Record Commission he re-edited his _Introduction_ and considerably improved it. This was done in 1832; and, to say the least, it brought some very good ore to the surface. When both these Commissions had given way to the better organization recently framed by Lord ROMILLY, he edited, for the series of _Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain_, the Latin Chronicle of John of Oxenedes, from a MS. belonging to Sir Robert COTTON’S Library. When _Oxenedes_ was published, just sixty years had passed from the publication of Sir Henry’s first Record labour, undertaken at the instance of Lord COLCHESTER.

In the interval, he had had a great opportunity, the first glimpse of which needs must have dilated the heart of so genuine a lover of antiquity. The publication of an improved edition of the _Monasticon Anglicanum_ of DODSWORTH and DUGDALE ought to have made a new epoch in British archæology. But the opportunity was lost. In those days, there was no encouragement for such labours at the Treasury; no enlightened promoter of them at the Rolls House. The control of the new _Monasticon_ passed into the hands of mere tradesmen. Neither of Mr. ELLIS’S co-editors ever buckled to the work. ELLIS himself became simply the servant of the associated publishers, who had no aim whatever beyond turning a golden penny out of the traditional prestige of Sir William DUGDALE’S name, and out of the standing advertisement that the _Monasticon_ was indubitably one of those books ‘which no gentleman’s library ought to be without.’ Heaps of crude, untranslated, and unelucidated information were thrust into the book, against the editor’s own clear conviction of his duty, and in spite of his remonstrance. ‘We must retrench,’ was the one answer to all editorial recommendations of real improvement. And meanwhile the publishers were actually netting fair profits from a long list of confiding subscribers. What might well have been a ‘broadstone of honour’ to English literature became its glaring disgrace.[24] No one would more gladly have striven for a better result—had the power lain with him—than would Sir Henry ELLIS. As to his nominal co-editors, they did almost nothing, from first to last.

To far better result did ELLIS labour upon his successive editions of _Hall_, _Hardyng_, _Fabyan_, and _Polydore Vergil_, among our chroniclers, and of BRAND’S _Observations on Popular Antiquities_, of DUGDALE’S _History of Saint Paul’s Cathedral_, and of NORDEN’S _Essex_, among the standard illustrations of our archæology and topography. But his most enduring contribution to historical literature is, beyond doubt, his _Original Letters, illustrative of English History_, the publication of which began in 1824, and was completed in 1846. That work alone would suffice to keep his name in honourable memory for a long time to come.

At the British Museum he had a considerable advantage over his predecessor in the Principal-Librarianship. He enjoyed the assistance, almost from the first, of an abler staff, in more than one of the departments, than Mr. PLANTA had commanded during the earlier years of his administration. [Sidenote: LABOURS OF SIR H. ELLIS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.] And an improved order of service had been established before Mr. ELLIS’S rule began. In this way appliances lay already under his hand which facilitated the work of progress, when—more especially—a strong demand for improvement came from without, as well as from the action of the Trustees themselves within.

[Sidenote: STATE OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM STAFF AT THE TIME OF THE DEATH OF
MR. PLANTA.]

At that date the Department of Printed Books was under the charge of the Rev. Henry Hervey BABER (the eminent editor of the ‘Alexandrian MS.’ of the Septuagint). He was assisted by Mr. Henry Francis CARY, the translator of DANTE, and also by Mr. WALTER, who had been one of the Librarians of King GEORGE THE THIRD, and who, in 1831, was succeeded by Mr. Antonio PANIZZI. In the Department of MSS. Mr. ELLIS’S Assistant-Keeper, the Rev. Josiah FORSHALL, had succeeded to the charge, and the new Keeper had the able assistance of Sir Frederick MADDEN, whose labours for the improvement of his department are well known to scholars. The Antiquities were confided to Mr. Edward HAWKINS; the various Natural History Collections to Messrs. KÖNIG and CHILDREN. The Botanical Department was, as I have shown at the close of the preceding Book, just about to be reorganized (almost to be created) by the transfer of the Collections of Sir Joseph BANKS, and with them of the services of their distinguished Keeper. Taken altogether, such a staff as this was of threefold efficiency to that with which Mr. PLANTA had started at the beginning of the century.

Mr. ELLIS enjoyed an additional advantage from the great familiarity with the whole service of the Museum which he had acquired during his labours as Secretary from the year 1814. The secretarial duty had been combined with the functions of keepership during thirteen years. Great punctuality, a conspicuous faculty for method and memory, and very courteous manners, were qualifications which are not always, or necessarily, found in union with conspicuous industry. In him they were combined. Nevertheless, he narrowly escaped losing the merited reward of long and assiduous labours. For he had a formidable competitor.

[Sidenote: THE CANDIDATURE OF MR. H. FYNES CLINTON.]

