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.
[Illustration:
_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.
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—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.
[Sidenote: SIR A. PANIZZI’S REPORT, IN OCTOBER, 1837, ON THE PROPER
CHARACTERISTICS OF A NATIONAL LIBRARY FOR GREAT BRITAIN.]
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[30]
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 of the admirable Report on the National
Library, written 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.
[Sidenote: THE IMPEDIMENTS IN THE WAY OF IMPROVEMENT.]
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 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.
[Sidenote: See hereafter, Chap. V.] When Mr. PANIZZI began to be known
in London 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 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.
So was it also in the instance of Mr. PANIZZI’S righthand man within the
Museum itself. Thomas WATTS was not gifted with powers of persuasive
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.
[Sidenote: LINGUISTIC ATTAINMENTS OF THOMAS WATTS.]
Mr. WATTS’ earliest schoolfellows had marvelled at his faculty for
acquiring with great rapidity such a degree of familiarity with foreign
tongues, as gave him an amply sufficient master-key to their several
literatures. When yet very young, he showed a scholarly appreciation of
the right methods of setting to work. He studied languages in
groups—giving his whole mind to one group at a time, and then passing to
another. At an age when many men (far from being blockheads) are
painfully striving after a literary command of their mother-tongue,
young WATTS had showed himself to be master of two several clusters of
the great Indo-European family, and to have a very respectable
acquaintance with a third. When, as a youthful volunteer at the Museum,
he was fulfilling a request made to him by Mr. BABER, that he would
catalogue the Collection of Icelandic books given to the Public, half a
century before, by Sir Joseph BANKS, and also another parcel of Russian
books, which had been bought at his own recommendation, the reading of
Chinese literature was the labour of his hours of private study, and the
reading of Polish literature was the recreation of his hours of leisure.
What the feelings of an ambitious student of that strain would be when
officially instructed by his superior to take under his sole (or almost
sole) charge the duty of examining the Museum Catalogues, and of
obtaining from all parts of Europe and Asia, and from many parts of
America, other catalogues of every kind, in order to ascertain the
deficiencies of the Library, and to supply them, the reader can fancy.
The new assistant luxuriated in his office. Many of his suggestions were
periodically and earnestly supported with the Trustees by Mr. PANIZZI.
His labours were appreciated and often (to my personal knowledge) warmly
applauded by his superior officer.
[Sidenote: HIS LISTS OF MUSEUM DESIDERATA.]
He began with making lists of Russian books that were _desiderata_ in
the Museum Library; then of Hungarian; then of Dutch; then of French,
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; then of Chinese; then of Welsh; then
of the rapidly growing, but theretofore (at the Museum) much neglected,
literature of the Americas and the Indies.
I used, now and then, to watch him at his work, and to think that no man
could possibly be employed more entirely to his liking. Long after I
ceased to enjoy any opportunity of talking with him about his
employment, I used occasionally to hear that similar tasks occupied, not
infrequently, the hours of evening leisure as well as the hours of
official duty. Some who knew him more intimately than—of late years—it
was my privilege to know him, believe that his early death was in part
(humanly speaking) due to his passion for poring over catalogues and
other records of far-off literatures when worn-out nature needed to be
refreshed, and to be recreatively interested in quite other occupations.
During the last twenty years alone (1850–1869 inclusive) he cannot have
marked and recommended for purchase less than a hundred and fifty
thousand foreign works, and in order to their selection he must needs
have examined almost a million of book-titles, in at least eighteen
different languages.
When little more than half that last-named term of years had expired he
was able to write—in a Report which he addressed to Mr. PANIZZI in
February, 1861—that the common object of Keeper and Assistant-Keeper had
been, during almost a quarter of a century, to ‘bring together from all
quarters the useful, the elegant, and the curious literature of every
language; to unite with the best English Library in England, or the
world, the best Russian Library out of Russia, the best German out of
Germany, the best Spanish out of Spain, and so with every language from
Italian to Icelandic, from Polish to Portuguese. In five of the
languages in which it now claims this species of supremacy, in Russian,
Polish, Hungarian, Danish, and Swedish, I believe I may say that, with
the exception of perhaps fifty volumes, every book that has been
purchased by the Museum within the last three and twenty years has been
purchased at my suggestion. I have the pleasure of reflecting that every
future student of the less-known literatures of Europe will find riches
where I found poverty; though, of course, [Sidenote: Reports of 1861,
pp. 17, 18.] the collections in all these languages together form but a
small proportion of the vast accumulations that have been added to the
Library during your administration and that of your successor.’[31]
When the reader comes to add to his estimate of the amount of mental
labour thus briefly and modestly indicated by the man who performed it,
a thought of the further toil involved in the re-arrangement and careful
_classification_ of more than four hundred thousand volumes of books, in
all the literary languages of the world (without any exception), he will
have attained some rough idea of the public service which was crowded
into one man’s life; and that, as we all have now to regret, not a
protracted life. He will have, too, some degree of conception of the
amount of acquired knowledge which was taken from us when Thomas WATTS
was taken.
