Chap. II. OF -had so much dislike to talk of their performances, as was Book III, manifested by Thomas WATTS. To this day, very much of HISTORY what he did for the Public is scarcely known even by those OP THE 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. MUSEUM UNDER SIR H. ELLIS. LABOURS FOR THE AUGMENTA BRITISH MUSEUM When Thomas WATTS entered the Museum, the imme- WATTS' diate task entrusted to him, onerous as it was, did not (for any long time) engross his attention. In common with TION OF THE Mr. PANIZZI, his desire to increase the Library, and to make London surpass Paris-' Paris must be surpassed,' LIBRARY. 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. In the autumn of 1837 he could hardly foresee that one of the attacks to be made, in the after-years, upon those who had appointed him, or who had promoted his appointment, for the crime of preferring a foreigner' to a high post in our National Museum, would be based upon the foreigner's neglect of English Literature. An Italian Librarian,' said those profound logicians, must, naturally and necessarily, swamp the Library with Italian books. He can't help doing it.' But, strange as it may have seemed to objectors of that calibre, this particular Italian happened to be, not only a scholar-a ripe and good one BOOK III, OF THE UNDER SIR H. ELLIS. SIR A. 1837, ON THE PROPER CHARACTER- LIBRARY FOR . but a man of wide sympathies, and of catholic tastes in literature. He was able himself to enjoy SHAKESPEARE, not less thoroughly than he was able, by his critical acumen, to increase other men's enjoyment of ARIOSTO and of Dante. In October, 1837, he wrote thus :- With respect to the purchase of books, Mr. PANIZZI begs to lay before the Trustees the general principles by which he will be guided, if not otherwise directed, in endeavouring to answer the expectations and wishes of the Trustees and of the Public in this respect. First, the attention of the Keeper of this emphatically British Library ought to be directed, most particularly, to British works, and to works relating to the British Empire; its religious, political, and literary, as well as scientific history; its laws, institutions, description, commerce, arts, &c. The rarer and more expensive a work of this description is, the more indefatigable* efforts ought to be made to secure it for the Library. Secondly, the old and rare, as well as the critical, editions of ancient Classics, ought never to be sought for in vain in this Collection. Nor ought good comments, as also the best translations into modern languages, to be wanting. Thirdly, with respect to foreign literature, arts, and sciences, the Library ought to possess the best editions of standard works for critical purposes or for use. The Public have, moreover, a right to find, in their National Library, heavy as well as expensive foreign works, such as Literary Journals; Transactions of Societies; large Collections, historical or otherwise; complete series of Newspapers; Collections of Laws, and their best interpreters.' We have, in this brief passage, the germ 6 * In Minutes of Evidence (page 596) printed erroneously reasonable.' To the brief extract, for which alone I can here afford space, were appended, in the original Report, many pertinent amplifications and illustrations. Some of these are given in the Minutes of Evidence above referred to. Chap. 11. HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM UNDER SIR H. ELLIS. of the admirable Report on the National Library, written BOOK III, on a far more extended scale, which was afterwards laid before the Government, and, ultimately, before Parliament. If this Report failed to lead, immediately (or, indeed, for a long time to come), to the increased means of acquisition on which its writer's mind was so much bent, the fault did not lie in the Trustees. It lay with the House of Commons, and with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is hard to realise, in 1870, how entirely the effort for an adequate improvement of the British Museum was an uphill task. Trustees like the late Lord DERBY and the late Sir R. H. INGLIS were earnestly desirous to carry out such recommendations as those of Mr. PANIZZI, but the employment of urging them on the Ministry was an ungrateful one. In those days of reforming-activity, although, in 1837, the average radicals in the House' were not quite such devout believers in the faith that a general overturn was the only road to a general millenium as they had been in 1832, they were willing enough to listen to attacks upon the managers of any public institution (no matter how crude were the views of the assailants, or how lopsided their information), but they were not half so ready to open the public purse-strings in order to enable impugned managers or trustees to improve the institution entrusted to them upon a worthy scale. Three months after writing his Report of 1837, Mr. PANIZZI was enabled to procure the official assistance of Mr. WATTS. The appointment strengthened his hands, by giving to a man of extraordinary powers for organization and government, the services of a man not less. extraordinary for his powers of accumulating and assimilating detail. What each man characteristically possessed, was just the right supplement to the special THE IM- IN THE WAY MENT. BOOK III, OF THE MUSEUM H. ELLIS. Chap. V. faculties of the other. But even such a happy union of personal qualities would have failed to carry into effect the large aspirations for the improvement of the Museum which both men, severally and independently, had cherished (during many years), but for one other circumstance. This was a merely incidental—one might say a fortuitous— circumstance; but it proved very influential upon the fortunes of the British Museum in the course of the years to come. When Mr. PANIZZI began to be known in London See hereafter, society-at first, very much by the instrumentality of the late Mr. Thomas GRENVILLE, who, at an early period, had become warmly attached to him-his acquaintance was eagerly cultivated. In this In this way he obtained opportunities to preach his doctrine of increased public support for our great national and educational institutions (his advocacy was not limited within the four walls of the Museum) in the ears of very valuable and powerful listeners. It was thought, now and then, that he preached on that topic out of season as well as in season. But the issue amply vindicated the zeal which prompted him to make the pleasures of social intercourse subserve the performance of a public trust. Few men, I imagine-holding the unostentatious post of a librarianship—ever possessed so many social opportunities of the kind here referred to, as were possessed by Mr. PANIZZI. And even those listeners who may have thought him over-pertinacious, sometimes, in pressing his convictions, must needs have carried away with them the assurance that one public servant, at all events, did not regard his duties as 'irksome.' They must have seen that this man's heart was in his official work. Mr. PANIZZI's right- So was it also in the instance of argument. His address and manners did no sort of justice to the intrinsic qualities, or to the true heart, of the man himself. To strangers, they often gave a most inaccurate idea of his faculties and character. Under the outward guise of a blunt-spoken farmer, there dwelt, not only high scholarship, but a lofty sense-it would not be too strong to say a passionate sense of public duty. He had none of the persuasive gifts of vivid talk. But he could preach forcibly, by example. When he had made some way with the first task which was assigned him, that of superintending the removal of the Library, and its due ordering-in some of the details of which he was ably assisted, almost from the outset, by Mr. George BULLEN (who, in January, 1838, was first specially employed to retranscribe the press-marks or symbols of the books, as they stood in old Montagu House, into the new equivalents necessitated by their altered position in the new Library, in which labour he was, in the April following, assisted by Mr. N. W. SIMONS)—and had solved, by assiduous effort and self-denying labour, some of the many difficulties which stood in the way of effecting that removal without impeding, to any serious degree, the service of the Public Reading Room, he turned his attention, at Mr. PANIzzi's instance, to the-to him-far more grateful task of preparing lists of foreign books for addition to the Library. For this task he evinced special qualities and attainments which, I believe, were never surpassed, by any librarian in the world; not even by an AUDIFFREDI, a VAN-PRAET, or a MAGLIABECHI. Book III, HISTORY OF THE Chap. II. MUSEUM UNDER SIR H. ELLIS. ATTAIN Mr. WATTS' earliest schoolfellows had marvelled at his LINGUISTIC faculty for acquiring with great rapidity such a degree of MENTS OF familiarity with foreign tongues, as gave him an amply WATTS. sufficient master-key to their several literatures. When THOMAS |