Mr. Watts began by criticising, somewhat incisively, the architectural skill which had constructed a vast quadrangle without providing it even with the means of a free circulation of air. He pinned Sir Robert Smirke on the horns of a dilemma. If, he argued, the architect looked to a sanitary result, he had, in fact, provided a well of malaria. If he contemplated a display of art, he had, by consenting to the abolition of his northern portico, spoiled and destroyed all architectural effect. ‘The space,’ he proceeded to say, which has thus been wasted, ‘would have afforded accommodation for the whole Library, much superior to what is now proposed to afford it. A Reading-Room of ample dimensions might have stood in the centre, and been surrounded, on all four sides, with galleries for the books.’ Afterwards, when adverting to the great expense which had been incurred upon the façades of the quadrangle, he went on to say: ‘It might now seem barbarous to propose the filling up of the square—as ought originally to have been done. |Mechanics’ Magazine (1837); vol. xxvi, pp. 295, seqq.| Perhaps the best plan would be to design another range of building entirely [new?], enclosing the present building on the eastern and northern sides as the Elgin and other galleries do on the western. To do this, it would be necessary to purchase and pull down one side of two streets,—Montagu Street and Montagu Place.’ |Ibid.|
See Chap. ii of Book III, p. 566, and the accompanying fac-simile.
As I have intimated already, this alternative project was unconsciously reproduced, by the present writer, ten years later, without any idea that it had been anticipated. But neither to the mind of the writer of 1837, nor to that of the writer of 1847, did the grand feature of construction which, within another decade, has given to London a splendid building as well as a most admirable Reading-Room, present itself. The substantial merit, both of originally suggesting, and of (in the main) eventually realising the actual building of 1857, belongs to Antonio Panizzi.
As to the claims on that score advanced by Mr. Hosking, formerly Professor of Architecture at King’s College, they apply to a plan wholly different from the plan which was carried into execution.
Mr. Hosking’s scheme was drawn up, for private circulation, in February, 1848 (thirteen months after the writing of my own pamphlet entitled Public Libraries in London and in Paris, and more than six months after its circulation in print), when it was first submitted to Lord Ellesmere’s Commission of Inquiry. It was first published (in The Builder) in June, 1850. His object was to provide a grand central hall for the Department of Antiquities.
When Mr. Hosking called public attention to his design of 1848—in a pamphlet entitled Some Remarks upon the recent Addition of a Reading-Room to the British Museum—Mr. Sydney Smirke wrote to him thus:—‘I recollect seeing your plans at a meeting of the Trustees, ... shortly after you sent them [to Lord Ellesmere]. When, long subsequently, Mr. Panizzi showed me his sketch for a plan of a new Reading-Room, I confess it did not remind me of yours, the purposes of the two plans and the treatment and construction were so different.’[[33]] |Sydney Smirke to William Hosking. (Remarks, &c.)| Whilst to Mr. Smirke himself belongs the merit of practical execution, that of design belongs no less unquestionably to Panizzi.
Mr. Panizzi himself preferred, at first, the plan of extending the building on the eastern and northern sides. His suggestions had the approval of the Commissioners of 1850. |The new or Panizzi Reading-Room.| But the Government was slow to give power to the Trustees to carry out the plan of their officer and the recommendation of the Commissioners of Inquiry, by proposing the needful vote in a Committee of Supply. Plan and Report alike lay dormant from the year 1850 to 1854. It was then that, as a last resort, and as a measure of economy, by avoiding all present necessity to buy more ground of the Duke of Bedford, Mr. Panizzi recommended the Trustees to build within the quadrangle, and drew a sketch-plan, on which their architect reported favourably. Sixty-one thousand pounds, by way of a first instalment, was voted on the third of July, 1854. The present noble structure was completed within three years from that day, and its total cost—including the extensive series of book-galleries and rooms of various kinds, subserving almost innumerable purposes—amounted in round numbers to a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It was thus only a little more than the cost of the King’s Library, which accommodates eighty thousand volumes of books and a Collection of Birds. The new Reading-Room and its appendages can be made to accommodate, in addition to its three hundred and more of readers, some million, or near it, of volumes, without impediment to their fullest accessibility.
To describe by words a room which, in 1870, has become more or less familiar, I suppose, to hundreds of thousands of Britons, and to a good many thousands of foreigners, would now be superfluous. But it will not be without advantage, perhaps, to show its character and appearance with the simple brevity of woodcuts.
The following illustrative block-plan shows the general arrangement of the Museum building at large, at the date of the erection of the new Reading-Room.
Block-plan of Museum (1857), distinguishing the Libraries from the Galleries of Antiquities, &c.