To his works of industry and of learning, the man we have lost added the
still better works of a kindly, benevolent heart. Many a struggling
student received at his hands both wise and loving counsel, and active
help. And his good deeds were not advertised. They would not now have
been spoken of, but for his loss—in the very thick of his labours for
the Public.
In a precious volume, which was first added to the manuscript stores of
the British Museum a little before Mr. WATTS’ death, there occurs the
rough jotting of a thought which is very apposite to our human and
natural reflections upon such an early removal from the scene of labour
as that just referred to. When somebody spoke to BACON of the death, in
the midst of duty and of mental vigour, of some good worker or other in
the vineyard of this world, almost three centuries ago, he made the
following entry in his private note-book:—‘Princes, when in jousts,
triumphs, or games of victory, men deserve crowns for their performance,
do not crown them below, where the deeds are performed, but call them
up. [Sidenote: Lord Bacon’s _Note-Book_ (MS. ADDIT. B. M.).] So doth God
by death.’
[Sidenote: OTHER LITERARY LABOURS OF THOMAS WATTS.]
But these several branches of public duty, onerous as they were, were
far from exhausting Mr. WATTS’ mental activity, either within the Museum
walls or outside of them. He was a frequent contributor to periodical
literature. To his pen the _Quarterly Review_ was indebted for an
excellent article on the _History of Cyclopædias_; the ATHENÆUM, for a
long series of papers on various topics of literary history and of
current literature, extending over many years; the various Cyclopædias
and Biographical Dictionaries successively edited by Mr. Charles KNIGHT,
for a long series of valuable notices, embracing the Language and
Literature of Hungary; those of Wales; and more than a hundred and
thirty brief biographical memoirs, distinguished alike for careful
research and for clear and vigorous expression. These biographies
relate, for the most part, to foreign men of letters. To the pages of
the _Transactions of the Philological Society_ he was a frequent
contributor. His Memoir on Hungarian Literature, first read to that
Society, procured him the distinction of a corresponding-membership of
the Hungarian Academy, and the distinction was enhanced by his being
elected on the same day with Lord MACAULAY.
Within the Museum itself two distinct and important departments of
official labour, both of which he filled with intelligence and zeal,
have yet to be indicated. [Sidenote: THE MUSEUM PRINTED BOOK CATALOGUE
OF 1839–1869, AND WATTS’ LABOURS IN RELATION TO IT.] In 1839, he took
part—with others—in framing an extensive code of ‘rules’ for the
re-compilation of the entire body of the Catalogues of Printed Books. In
May, 1857, he took charge of the Public Reading-Room, as Chief
Superintendent of the daily service.
It need hardly be said that the first-named task—that on the
Catalogues—was a labour of planning and shaping, not one of actual
execution. It was very important, however, in its effects on the public
economy of the Library, and it was the one only labour, as I believe,
performed by Mr. WATTS, whether severally or in conjunction with others,
which failed to give unmixed satisfaction to the general body of
readers. The _Minutes of Evidence_, taken by the Commissioners of
1848–1850, whilst they abound in expressions of public gratitude both to
Mr. PANIZZI and, next after him, to Mr. WATTS, contain a not less
remarkable abundance of criticisms, and of complaints, upon the plan
(not the execution) of the _Catalogue of Printed Books_ begun in 1839.
The subject is a dry one, but will repay some brief attention on the
reader’s part.
When Mr. PANIZZI became Keeper, he had (it will have been seen) to face
almost instantly, and abreast, three several tasks, each of which
entailed much labour upon himself, personally, as well as upon his
assistants. The third of them—this business of the Catalogue—proved to
be not the least onerous, and it was, assuredly, not the best rewarded
in the shape of its ultimate reception by those concerned more
immediately in its performance. I can speak with some sympathy on this
point, since it was as a temporary assistant in the preparation of this
formidable and keenly-criticised Catalogue, that the present writer
entered the service of the Trustees, in February, 1839.