At this time, a most accomplished scholar, who deservedly possessed large influence, both social and political, had obtained the virtual promise of almost the highest personage in the realm that whenever Mr. PLANTA died he should receive the offer of successorship. Mr. Henry FYNES CLINTON, in those quiet ante-reform days, had been able, for twenty years, to unite the functions of a Member of Parliament with the assiduous pursuits of scholarship in one of its highest forms. Learning had higher charms for him than Politics, and he had no turn for debate, but he had steadily attended the House of Commons while giving to the world his _Fasti Hellenici_ and _Fasti Romani_. Six months before Mr. PLANTA’S decease, the Archbishop of CANTERBURY had, in effect, promised Mr. FYNES CLINTON that he would nominate him to be Principal-Librarian, and the Archbishop well knew that, as far as learning went, such an appointment would be applauded throughout Europe. The Archbishop (Dr. Charles MANNERS SUTTON), did not forget his promise, and his vote carried that of the then Speaker of the House of Commons, who was the Archbishop’s son. Their joint communication with the Lord Chancellor procured his assent also. ‘We have made,’ the Archbishop told Mr. FYNES CLINTON, ‘your recommendation to the King as strong as possible.’ The practice, as the reader will perhaps remember, was that the then Principal Trustees should in all such cases recommend to the Sovereign _two_ names, with such observations upon them as to those Trustees might seem appropriate.

[Sidenote: _Letters and Journ. of_ H. Fynes Clinton, in the _Literary
Remains_ (1854), pass.]

As Mr. ELLIS was now the senior officer; had had the care successively of two several departments (MSS. and Printed Books); had also served as Secretary, and, in all these employments, had acquitted himself with diligence and credit, there could, of course, be no difficulty as to the name which should be submitted to GEORGE THE FOURTH in company with that of Mr. FYNES CLINTON. Other Trustees interested themselves in supporting, indirectly but efficiently, the claims of one who had served the Board so long. And the King was pleased to prefer the second name which had been placed before him by the Principal Trustees rather than the first. [Sidenote: Lord Lansdowne to Archbishop of Canterbury; 20 December, 1827.] Lord LANSDOWNE received His Majesty’s commands to signify to the Archbishop that it was upon the ground of ‘long service in the Museum’ that the King had made his choice.

[Sidenote: SERVICES AND CHARACTER OF SIR H. ELLIS.]

Those who had (like the writer) opportunity to watch, during most of the succeeding thirty years, the continuance of that service, know that the King’s selection was justified. Sir Henry ELLIS was not gifted with any of those salient abilities which dazzle the eyes of men; but he had great power of labour, the strictest integrity of purpose, and a very kind heart. He was ever, to the Trustees, a faithful servant, up to the full measure of his ability. To those who worked under him he was always courteous, considerate, and very often he was generous. He would sometimes expose himself to misconstruction, in order to appease discords. He would at times rather seem wanting in firmness of will than, by pressing his authority, wound the feelings of well-intentioned but irritable subordinates. No one could receive from him a merited reproof—I speak from personal experience—without perceiving that the duty of giving it was felt to be a painful duty. The Commissioners of 1850 had ample warrant for hinting, in their Report to the Crown—when alluding to certain internal disputes—that the qualities least abounding in Sir Henry ELLIS’S composition were those which equip a man [Sidenote: _Report_ (1850) p. 32.] ‘for such harsher duties of his office, as cannot be accomplished by the aid of conciliatory manners, the index of a benevolent disposition.’

A man of that temper will now and then, in his own despite, get forced into a somewhat bitter controversy. One sharp attack on Sir Henry’s administration of his Principal-Librarianship had a close connection with discords of an anterior date which had broken out in the Society of Antiquaries. [Sidenote: THE STORY OF THE MSS. AT POMARD.] The late Sir Harris NICOLAS would scarcely have criticised, with so much vehemence, what he thought to have been a careless indifference on ELLIS’S part to the acquisition for the British Museum of an important body of historical manuscripts, preserved in a chateau in a distant corner of France (and offered to the Trustees in 1829), but for the circumstance that Sir Henry’s kindly unwillingness, evinced a little while before, to desert a very weak colleague at Somerset House had stood in the way of some much-needed reforms in that quarter. Without in the least intending beforehand to represent things unfairly, Sir H. NICOLAS acted under the influence of an unconscious bias or pre-judgment. The Joursanvault story is still worth telling, although it has now become an old story, and one portion of the historical treasures it relates to are now past wishing for, as an English possession.

In the course of the revolutionary convulsions in France, a great body of historical documents had been abstracted from the famous old Castle of Blois. Eventually, as years passed on, they found their way into the country-seat, at Pomard, of the Baron de JOURSANVAULT, and with them were amalgamated an extensive collection of old family papers, many books on genealogy, and some choice illuminated missals.

An English gentleman long resident in France had formed the acquaintance of the Baron de JOURSANVAULT, and in the course of conversation came to hear of the existence of these historical treasures. He also perceived that their owner had little taste for them, or ability to profit by their contents. Sir Thomas Elmsley CROFT probed his French friend on the subject of parting with them. The Baron lent a willing ear, and, to whet his interlocutor’s appetite, told him that a great many of the manuscripts related to the history of the English rule in France. Sir Thomas then apprised an English friend, famous for his love of old MSS., of the existence of the hoards, and of the certainty that the Baron who owned them would greatly prefer a few rouleaux of English gold to a whole castle-full of the most precious parchments that ever charmed the longing eyes of a Jonathan OLDBUCK—or a Harris NICOLAS.

