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 HerveyBaber(the eminent editor of the ‘Alexandrian MS.’ of the Septuagint). He was assisted by Mr. Henry FrancisCary, the translator ofDante, and also by Mr.Walter, who had been one of the Librarians of KingGeorge the Third, and who, in 1831, was succeeded by Mr. AntonioPanizzi. In the Department of MSS. Mr.Ellis’sAssistant-Keeper, the Rev. JosiahForshall, had succeeded to the charge, and the new Keeper had the able assistance of Sir FrederickMadden, whose labours for the improvement of his department are well known to scholars. The Antiquities were confided to Mr. EdwardHawkins; the various Natural History Collections to Messrs.KönigandChildren. 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 JosephBanks, 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.Plantahad started at the beginning of the century.
Mr.Ellisenjoyed an additional advantage from thegreat 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.
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.Plantadied he should receive the offer of successorship. Mr. HenryFynes 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 hisFasti HelleniciandFasti Romani. Six months before Mr.Planta’sdecease, the Archbishop ofCanterburyhad, in effect, promised Mr.Fynes Clintonthat 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. CharlesManners 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 Sovereigntwonames, with such observations upon them as to those Trustees might seem appropriate.
Letters and Journ. ofH. Fynes Clinton, in theLiterary Remains(1854), pass.
As Mr.Elliswas 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 toGeorge the Fourthin 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.|Lord Lansdowne to Archbishop of Canterbury; 20 December, 1827.|LordLansdownereceived 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.
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 HenryElliswas 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 infirmness 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 HenryEllis’scomposition were those which equip a man|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.|The story of the MSS. at Pomard.|The late Sir HarrisNicolaswould scarcely have criticised, with so much vehemence, what he thought to have been a careless indifference onEllis’spart 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.Nicolasacted 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 deJoursanvault, 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 deJoursanvault, 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 ElmsleyCroftprobed 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 JonathanOldbuck—or a HarrisNicolas.
Sir Harris, directly he received this piece of news from Paris, passed it on to his friend the late LordCanterbury, then Speaker, who, in turn, communicated the information to Sir H.Ellis, for the use of the Trustees.Elliswas 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 fromParis) 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.
Sir Henry Ellis’s report on the Historical MSS. at Pomard.
Immediately on his return to Paris, Sir Henry wrote thus to the Archbishop ofCanterbury:—‘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.|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 ofthe 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 ofBlois, 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.
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 ofOrleansin 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 ofOrleans, whilst prisoner in England after the fight of Agincourt. There is a payment to the Earl ofSuffolk; another topersons fighting against the English; a payment for the deliverance of the Duc d’Angoulemewhilst a prisoner in England in 1412; various orders of John, Duke ofBedford, the Bastard of Salisbury, the Duke ofExeter, &c., to persons in the care of military posts under them; the Duke ofBedfordconcerning musters;Henry the Fifth’sacquittance 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 WilliamBourchierof the estates of the Earl ofEu, 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 HenryEllishad 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. deJoursanvaultwas embarrassed. To Sir ThomasCrofthe had already said that he hoped to get sixty thousand francs.Ellishad 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 ofWellingtonmust 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 ofNapoleon, then M. deJoursanvaultwas to receive, from the English Government, authority to importinto 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 HarrisNicolas’sknowledge thatEllis’sjourney 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]andtreasured 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.
The Parliamentary Inquiry into Museum affairs of 1835 and 1836.
Originally, and immediately, that inquiry was proposed to the House of Commons by Mr. BenjaminHawes, then M.P. for Lambeth, at the instance of a Mr. JohnMillard, who had been employed, for some years, on an Index of MSS., and whose employment (upon very good grounds) had been discontinued. Sir HarrisNicolasalso 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, onbehalf of the Trustees, was borne—it need not be said how ably—by men of no less mark than Sir Robert HarryInglisand the late Earl ofDerby, then Lord Stanley.
One of the best results of the appointment of that Committee of 1835–36 was the opportunity it gave to Mr.Baberand to Mr.Panizziof 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.Panizzihad 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.
Mr. Panizzi’s appointment to the Keepership of Printed Books.
Amongst the duties entrusted to Mr.Panizziafter 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 HerveyBaber, 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 FrancisCary, who, as one of the best among the many English translators ofDante, 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 loveDante, before they were able toread him in his proper garb, and learnt too to love Italy, asCaryloved it, forDante’ssake.