[Sidenote: OBJECTIONS TO THE PLAN OF THE MUSEUM PRINTED BOOK CATALOGUE
(1839–1869).]
That some objections to the plan adopted in 1839 are well-grounded I
entirely believe. But the important point in this matter, for our
present purpose, is, not that the plan preferred was unobjectionable,
but that the utmost effort was used, at the time and under the
circumstances of the time, to prepare such a Catalogue as should meet
the fair requirements both of the Trustees and of the Readers. It is
within my recollection that, to effect this, Mr. PANIZZI laboured,
personally as well as in the way of super-intendance and direction, as
it has not often happened to me, in my time, to see men labour for the
Public. Assuredly to him promotion brought no lessening of toil in any
form.
In shaping the plan of the General Catalogue of 1839–1870 (for it is, at
this moment of writing, still in active progress), the course taken was
this:—A sort of committee of five persons was formed, each of whom
severally was to prepare, in rough draft, rules for the compilation of
the projected work, illustrated by copious examples. It was to be
entirely new, and to embrace every book contained in the Library up to
the close of the year 1838. The draft rules were then freely discussed
in joint committee, and wherever differences of opinion failed to be
reconciled upon conference, the majority of votes determined the
question. Such was Mr. PANIZZI’S anxiety to prepare the best Catalogue
for the Readers that was practicable, that he never insisted,
authoritatively, on his own view of any point whatever, which might be
in contention amongst us, when he stood in a minority. On all such
points, he voted upon an exact equality with his assistants. The rules
that were most called into question (before the Commissioners of
1848–1850) had been severally discussed and determined in this fair and
simple way. Beyond all doubt, some of the rules might now be largely
amended in the light of subsequent experience. But, when adopted, they
seemed to _all_ of us the best that were practicable under all the then
circumstances.
The committee thus formed consisted of Mr. PANIZZI himself, of Mr.
Thomas WATTS, of Mr. John Winter JONES (now Principal-Librarian), of Mr.
John Humffreys PARRY (now Mr. Serjeant PARRY), and of the writer of this
volume. The labour was much more arduous than the average run of readers
in a Public Library have any adequate conception of. It occupied several
months. It was pushed with such energy and industry, that many a time,
after we had all five worked together, till the light of the spring days
of 1839 failed us, we adjourned to work on—with the help of a sandwich
and a glass of Burgundy—in Mr. PANIZZI’S private apartment above the old
gate in the Court-yard. If the result of our joint labours had been
printed in the ordinary form of books, it would have made a substantial
octavo volume. The code has, no doubt, many faults and oversights, but,
be they what they may, it was a vast improvement upon former doings in
that direction; [Sidenote: See Mr. Panizzi’s evidence before the
Commissioners of 1848–9.] and not a little of it has been turned to
account, of late years, in the Public Libraries of France, of Germany,
and of America.
In the labours of this little house-committee my late friend took a very
large share. To Mr. PANIZZI, and to him, all their colleagues in the
task of 1839 will readily admit that the chief merit of what is good,
and the smallest part of the demerit of what may have been injudicious,
in the _Rules for the Compilation of the Catalogue of Printed Books_
(now before me) is incontestably due. My own experience in such matters,
in the spring of 1839, was small indeed. That of my friend PARRY was
even less. Mr. Winter JONES possessed, already, the advantage of a
thorough familiarity with the Library about to be catalogued, and also
an extensive and thorough general knowledge of books. Of Mr. PANIZZI’S
qualifications and attainments, for such a labour, it would be
supererogatory and idle to say a word more, except that he had
already—and single-handed—made so good a Catalogue of the fine Library
of the Royal Society that the meddling of half a dozen ‘revisers’ failed
to spoil it. But there is no impropriety in saying of Mr. WATTS, that he
so delighted in the labour in hand as to make it seem, to those who
worked with him, that he looked upon it in the light of a pleasant
recreation rather than in the light of a dry task.