Sir Harris, directly he received this piece of news from Paris, passed it on to his friend the late Lord CANTERBURY, then Speaker, who, in turn, communicated the information to Sir H. ELLIS, for the use of the Trustees. ELLIS was sent to France—whither indeed he had, just at that moment, arranged to go, in order to spend part of his holidays in Paris, according to his frequent custom.

He reached Pomard (two hundred and fifty miles from Paris) in September, 1829, and found a vast body of charters which had formed the archives of the mediæval Earls of Blois, together with many heraldic and genealogical manuscripts chiefly relating to French families. But he found hardly any manuscripts which bore, directly, upon English history or affairs—the immediate object, it must be remembered, of the mission given him by the Trustees.

[Sidenote: SIR HENRY ELLIS’S REPORT ON THE HISTORICAL MSS. AT POMARD.]

Immediately on his return to Paris, Sir Henry wrote thus to the Archbishop of CANTERBURY:—‘The Collection is indeed a most extraordinary one of its kind, and would be a treasure in the stores of the British Museum, or of any other public Collection, though, perhaps, for a reason which will presently appear, some of the Trustees may think a public library of France would be its most appropriate repository. [Sidenote: 1829, September.] It is placed in two attics of the Chateau, of considerable area—and I should say sixteen feet in height—in cartons (or paste-board boxes), each two feet in length by one in depth and width. Each carton contains some hundreds of charters, at least whenever I examined them, and I made here and there my comparison with the catalogue of from twenty to thirty cartons, all answering to the catalogue and to the successive dates upon the outside of the boxes.... In one room there were above a hundred boxes piled up to the ceiling, the lower ones of which, where I could get at them, were full of instruments arranged as I have described. I counted also, in the same room, near a hundred and fifty bundles, all of single articles, partly piled up for want of room, and placed upon the floors. In the second room I counted a hundred and forty-nine cartons piled up like the former, and no ladder in the house to get at them. I did what I could upon a pair of steps made of two thin boards fastened to two other upright boards, but I had not even a safe pair of steps. Many of the cartons in the second room contained collections of a comparatively recent date, apparently the manuscripts of the Baron’s father. Some of these were terriers of lands, others were marked “_Pays Étrangers_,” “_Monumens Généalogiques_;” “_Pièces Historiques_;” “_Parlement_;” “_Histoire de l’Église_.”’

‘Of the great collection of charters (and it appeared to me to be larger than all the collection of charters at present in the British Museum put together), I am bound to say that I believe them to have formed almost the entire muniments of the Earls of BLOIS, containing whatever related to their concern in the wars of Europe in the middle ages, to their prædial possessions, their granting out of property and privileges, sales, feudal or public acts, quittances of money for military services, letters patents, expenses of household, and every act, material or immaterial, likely to be found in the archives of one of the greatest houses of England.

[Sidenote: PAUCITY OF ENGLISH DOCUMENTS IN THE ARCHIVES AT POMARD.]

‘I looked in vain, however, for anything illustrative of English history, except in a single bundle, tied in paper, which seemed unconnected with the cartons, and was not, as far as I could find, in any of the MS. catalogues. This bundle was entitled, in a modern hand, “Documens relatifs à l’occupation de la France par les Anglais, 1400.” It consists of about one hundred vellum instruments, one or two, or perhaps more, so far in the form of letters that they were official announcements; such as the Duke of ORLEANS in England in 1437, that he had obtained safe conducts for his Chancellor and Premier Écuyer d’écurie. Amongst these are various orders of payment and acquittances for money, and several relate to Charles, Duke of ORLEANS, whilst prisoner in England after the fight of Agincourt. There is a payment to the Earl of SUFFOLK; another to persons fighting against the English; a payment for the deliverance of the Duc d’ANGOULEME whilst a prisoner in England in 1412; various orders of John, Duke of BEDFORD, the Bastard of Salisbury, the Duke of EXETER, &c., to persons in the care of military posts under them; the Duke of BEDFORD concerning musters; HENRY THE FIFTH’S acquittance to the parishioners of certain villages for payments on account of the war; various grants of the same King for services in the wars; a grant to Sir William BOURCHIER of the estates of the Earl of EU, dated at Mantes in his seventh year; and an order for a confirmation to be made out of the different grants of the Kings of England and Dukes of Normandy to the House of Lepers at Dieppe.’

When Sir Henry ELLIS had completed at Pomard that rough examination of the Collection which he thus described on his return to Paris, his first inquiry of the owner was, of course, about price. M. de JOURSANVAULT was embarrassed. To Sir Thomas CROFT he had already said that he hoped to get sixty thousand francs. ELLIS had noticed, as the Baron drove him from Beaune into the court-yard of the old chateau, that its appearance denoted wealth in past rather than in present days, but he could hardly have been prepared for the effect of altered circumstances in turning a gentleman into a chapman. In the evening the anticipated sixty thousand francs had grown into a hundred and ten thousand. Nor was this the only demand. The Duke of WELLINGTON must use his credit at Paris to transform the Baron into a Count (without any stipulation for an entailed estate by way of ‘majorat’); and if the task should be beyond the powers even of the conqueror of NAPOLEON, then M. de JOURSANVAULT was to receive, from the English Government, authority to import into England five hundred pipes of Beaune wine, grown upon his own estate, free of all customs duties, and for his own profit.