Mr.Carywas the grandson of MordecaiCary, Bishop of Killaloe, and the son of a Captain in the British Army, who at the time of HenryCary’sbirth was quartered at Gibraltar, where the boy was born on the sixth of December, 1772.|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 theInferno, 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 withColeridgeand 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 TaylorCombe. That office was given, with great propriety, to Mr. EdwardHawkins, who had assisted Mr.Combe, and had, in fact, replaced him during his illness. But Mr.Caryhad met with encouragement—especially from the Archbishop ofCanterbury—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 ofBean, and Mr.Beanwas just dead. Within a week or two, Mr.Carywas 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 ofColeridge,Rogers, CharlesLamb,[27]and (during their occasional visits to London) those ofSoutheyand ofWordsworth, became, in those days, very familiar at the gate of old Montagu House.Coleridgehad always lovedCary, 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 FrancisFreelingthat 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.Carylost 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.’|Life of H. F. Cary, by his Son, vol. ii, p. 198.|Such are the words of his fellow-mourner.
Part of Mr.Cary’sduties 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 toCary. The circumstances of that appointment have been thus stated by the eminent Prelate who made it:—
Circumstances of Mr. Panizzi’s first appointment in 1831.
‘Mr.Panizziwas 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’sappointment would be very advantageous for the institution.|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.Panizzihad already passed almost ten years in England.|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.Panizzihad 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 hissteps, 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 UgoFoscolo, ofRoscoe, and ofBrougham. 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 ofBojardoandAriosto, which was completed in 1834.
Minutes of Evidence on the Constitution and Management of the British Museum, 26 May, 1848, § 2764 (Report of 1850, p. 114).
When Mr.Baberannounced, in March, 1837, his intention to resign his Keepership, Mr.Panizzimade 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’sresignation,’ his services would be borne in mind.
One of Mr.Cary’searliest steps in the matter was to apply to his friend and fellow-poet, Mr. SamuelRogers.Rogers—to use his own words—was one who had knownCary‘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 friendCaryby 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,Rogersalso conversed on the subject. Mr.Abercrombyasked the poet: ‘What do you know about a Mr.Panizzi, who stands next toCary?’ ‘Panizzi,’ saidRogers, ‘would serve you very well.’ ‘To tell you the truth,’ rejoined the Speaker, ‘we think that, if Mr.Caryis not appointed,Panizziwill be the right man.’ At that time, Mr.Panizziwas 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 toCary. ‘The Lord Chancellor and the Speaker,’ writesCary’sbiographer, ‘acting under information,the source of which was probably known only to them and their informant,|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.Carymade his personal application to the Archbishop. The Archbishop told him that objections weremade to his appointment.Cary, immediately after his return, told his brother-officersBaberandPanizziwhat the Archbishop had communicated to him. ‘Then,’ said Mr.Panizzi, ‘the thing concerns me.’ ‘Yes,’ rejoinedCary, ‘certainly it does.’ They all knew that applications for the vacant office from outsiders were talked of. Among these were the late Reverend ErnestHawkinsand the late Reverend RichardGarnett(who afterwards succeeded to the Assistant-Librarianship). And Mr.Panizzithen 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.’Caryreplied, ‘Not at all.’ Instantly, and inCary’spresence, Mr.Panizziwrote 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’ssuccessor.|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.Caryof the conversation he has had the honour to have with your Grace.’ The writer gave his letter into Mr.Cary’shand, 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’sappointment, despite all objection (and nothing can be more natural than that it should be so—‘A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind’), that thepublicinterest, 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 HenryEllishimself, when asked to give a formal testimonial of Mr.Panizzi’squalifications to be head of thePrinted 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. EdwardHawkins, 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]
Caryafterwards—and when it was too late to recall it—regretted his assent to Mr.Panizzi’sapplication. 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 thatalleviation of labourwhich,in this as in other public offices, is gained by promotionto a superior place, than call for a continuance of the same laborious employment.’|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 ‘asuperior place’ brings to a public servant, is a somewhat amusing subject of conjecture.
It was with perfect honesty and integrity of purpose that Mr.Caryadduced 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 DanielDefoehad, a hundred years before, put all reproach and contumely on the score of a man’snotbeing a ‘true-born Englishman’ quite out of Court, in all contentions concerning capabilities of public service. But, of all places in the world, aMuseumis 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.Caryregretted that he had permitted a name so deservedly honoured to endorse so poor a sophism.
Mr. AntonioPanizzireceived 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.Caryresigned his Assistant-Librarianship.|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 ofEllis, 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 theVetus 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’sdischarge 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 butshallow, 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 theCatalogue of the Printed Books; as he had performed his hard-by almost thirty years earlier.
Mr.Babersurvived 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 HenryEllisby 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’searliest 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’sleading 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 intosalient 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.Panizzireceived 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. ThomasWatts.|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.
ThomasWattswas 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. YoungWattsevinced 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 theMinutes 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.|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.Wattsdid 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, entitledPublic 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 friendWatts. 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 ThomasWatts. 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.