But whatever the ultimate differences of opinion, amongst those
concerned in such a matter, about the merits of the Museum Catalogue,
begun in 1839, there was no difference at all, either in the House or
out of it, as to the conspicuous merits of his performance of every
subsequent duty. His stores of knowledge were put, with the utmost
readiness, at the service of all sorts of readers; and he was not less
admirable in the discharge of his office of Superintendent of the
Reading-Room than afterwards in the more prominent office of Keeper of
Printed Books—which he held little more than three years.
When Sir Henry ELLIS retired, in 1856, from the office of
Principal-Librarian, the Collection of Printed Books—which he had found,
on his accession to that office, extending to less than one hundred and
fifty thousand volumes—exceeded five hundred and twenty thousand
volumes. The annual number of Readers admitted had increased from about
seven hundred and fifty to nearly four thousand.
The one step which did more than aught else to promote this improvement
was the systematic survey of the then existing condition of the Printed
Library, in all the great departments of knowledge, which Mr. PANIZZI
set on foot in 1843, and embodied in a Memoir addressed to the Trustees,
on the first of January, 1845.
[Sidenote: MR. PANIZZI’S MEMOIR ON THE COLLECTION OF PRINTED BOOKS,
1845.]
The principle on which this Memoir was compiled lay in the careful
comparison of the Museum Catalogues with the best special
bibliographies, and with the Catalogues of other Libraries. In
Jurisprudence, for example, the national collection was tested by the
_Bibliotheca Juridica_ of LIPENIUS, SENCKENBERG, and MADAHN; by the list
of law-books inserted in DUPIN’S edition of CAMUS’ _Lettres sur la
profession d’Avocat_, and by the _Bibliothèque diplomatique choisie_ of
MARTENS. In Political Economy, by BLANQUI’S list given in the _Histoire
de l’Economie politique en Europe_. The Mathematical section of the
Library was compared with ROGG’S _Handbuch der mathematischen
Literatur_. In British History, the _Bibliotheca Grenvilliana_, and the
_Catalogue of the Library of the Writers to the Signet_, were examined,
for those sections of the subject to which they were more particularly
applicable, and so on in the other departments. The facts thus elicited
were striking. It was shown that much had been done since 1836 to
augment almost every section of the Library; but that the deficiencies
were still of the most conspicuous sort. In a word, the statement
abundantly established the truth of the proposition that ‘the Collection
of Printed Books in the British Museum is not nearly so complete and
perfect as the National Library of Great Britain ought to be ...’ and it
then proceeded to discuss the further question: ‘By what means can the
collection be brought with all proper despatch to a state of as much
completeness and perfection as is attainable in such matters, and as the
public service may require?’
It was shown that no reliance could be placed upon donations, for the
filling up those gaps in the Library which were the special subject of
the Memoir. Rare and precious books might thus come, but not the widely
miscellaneous assemblage still needed. As to special grants for the
acquisition of entire collections, not one of ten such collections, it
was thought, would, under existing circumstances, be suitable for the
Museum. The Copyright-tax has no bearing, however rigidly enforced, save
on current British Literature. There remained, therefore, but one
adequate resource, that of annual Parliamentary grants, unfettered by
restrictions as to their application, and capable of being depended upon
for a considerable number of years to come. Purchases might thus be
organized in all parts of the world with foresight, system, and
continuity. In the letter addressed by the Trustees to the Treasury, it
was stated that, ‘for filling up the chasms which are so much to be
regretted, and some of which are distinctly set forth in the annexed
document, the Trustees think that a sum of not less than ten thousand a
year will be required for the next ten years,’ in addition to the usual
five thousand a year for the ordinary acquisitions of the Library.
The Lords of the Treasury were not willing to recommend to Parliament a
larger annual grant than ten thousand pounds, ‘for the purchase of books
of all descriptions,’ but so far they were disposed to proceed,
[Sidenote: _Treasury Minutes_, 1845.] ‘for some years to come;’ and they
strongly inculcated upon the Trustees ‘the necessity, during the
continuance of such grants, of postponing additions to the other
collections under their charge, which, however desirable in themselves,
are of subordinate importance to that of completing the Library.’
MANUSCRIPTS ADDED IN THE YEARS 1849, 1850.