Sir Henry (who with great good sense had already taken precaution that his position at the British Museum should not be known to his host at Pomard, in the hope of precluding any exaggeration of terms) remonstrated against the burden of such a demand, but all entreaty was vain. The Baron was bent on having—in addition to his £4400—either a step in nobility, or, at the least, a handsome remission of customs duty. The Trustees, in the end, declined to treat.

When it came to Sir Harris NICOLAS’S knowledge that ELLIS’S journey to Pomard was apparently to have no result in the way of bringing historical manuscripts into England, he felt angry as well as disappointed. It was his earnest belief—whether right or wrong—that a valuable occasion had been somewhat trifled with. He told the story,[25] and treasured up the memory, and both the story and the narrator’s personal reminiscences of the transaction had their share in bringing about the parliamentary enquiry into the affairs of the British Museum.

[Sidenote: THE PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO MUSEUM AFFAIRS OF 1835 AND
1836.]

Originally, and immediately, that inquiry was proposed to the House of Commons by Mr. Benjamin HAWES, then M.P. for Lambeth, at the instance of a Mr. John MILLARD, who had been employed, for some years, on an Index of MSS., and whose employment (upon very good grounds) had been discontinued. Sir Harris NICOLAS also brought his influence to bear. Mr. HAWES, personally, had a very earnest intention to benefit the Public by the inquiry. But his own pursuits in life were not such as to have given him the literary qualifications necessary for conducting it. With not less wisdom than modesty, when he had carried his motion for a Select Committee, he waived his claim to its chairmanship. The Committee chose for that office Mr. SOTHERON ESTCOURT. The burden of examination, on behalf of the Trustees, was borne—it need not be said how ably—by men of no less mark than Sir Robert Harry INGLIS and the late Earl of DERBY, then Lord Stanley.

One of the best results of the appointment of that Committee of 1835–36 was the opportunity it gave to Mr. BABER and to Mr. PANIZZI of advocating the claims of the National Library to largely increased liberality on the part of Parliament. The latter, in particular, did it with an earnestness, and with a vivacity and felicity of argument and of illustration, which I believe won for him the respect of every person who enjoyed (as I did) the pleasure of listening to his examination. I do not think that anybody in that Committee Room of 1836 thought his arguments a whit the weaker for being expressed by ‘a foreigner.’ But it chances to be within my knowledge that pressure was put upon Mr. HAWES, as a conspicuous member of the Committee, to induce him to put questions to a certain witness with the view of enabling that witness to attack the Trustees for appointing a foreigner to an important office in the Museum. The ludicrous absurdity of an objection on that score—in relation to a great establishment of Literature and Science—was not, it seems, felt in those days as it would assuredly be felt in the present day. The absurdity did not strike the mind of Mr. HAWES, but, to his great credit, he steadfastly refused to admit of any impeachment in the Committee of a choice which he believed had been most fitly made in all other respects.[26]

It is more than probable that the ability which Mr. PANIZZI had displayed in the Committee Room of the House of Commons, as well as the zeal for our national honour which he had shown himself to possess, had something to do in preparing the way for the promotion which awaited him within a few months after Mr. HAWES’ Committee made its final report to the House. But his labours in the Museum itself had certainly given substantial and ample warrant for that promotion—under all the circumstances of the case—as will be seen presently.

[Sidenote: MR. PANIZZI’S APPOINTMENT TO THE KEEPERSHIP OF PRINTED
BOOKS.]

Amongst the duties entrusted to Mr. PANIZZI after his entrance (in 1831) into the service of the Trustees as an extra Assistant-Librarian, was the cataloguing of an extraordinary Collection of Tracts illustrative of the History of the French Revolution. He had laboured on a difficult task with great diligence and with uncommon ability. In 1835, a Committee of Trustees reported, in the highest terms, on the performance of his duties, and concluded their report with a recommendation which, although the general body of Trustees did not act upon it, became the occasion of a very eulogistic minute. Two years afterwards, the office of Keeper of Printed Books became vacant by the resignation of the Reverend Henry Hervey BABER, who had filled it, with great credit, from the year 1802.

The office of Senior Assistant-Librarian in that Department was then filled by another man of eminent literary distinction, the Reverend Henry Francis CARY, who, as one of the best among the many English translators of DANTE, is not likely to be soon forgotten amongst us. Not a few Englishmen of the generation that is now passing away learnt in his version to love DANTE, before they were able to read him in his proper garb, and learnt too to love Italy, as CARY loved it, for DANTE’S sake.

