HISTORY MUSEUM UNDER SIR H. ELLIS. It is more than probable that the ability which Mr. BOOK III, PANIZZI had displayed in the Committee Room of the Chap. II. House of Commons, as well as the zeal for our national OF THE 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. PANIZZI'S MENT TO THE PRINTED Amongst the duties entrusted to Mr. PANIZZI after his MR. entrance (in 1831) into the service of the Trustees as an APPOINTextra 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 BOOKS. 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 BOOK III, Chap. II. HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM UNDER SIR H. ELLIS. LIFE AND LITERARY LABOURS OF HENRY FRANCIS CARY. 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. 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 and had established himself in the great wen' as Reader at year, 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 AssistantLibrarian 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. Chap. II. OF THE UNDER SIR H. ELLIS. The homely rooms in the Court-yard of the Museum Book III, Part of Mr. CARY'S duties at the Museum now neces- * It was in the old rooms in the Court-yard of Montagu House that Charles Lamb enjoyed the last, I think, of his dinings-out.' A few days after his final visit (November, 1834) the hand of Death was already upon him. Cary, before writing the well-known epitaph, wrote some other graceful and touching lines on his old friend. They were occasioned by finding, in a volume lent to Lamb by Cary, Lamb's bookmark, against a page which told of the death of Sydney. They begin thus: 'So should it be, my gentle friend, Thy leaf last closed at Sydney's end; Cary, by his Son, vol. ii, 1 Воок 111, Chap. II. HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM UNDER SIR H. ELLIS. CIRCUM STANCES OF MR. FIRST AP- 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 : '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 Minutes of opinion that Mr. PANIZZI's appointment would be very Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the British Museum, 28 June, 1836, p. 433. MR. PANIZZI'S advantageous for the institution. 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. 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 IN ENGLAND. Duchy of Modena, Mr. PANIZZI had been educated at EARLY CAREER AND HIS LABOURS 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 Chap. II OF THE MUSEUM H. ELLIS. steps, and appealed, by turns, to the suspicions and to the BOOK III, fears of the local authorities. Presently it seemed clear HISTORY that England, alone, would afford, to the dreaded 'conspirator' for Italy, a secure abode. At Liverpool he ac- UNDER SIR quired 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. 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, |