In 1843, an important series of modern Historical MSS., relating more
especially to the South of Europe, was purchased from the RANUZZI family
of Bologna. The papers of the Brothers Laurence HYDE, Earl of Rochester,
and Henry HYDE, Earl of Clarendon, were also secured. Additions, too, of
considerable interest, were made to the theological and classical
sections of the MS. Department, by the purchase of many vellum MSS.,
ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. In 1849, the most
important acquisitions related to our British History. About three
hundred documents illustrative of the English Wars in France (1418 to
1450), nearly a hundred autograph letters of WILLIAM III, and an
extensive series of transcripts from the archives at the Hague, were
thus gathered for the future historian. In 1850, a curious series of
Stammbücker, three hundred and twenty in number, and in date extending
from 1554 to 1785, was obtained by purchase. These Albums, collectively,
contained more than twenty-seven thousand autographs of persons more or
less eminent in the various departments of human activity. Amongst them
is the signature of MILTON. The acquisitions of 1851 included some
Biblical MSS. of great curiosity; an extensive series of autograph
letters (chiefly from the Donnadieu Collection), and a large number of
papers relating to the affairs of the English Mint.
In the year last-named Sir Frederick MADDEN thus summed up the
accessions to his Department since the year 1836:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│Volumes of Manuscripts 9051│
│Rolls of Maps, Pedigrees, &c. 668│
│Manuscripts on Reed, Bark, or other material 136│
│Charters and Rolls 6750│
│Papyri 42│
│Seals 442│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
[Sidenote: TABULAR VIEW OF THE ACCESSIONS TO THE MSS. DEPARTMENT FROM
1836–1851.]
And he adds:—‘If money had been forthcoming, the number of manuscripts
acquired during the last fifteen years might have been more than
doubled. The collections that have passed into other hands, namely, Sir
Robert CHAMBERS’ Sanscrit MSS.; Sir William OUSELEY’S Persian; BRUCE’S
Ethiopic and Arabic; MICHAEL’S Hebrew; LIBRI’S Italian, French, Latin,
and Miscellaneous; BARROIS’ French and Latin; as well as the Stowe
Collection of Anglo-Saxon, Irish, and English manuscripts, might all
have been so united. The liberality of the Treasury becomes very small
when compared with the expenditure of individuals. Lord ASHBURNHAM,
during the last ten years, has paid nearly as large a sum for MSS. as
has been expended on the National Collection since the Museum was first
founded.’
[Sidenote: GROWTH OF THE PRINTED DEPARTMENT UP TO 1851.]
The causes which at this period again tended somewhat to slacken the
growth of the Printed Collection have been glanced at already. But
during the fifteen years from 1836 to 1851, it had increased at the rate
of sixteen thousand volumes a year, on the average. When the estimates
of 1852 were under discussion, Mr. PANIZZI stated, ‘that till room is
provided, the deficiency must in a great measure continue, and new
[foreign] books only to a limited extent be purchased.’ The grant for
such purchases was therefore, in that year, limited to four thousand
pounds. In a subsequent report, Mr. PANIZZI added, ‘that he could not
but deeply regret the ill-consequences which must accrue by allowing old
deficiencies to continue, and new ones to accumulate.’ From the same
report may be gathered a precise view of the actual additions, from all
sources, during the quinquennium of 1846–1850. The increase in the
printed books, therefore, although it had not quite kept pace with Mr.
PANIZZI’S hopeful anticipations in 1852, had actually reached a larger
yearly average, during that last quinquennium, than was attained in the
like period from 1846 to 1850.
The report from which these figures are taken was made in furtherance of
the good and fruitful suggestion that a great Reading-Room should be
built within the inner quadrangle. Judging from the past, argued Mr.
PANIZZI, in June, 1852, ‘and supposing that for the next ten years from
seven thousand to seven thousand five hundred pounds will be spent in
the purchase of printed books, the increase ... would be at the average
of about twenty-seven thousand volumes a year, without taking into
consideration the chance of an extraordinary increase, owing to the
purchase or donation of any large collection. [Sidenote: See hereafter,
Chap. V.] It was owing to the splendid bequest of Mr. GRENVILLE that the
additions to the Collection in 1847 reached the enormous amount of more
than fifty-five thousand volumes. After the steady and regular addition
of about twenty-seven thousand volumes for ten years together, here
reckoned upon, the Collection of Printed Books in the British Museum
might defy comparison, and would approach, as near as seems practicable
in such matters, to a state of completeness. The increase for the ten
years next following might be fairly reduced to two thirds of the above
sum. [Sidenote: GROWTH OF THE PRINTED SECTION OF THE LIBRARY SINCE
1852.] At this rate, the collection of books, which has been more than
doubled during the last fifteen years, would be double of what it now is
in twenty years from the present time [1852].’ At the date of this
report the number of volumes was already upwards of four hundred and
seventy thousand. At the date at which I now write (January, 1870), the
number of volumes, as nearly as it can be calculated, has become one
million and six thousand. On the average, therefore, of the whole
period, the increase has been not less than thirty-one thousand five
hundred volumes in every year. The Collection was somewhat more than
doubled during the first fifteen years of Mr. PANIZZI’S Keepership.