Mr. CARY was the grandson of Mordecai CARY, Bishop of Killaloe, and the son of a Captain in the British Army, who at the time of Henry CARY’S birth was quartered at Gibraltar, where the boy was born on the sixth of December, 1772. [Sidenote: LIFE AND LITERARY LABOURS OF HENRY FRANCIS CARY.] He was educated at Birmingham and at Christ Church, Oxford. It was in his undergraduate days at Christ Church that he began to translate the _Inferno_, although he did not publish his first volume until he had entered his thirty-third year, and had established himself in ‘the great wen’ as Reader at Berkeley Chapel (1805). CARY’S ‘_Dante_’ soon won its way to fame. Among other blessings it brought about his life-long friendship with COLERIDGE and with the Coleridgian circle. He now became an extensive contributor to the literary periodicals. In 1816, he was made Preacher at the Savoy. In 1825, he offered himself to the Trustees of the British Museum as a candidate for the Keepership of the Department of Antiquities in succession to Taylor COMBE. That office was given, with great propriety, to Mr. Edward HAWKINS, who had assisted Mr. COMBE, and had, in fact, replaced him during his illness. But Mr. CARY had met with encouragement—especially from the Archbishop of CANTERBURY—and kept a bright look-out for new vacancies. In May or June, 1826, he wrote to his father that he had learnt that the office of Assistant-Librarian in the Department of Printed Books was vacant. It had been, he added, held by a most respectable old clergyman of the name of BEAN, and Mr. BEAN was just dead. Within a week or two, Mr. CARY was appointed to be his successor. By a large circle of friends the appointment was hailed as a fitting tribute to a most deserving man of letters.

The homely rooms in the Court-yard of the Museum allotted to the Assistant-Keeper of the Printed Book Department were soon the habitual resort of a cluster of poets. The faces of COLERIDGE, ROGERS, Charles LAMB,[27] and (during their occasional visits to London) those of SOUTHEY and of WORDSWORTH, became, in those days, very familiar at the gate of old Montagu House. COLERIDGE had always loved CARY, and when the charms of long monologues, delivered at the Grove to devout listeners, withheld him from visits, the correspondence between Highgate and Bloomsbury became so frequent and so voluminous, that he is said to have endeavoured to persuade Sir Francis FREELING that all correspondence to or from the British Museum ought to be officially regarded as ‘On His Majesty’s Service,’ and to be franked, to any weight, accordingly. But those love-enlivened rooms were, in a very few years, to be darkly clouded. CARY lost his wife on the twenty-second of November, 1832, and almost immediately afterwards—so dreadful was the blow to him—‘a look of mere childishness, approaching to a suspension of vitality, marked the countenance which had but now beamed with intellect.’ [Sidenote: _Life of H. F. Cary_, by his Son, vol. ii, p. 198.] Such are the words of his fellow-mourner.

Part of Mr. CARY’S duties at the Museum now necessarily fell, for a few months, to be discharged by Mr. PANIZZI, who, in the preceding year, had been appointed next in office to CARY. The circumstances of that appointment have been thus stated by the eminent Prelate who made it:—

[Sidenote: CIRCUMSTANCES OF MR. PANIZZI’S FIRST APPOINTMENT IN 1831.]

‘Mr. PANIZZI was entirely unknown to me, except by reputation. I understood that he was a civilian who had come from Italy, and that he was a man of great acquirements and talents, peculiarly well suited for the British Museum. That was represented to me by several persons who were not connected with the Museum, and it was strongly pressed by several of the Trustees, who were of opinion that Mr. PANIZZI’S appointment would be very advantageous for the institution. [Sidenote: _Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the British Museum_, 28 June, 1836, p. 433.]Considering the qualifications of that gentleman, his knowledge of foreign languages, his eminent ability and extensive attainments, I could not doubt the propriety of acceding to their wishes.’

When that appointment was made, Mr. PANIZZI had already passed almost ten years in England. [Sidenote: MR. PANIZZI’S EARLY CAREER AND HIS LABOURS IN ENGLAND.] The greater part of them had been spent at Liverpool, as a tutor in the language and literature of Italy. Born at Brescello, in the Duchy of Modena, Mr. PANIZZI had been educated at Reggio and at Parma; in the last-named University he had graduated as LL.D. in 1818; and he had practised with distinction as an advocate. Part of his leisure hours had been given to the study of bibliography, and to the acquisition of a library. But he was an ardent aspirant for the liberty of Italy, and, in 1820, narrowly escaped becoming one of its many martyrs. After the unsuccessful rising of that year in Piedmont, he was arrested at Cremona, but escaped from his prison. After his escape he was sentenced to death. He sought a refuge first at Lugano, and afterwards at Geneva. But his ability had made him a marked man. Austrian spies dogged his steps, and appealed, by turns, to the suspicions and to the fears of the local authorities. Presently it seemed clear that England, alone, would afford, to the dreaded ‘conspirator’ for Italy, a secure abode. At Liverpool he acquired the friendship successively of Ugo FOSCOLO, of ROSCOE, and of BROUGHAM. In 1828, he received and accepted the offer of the Professorship of Italian Literature in the then London University, now ‘University College.’ In 1830, he began the publication of his admirable edition of the poems of BOJARDO and ARIOSTO, which was completed in 1834.

[Sidenote: _Minutes of Evidence on the Constitution and Management of
the British Museum_, 26 May, 1848, § 2764 (Report of 1850, p.
114).]

When Mr. BABER announced, in March, 1837, his intention to resign his Keepership, Mr. PANIZZI made no application for the office, but he wrote to the Principal Trustees an expression of his hope that if, in the event, ‘any appointment was to take place on account of Mr. BABER’S resignation,’ his services would be borne in mind.

One of Mr. CARY’S earliest steps in the matter was to apply to his friend and fellow-poet, Mr. Samuel ROGERS. ROGERS—to use his own words—was one who had known CARY ‘in all weathers.’ His earnest friendship induced him to write a letter of recommendation to the three Principal Trustees. After he had sent in his recommendation, a genuine conscientiousness—not the less truly characteristic of the man for all that outward semblance of cynicism which frequently veiled it—prompted him to think the matter over again. It occurred to him to doubt whether he was really serving his old friend CARY by helping to put him in a post for which failing vigour was but too obviously, though gradually, unfitting him. His misgiving increased the more he turned the affair over in his mind. He then wrote three letters (to the Archbishop, Chancellor, and Speaker), recalling his recommendation, and stating his reason. With the Speaker, ROGERS also conversed on the subject. Mr. ABERCROMBY asked the poet: ‘What do you know about a Mr. PANIZZI, who stands next to CARY?’ ‘PANIZZI,’ said ROGERS, ‘would serve you very well.’ ‘To tell you the truth,’ rejoined the Speaker, ‘we think that, if Mr. CARY is not appointed, PANIZZI will be the right man.’ At that time, Mr. PANIZZI was not personally known either to the Speaker or to the Chancellor.

I give these details, first, because they became, in after-days, a very vital and influential part of the History of the British Museum. No appointment was ever made during the whole of the hundred and fifteen years which have elapsed betwixt the first organization of the establishment in 1755 and the year in which I write (1870) that has had such large influence upon its growth and its improvement; and, secondly, because in a published life of the excellent man whose temporary disappointment led to a great public benefit a passage appears which (doubtless very unintentionally, but not the less seriously) misrepresents the matter, and hints, mysteriously, at underhanded influence, as though something had been done in the way of treachery to CARY. ‘The Lord Chancellor and the Speaker,’ writes CARY’S biographer, ‘acting under information, _the source of which was probably known only to them and their informant_, [Sidenote: _Life of Henry Francis Cary_, vol. ii, p. 200.] resolved on passing him over, and appointing his subordinate, Mr. PANIZZI, to the vacant place.’

These letters and conversations passed in the interval between the announcement that there would be a vacancy in the Museum staff and its actual occurrence. The Keepership became vacant on the twenty-fourth of June. On that day Mr. CARY made his personal application to the Archbishop. The Archbishop told him that objections were made to his appointment. CARY, immediately after his return, told his brother-officers BABER and PANIZZI what the Archbishop had communicated to him. ‘Then,’ said Mr. PANIZZI, ‘the thing concerns me.’ ‘Yes,’ rejoined CARY, ‘certainly it does.’ They all knew that applications for the vacant office from outsiders were talked of. Among these were the late Reverend Ernest HAWKINS and the late Reverend Richard GARNETT (who afterwards succeeded to the Assistant-Librarianship). And Mr. PANIZZI then proceeded to say to Mr. CARY: ‘You will not, now, object to my asking for the place myself, as there are these objections to you.’ CARY replied, ‘Not at all.’ Instantly, and in CARY’S presence, Mr. PANIZZI wrote thus to the Archbishop:—‘I hope your Grace will not deem it presumptuous in me to beg respectfully of your Grace and the other Principal Trustees to take my case into consideration, should they think it necessary to depart from the usual system of regular promotion, on appointing Mr. BABER’S successor. [Sidenote: Panizzi to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 26 June, 1837 (_Minutes of Evidence of 1850_).] I venture to say thus much, having been informed by Mr. CARY of the conversation he has had the honour to have with your Grace.’ The writer gave his letter into Mr. CARY’S hand, received his brother-officer’s immediate approval, and had that approval, at a later hour of the day and after a re-perusal of the letter, confirmed.

Within the walls of the Museum, the general feeling was so strongly in favour of Mr. CARY’S appointment, despite all objection (and nothing can be more natural than that it should be so—‘A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind’), that the _public_ interest, in having an officer who would use the appointment rather as a working-tool than as a reclining staff, was, for the moment, lost sight of. Sir Henry ELLIS himself, when asked to give a formal testimonial of Mr. PANIZZI’S qualifications to be head of the Printed Book Department, answered: ‘If you told me that the Bodleian Librarianship was vacant—or any other outside Librarianship worth your having—you should have my heartiest recommendation. At present, you must excuse me;’ or in words to that effect. Edward HAWKINS, then Keeper of the Department of Antiquities, expressed himself (in the hearing of the present writer) to like purpose, when asked what his opinion was on a point which, at the moment, attracted not a little attention in literary circles.[28]

CARY afterwards—and when it was too late to recall it—regretted his assent to Mr. PANIZZI’S application. He applied again to the Archbishop, and obtained something like a promise of support. He wrote several letters to the Lord Chancellor. In one of these he (unconsciously, as it seems) adduced a conclusive argument against his own appointment to the office he sought. He wrote that, as he was informed, the objections of his Lordship and of the Speaker were twofold: the one resting on his age, and the other on the state of his health. He answered the objections in these words:—‘My age, it is plain, might rather ask for me that _alleviation of labour_ which, _in this as in other public offices, is gained by promotion_ to a superior place, than call for a continuance of the same laborious employment.’ [Sidenote: Cary to the Lord Chancellor, 18 July, 1837 (_The Times_).] What must have been a Lord Chancellor’s ruminations upon the ‘alleviation of labour’ which ‘a superior place’ brings to a public servant, is a somewhat amusing subject of conjecture.