During the next like term of years, when the department was partly under
the administration of Mr. PANIZZI, and partly under that of Mr. Winter
JONES, it was nearly doubled again. It follows that the anticipation
expressed in the _Report_ of 1852 has been much more than fulfilled.
Less than seventeen years of labour have achieved what was then expected
to be the work of twenty years.
If the other departments of the British Museum cannot show an equal
ratio of growth during the term now under review, it has not been from
lack of zeal, either in their heads or in the Trustees. Their progress,
too, was very great, although it is not capable of being so strikingly
and compendiously illustrated. It has also to be borne in mind that the
arrears, so to speak, of the Library, were relatively greater than those
of some other divisions of the Museum.
[Sidenote: PROGRESS OF THE NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS.]
At the commencement of Sir Henry ELLIS’S term of
Principal-Librarianship, the Natural-History Collections were partly
under the charge of Dr. LEACH, partly under that of Mr. Charles KÖNIG.
Both were officers of considerable scientific attainments. In the
instance of Dr. LEACH, certain peculiar eccentricities and crotchets
were mixed up in close union with undoubted learning and skill. In not a
few eminent naturalists a tendency to undervalue the achievements of
past days, and to exaggerate those of the day that is passing, has often
been noted. LEACH evinced this tendency in more ways than one. But a
favourite way of manifesting it led him many times into difficulties
with his neighbours. He despised the taxidermy of Sir Hans SLOANE’S age,
and made periodical bonfires of Sloanian specimens. These he was wont to
call his ‘cremations.’ In his time, the Gardens of the Museum were still
a favourite resort of the Bloomsburians, but the attraction of the
terraces and the fragrance of the shrubberies were sadly lessened when a
pungent odour of burning snakes was their accompaniment. The stronger
the complaints, however, the more apparent became Dr. LEACH’S attachment
to his favourite cremations.
[Sidenote: GEORGE MONTAGU; HIS LABOURS IN NATURAL HISTORY AND HIS
ZOOLOGICAL MUSEUM.]
LEACH was the friend and correspondent of that eminent cultivator of the
classificatory sciences, Colonel George MONTAGU, of Lackham. Both of
them rank among the early members of the Linnæan Society, and it was
under LEACH’S editorship that MONTAGU’S latest contributions to the
Society’s _Transactions_ were published. [Sidenote: 1802–13.] MONTAGU’S
_Synopsis of British Birds_ marks an epoch in the annals of our local
ornithology, as does his treatise entitled _Testacea Britannica_ in
those of conchology. [Sidenote: 1803–9.] His contributions to the
National Collections were very liberal. But he did not care much for any
books save those that treated of natural history. In addition to a good
estate and a fine mansion, he had inherited from his brother a choice
old Library at Lackham, and a large cabinet of coins. These, I believe,
he turned to account as means of barter for books and specimens in his
favourite department of study. His love of the beauties of nature led
him to prefer an unpretending abode in Devon to his fine Wiltshire
house, and it was at Knowle that he died in August, 1815. His
Collections in Zoology were purchased by the Trustees, and were removed
from Knowle soon after his death. Scarcely any other purchase of like
value in the Natural-History Department was made for more than twenty
years afterwards. After the purchase of the Montagu Collection, the
growth of that department depended, as it had mainly depended before it,
on the acquisitions made for the Public by the several naturalists who
took part in the Voyages of Discovery or whose chance collections, made
in the course of ordinary duty, came to be at the disposal of the
British Admiralty.
Many of those naturalists were men of marked ability. Of necessity,
their explorations were attended with much curious adventure. To detail
their researches and vicissitudes would form—without much credit to the
writer—an interesting chapter, the materials of which are superabundant.
But, at present, it must needs be matter of hope, not of performance.