It was with perfect honesty and integrity of purpose that Mr. CARY adduced medical testimony of his fitness for continued but diminished labours. He would have exerted himself to the best of his ability. But it was a blemish in an excellent man that (under momentary irritation) he twice permitted himself to reproach his competitor and colleague with being ‘a foreigner.’

One would fain have hoped that our famous countryman Daniel DEFOE had, a hundred years before, put all reproach and contumely on the score of a man’s _not_ being a ‘true-born Englishman’ quite out of Court, in all contentions concerning capabilities of public service. But, of all places in the world, a MUSEUM is the queerest place in which to raise petty questions of nationality. If it be at all worthy of its name, its contents must have come from the four quarters of the globe. Men of every race under Heaven must have worked hard to furnish it. It brings together the plants of Australia; the minerals of Peru; the shells of the far Pacific; the manuscripts which had been painfully compiled or transcribed by twenty generations of labourers in every corner of Europe, as well as in the monasteries of Africa and of the Eastern Desert; and the sculptures and the printed books of every civilised country in the world. And then it is proposed—when arrangements are to be made for turning dead collections into living fountains of knowledge—that the question asked shall be: _not_ ‘What is your capacity to administer?’ but ‘Where were you born?’ I hope, and I believe, that in later years Mr. CARY regretted that he had permitted a name so deservedly honoured to endorse so poor a sophism.

Mr. Antonio PANIZZI received his appointment on the fifteenth of July, 1837. If he had worked hard to gain promotion, he worked double tides to vindicate it. In the following month, Mr. CARY resigned his Assistant-Librarianship. [Sidenote: PANIZZI’S APPOINTMENT AS KEEPER OF THE PRINTED BOOKS, July, 1837.] He left the Museum with the hearty respect and with the brotherly regrets of all his colleagues, without any exception. Of him, it may very truly be said, he was a man much beloved.

Nor was it otherwise with Mr. BABER. His public services began in old Bodley towards the end of the year 1796, and they were so efficient as to open to him, at the beginning of the present century, a subordinate post in the British Museum, his claims to which he waived the instant that he knew they would stand in the way of ELLIS, his early friend of undergraduate days. He became Assistant-Librarian in 1807; Keeper of Printed Books in 1812. He, too, was a man with no enemies. In literature he won (before he was fifty) an enduring place by his edition of the _Vetus Testamentum Græcum e Codice MS. Alexandrino ... descriptum_.

Of the amiability of character which distinguished Mr. BABER, not less than did his scholarship, the present writer had more than common experience. It was my fortune to make my first intimate acquaintance (1835) with the affairs of the British Museum in the capacity of a critic on that part of Mr. BABER’S discharge of his manifold functions as Keeper which related to the increase of the Library, both by purchase and by the operation of the Copyright Act. I criticised some of his doings, and some of his omissions to do, with youthful presumption, and with that self-confident half-knowledge which often leads a man more astray, practically, than does sheer ignorance. So far from resenting strictures, a few of which may have had some small validity and value, while a good many were certainly plausible but shallow, he turned the former to profit, and, so far from resenting the latter, repeatedly evinced towards their author acts of courtesy and kindness. It was in his company that I first explored—as we strode from beam to beam of the unfinished flooring—the new Library rooms in which, long afterwards, I was to perform my humble spell of work on the _Catalogue of the Printed Books_; as he had performed his hard-by almost thirty years earlier.

Mr. BABER survived his retirement from his Keepership (in 1837) no less than thirty-two years. He died, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1869, at his rectory-house at Stretham, in the Isle of Ely, and in his 94th year. He had then been F.R.S. for fifty-three years, and had survived his old friend Sir Henry ELLIS by a few weeks. He served his parishioners in Cambridgeshire, as he had served his country in London, with unremitting zeal and punctual assiduity.

One of Mr. PANIZZI’S earliest employments in his new office of 1837 was to make arrangements for the formidable task of transferring the whole mass of the old Library from Montagu House to the new Building, but he also did something immediately towards preparing the way for that systematic enlargement of the Collection of Printed Books which he had formerly and so earnestly pressed on the attention, not merely of the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1835–36, but of every Statesman and Parliament-man whose ear he could gain, whether (in his interlocutor’s opinion) in season or out of season. To use the expression of the man who, at a later date, mainly helped him in that task, Mr. PANIZZI’S leading thought, in regard to Public Libraries, was that Paris must be surpassed. In common with others of us who, like himself, had been examined before Mr. HAWES’ Committee on that subject, he had brought into salient relief some points of superiority which foreign countries possessed over Britain, but the ruling motive of the unsavoury comparison was British improvement, not, most assuredly, British discredit.