The distinctive progress of the Natural-History Collections, from
comparative and relative poverty, to a creditable place amongst rival
collections, connects itself pre-eminently with the labours of Dr. John
Edward GRAY, who will hereafter be remembered as the ablest keeper and
organizer those collections have hitherto had. Dr. GRAY is now (1870) in
the forty-sixth year of his public service at the British Museum, which
he entered as an Assistant, in 1824. He is widely known by his able
edition of GRIFFITHS’ _Animal Kingdom_, by his _Illustrations of Indian
Zoology_, by his account of the famous Derby Menagerie at Knowsley, and
by his _Manual of British Shells_; but his least ostensible publications
rank among the most conclusive proofs both of his ability and of his
zeal for the public service. Dr. GRAY has always advocated the
publication—to use Mr. CARLYLE’S words when under interrogatory by the
Museum Commissioners of 1848—of ‘all sorts of Catalogues.’ It is to him
that the Public owe the admirable helps to the study of natural history
which have been afforded by the long series of inventories, guides, and
nomenclators, the publication of which began, at his instance, in the
year 1844, and has been unceasingly pursued. A mere list of the various
printed synopses which have grown out of Dr. GRAY’S suggestion of 1844
would fill many such pages as that which the reader has now before him.
The consequence is, that in no department of the Museum can the student,
as yet, economise his time as he can economise it in the Natural-History
Department. _Printed_, not Manuscript, Catalogues mean time saved;
disappointment avoided; study fructified. No literary labour brings so
little of credit as does the work of the Catalogue-maker. None better
deserves the gratitude of scholars, as well as of the general mass of
visitors.
[Sidenote: STATE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS OF THE MUSEUM IN
1836.]
Dr. GRAY became Keeper of Zoology in 1840. Four years earlier, he had
given to Sir Benjamin HAWES’ Committee a striking account of the
condition of that department, illustrating it by comparisons with the
corresponding Collections in Paris, which may thus (not without
unavoidable injustice) be abridged:—The species of mammalia then in the
Museum were four hundred and five; the species of birds were two
thousand four hundred, illustrated by four thousand six hundred and
fifty-nine individual specimens. At that date, the latest accessible
data assigned to the Paris Collection about five hundred species of
mammals, and about two thousand three hundred species of birds,
illustrated by nearly six thousand specimens. The Museum series of birds
was almost equally rich in the orders, taken generally; but in
gallinaceous birds it was more than proportionately rich, a large number
of splendid examples having been received from India. In the birds of
Africa, of Brazil, and of Northern Europe, also, the Museum was already
exceptionally well-stored.
The special value of the Ornithological Collection undoubtedly showed
that it had been more elaborately cared for than had been some other
parts of natural history. But the extent and richness of the bird
gallery, even at this period, is not to be ascribed merely to a desire
to delight the eyes of a crowd of visitors. For scientific purposes, a
collection of birds must be more largely-planned and better filled than
a collection of mammals, or one of fish. In birds, the essential
characters of a considerable group of individual specimens may be
identical and their colours entirely different. [Sidenote: See _Minutes
of Evidence_, 1836, p. 238.] Besides the numerous diversities attendant
upon age and sex, the very date at which a bird is killed may produce
variations which have their interest for the scientific student.
The number of species of reptiles was in 1836 about six hundred,
illustrated by about one thousand three hundred specimens. This number
was much inferior to that of the Museum at Paris, but it exceeded by one
third the number of species in the Vienna Museum, [Sidenote: _Ibid._, p.
242 (Q. 2996–9).] and almost by one half the then number at Berlin.
The species of fish amounted to nearly a thousand, but this was hardly
the fourth of the great collection at Paris, although it probably
exceeded every other, or almost every other, Continental collection of
the same date. Of shells, the Museum number of species was four thousand
and twenty-five (exclusive of fossils), illustrated by about fifteen
thousand individuals. This number of species was at par with that of
Paris; much superior both to Berlin and to Leyden; but it was far from
representing positive—as distinguished from comparative—wealth. There
were already, in 1836, more than nine thousand known species of shells.
It was further shown in the evidence that, even under the arrangements
of 1836, the facilities of public access equalled those given at the
most liberal of the Continental Museums, and considerably exceeded those
which obtained at fully four-fifths of their number.