In the formidable business of the transfer of the bulk of the National Library, Mr. PANIZZI received his best help from a man now just lost to us, but whose memory will surely survive. Exactly six months after his own appointment to the headship of his Department, he introduced into the permanent service of the Trustees Mr. Thomas WATTS. [Sidenote: THE LITERARY CAREER AND THE PUBLIC SERVICES OF THOMAS WATTS.] The readers of such a volume as this will not, I imagine, think it to be a digression if I here make some humble attempt to record what was achieved by my old acquaintance—an acquaintance of almost one and thirty years’ standing—both in his varied literary labours and in his long and fruitful service at the Museum.

Thomas WATTS was born in London in the year 1811. He was educated at a private school in London, where he was very early noted for the possession of three several qualities, one or other of which is found, in a marked degree, in thousands of men and in tens of thousands of precocious boys, but the union of all of which, whether in child or in man, is rare indeed. Young WATTS evinced both an astonishing capacity for acquiring languages—the most far remote from his native speech—and an unusual readiness at English composition. He had also a knack for turning off very neat little speeches and recitations. Before he was fifteen, he could give good entertainment at a breaking up or a ‘speech-day.’ Before he was twenty, he had gained his footing as a contributor to periodical literature.[29]

In the autumn of the year 1835, Mr. WATTS’ attention was attracted to the publication of the _Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the British Museum_, the first portion of which had been ordered to be printed, by the House of Commons, in the preceding August. [Sidenote: WATTS’ EARLY INTEREST IN THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.] He read the evidence with great interest, and ere long he wrote (in 1836 and 1837) some valuable comments upon it, which embodied several suggestions for the improvement of the Museum service, and for making it increasedly accessible to the Public. More than two or three of the suggestions so offered, he lived to carry out—long afterwards, by his own exertions, and with the cordial approval of his superior officer, Mr. PANIZZI—into practice, after he had himself entered into the service of the Trustees as an Assistant in the Printed Book Department.

But he chose a very unfortunate medium for his useful communications of 1836 and 1837. He printed them in the columns of the ‘_Mechanics’ Magazine_,’ where, for practical purposes, they were almost buried. Of this fact I am able to give a small illustrative and personal instance. Possibly, it may be thought to have some little biographical value, as a trait of his character.

In both of the years above named Mr. WATTS did the present writer the honour to make some remarks on his humble labours for the improvement of the Museum in 1835 and 1836. Mr. WATTS’ remarks were very complimentary and kind in their expression. But I never saw or heard of them, until this year, 1870, after their writer had passed from the knowledge of the many acquaintances and friends who, in common with myself, much esteemed him, and who will ever honour his memory.

One of the communications which my late friend published in that ‘_Mechanics’ Magazine_’ contained two suggestions—made contingently, and by way of alternative plans—for the enlargement of the Museum buildings. Nearly eleven years afterwards (August, 1847), I unconsciously repeated those very suggestions, amongst many others, in a pamphlet, entitled _Public Libraries in London and Paris_. I was in complete ignorance that my suggestions of 1847 were otherwise than entirely original. I thought them wholly my own. Of the print which accompanied my pamphlet I give the reader an exact fac-simile, errors included, on the opposite plate. The print embodied very nearly the same thoughts, on the enlargement of the library, which had been expressed, so long before, in the pages of the ‘_Mechanics’ Magazine_.’ The first presented copy of that pamphlet and print was given to my friend WATTS. I was then absent, far from London, and I had presently the pleasure of receiving from him a long letter, containing some criticisms and remarks on my publication. But such was his modest reticence about his own prior performance, that the letter contained no word or hint concerning the anticipation of my alternative suggestions for the enlargement of the Library in his prior publication. And, in the long interval between 1837 and 1847, I suppose we had conversed about the improvement of the Museum, and about its buildings, actual and prospective, some thirty or forty times, but (as I have said) those valuable and thoughtful articles of his, printed in 1836–7—and making complimentary mention of my own labours, and of my evidence given before Mr. HAWES’ Committee—never came within my knowledge. No part of their contents was even mentioned to me. I saw them, for the first time, in January, 1870. Very few men—within my range of acquaintance—had so much dislike to talk of their performances, as was manifested by Thomas WATTS. To this day, very much of what he did for the Public is scarcely known even by those who (at one time or other) enjoyed the pleasure, and the honour, of his friendship. He was one of the men who ‘did good by stealth,’ and would have almost blushed to find it fame.

_Plate Nº 2_

SUGGESTIONS, MADE IN 1847.
FOR THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE LIBRARY OF THE
BRITISH MUSEUM.

BEING THE FAC-SIMILE OF A PLAN INSERTED IN A PAMPHLET (WRITTEN IN
1846.)

ENTITLED

PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN LONDON AND PARIS.
]

[Sidenote: WATTS’ LABOURS FOR THE AUGMENTATION OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
LIBRARY.]

When Thomas WATTS entered the Museum, the immediate task entrusted to him, onerous as it was, did not (for any long time) engross his attention. In common with Mr. PANIZZI, his desire to increase the Library, and to make London surpass Paris—‘_Paris must be surpassed_,’ are the words which close the best of those articles, printed in 1837, to which I have just now referred—amounted to a positive passion. He did not talk very much about it; but I fancy it occupied, not only his waking thoughts, but his very dreams.

Mr. PANIZZI had not been at the head of his Department many weeks before he began a Special Report to the Trustees, recommending a systematic increase of the Collection of Printed Books.