Among the many services rendered to the Museum by Dr. GRAY, one is of
too important a character to be passed over, even in a notice so brief
as this must needs be. [Sidenote: THE HARDWICKE BEQUEST OF ZOOLOGY.] The
large bequest in Zoology of Major-General HARDWICKE grew out of a
stipulation made by Dr. GRAY, when he undertook, at General HARDWICKE’S
request, the editorship of the _Illustrations of Indian Zoology_. A long
labour brought to the editor no pecuniary return, but it brought an
important collection to the British Public in the first instance, and
eventually a large augmentation of what had been originally given.
[Sidenote: GROWTH OF THE NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS OF THE MUSEUM.
1836–49.]
In March, 1849, the course of inquiries pursued by Lord ELLESMERE’S
Commission led to a new review of the growth of the Natural-History
Collections, and more especially of the Zoology. It applied in
particular to the twelve or thirteen years which had then elapsed since
the prior inquiries of 1835–1836. The statement possesses much interest,
but it is occasionally deficient in that systematic and necessary
distinction between species and specimens which characterised the
evidence of 1836. In brief, however, it may be said, that in the eight
years extending between June, 1840, and June, 1848, twenty-nine thousand
five hundred and ninety-five _specimens_ of vertebrated animals were
added to the Museum galleries and storehouses. Of these, five thousand
seven hundred and ninety-seven were mammals; thirteen thousand four
hundred and fourteen were birds; four thousand one hundred and twelve
reptiles; and six thousand two hundred and seventy-two were fish. The
number of specimens of annulose animals added during the same period was
seventy-three thousand five hundred and sixty-three: and that of
mollusca and radiata, fifty-seven thousand six hundred and ten.
These large additions comprised extensive gatherings made by DYSON in
Venezuela, and in various parts of North America; by GARDINER and
CLAUSEN in Brazil; by GOSSE in Jamaica; by GOULD, GILBERT, and
STEPHENSON, in Australia and in New Zealand; by HARTWEG in Mexico; by
GOUDOT in Columbia; by VERREAUX and SMITH in South Africa; by FRAZER in
Tunis; and by BRIDGES in Chili and in some other parts of South America.
Of the splendid collections made by Mr. HODGSON in India, some more
detailed mention must be made hereafter.
[Sidenote: CHECK IN THE GROWTH OF NATURAL-HISTORY COLLECTIONS ON THE
CONTINENT, 1845–1855.]
Meanwhile, on the Continent of Europe, political commotion had seriously
checked the due progress of scientific collections. Britain had been
making unwonted strides in the improvement of its Museum, at the very
time when most of the Continental States had allowed their fine Museums
to remain almost stationary. In mammals, birds, and shells, the British
Museum had placed itself in the first rank. Only in reptiles, fish, and
crustacea, could even Paris now claim superiority. Those classes had
there engaged for a long series of years the unremitting research and
labour of such naturalists as CUVIER, DUMERIL, VALENCIENNES, and
MILNE-EDWARDS; and their relative wealth of specimens it will be hard to
overtake. In insects, the Museum Collection vies with that of Paris in
point of extent, and excels it in point of arrangement.
Not less conspicuous had been the growth of the several Departments of
Antiquities. And this part of the story of the Museum teems with varied
interest. Within a period of less than thirty years, vast and
widely-distant cities, rich in works of art, have been literally
disinterred. In succession to the superb marbles of Athens, of
Phigaleia, and of Rome, some of the choicest sculptures and most curious
minor antiquities of Nineveh, of Calah, of Erech, of Ur-of-the-Chaldees,
of Babylon, of Xanthus, of Halicarnassus, of Cnidus, and of Carthage,
have come to London.
The growth of the subordinate Collections of Archæology has been
scarcely less remarkable. The series of ancient vases—to take but one
example—of which the research and liberality of Sir William HAMILTON
laid a good foundation almost a century ago, has come at length to
surpass its wealthiest compeers. Only a few years earlier, it ranked as
but the third, perhaps as but the fourth, among the great vase
collections of Europe. London, in that point of view, was below both
Naples and Paris, if not also below Munich. It now ranks above them all;
possessing two thousand six hundred vases, as against two thousand at
Paris, and two thousand one hundred at Naples.[32]
Another department, lying in part nearer home—that of British, Mediæval,
and Ethnological Antiquities—has been almost created by the labours of
the last twenty years. The ‘British’ Museum can no longer be said to be
a misnomer, as designating an establishment in which British Archæology
met with no elucidation.