“‘I am glad, Mr. Panizzi, that we are alone, as I have something to tell you, which I wish to be considered strictly confidential, and that you will not mention to any human being as long as I live. There is nothing, perhaps, that renders secrecy strictly necessary in what I am going to say; but it is as well to keep it to ourselves, as it concerns nobody but me. I have often perceived that you wished to know what would become of my library after my death, and I have often seen also that you wished it should go to the British Museum. That wish is very natural as well as very creditable to you; for, treated as you have been by the Trustees, had you been a less zealous officer, and not so thoroughly honest a man, you would not so easily have forgiven their conduct towards you, and felt so warm an interest in the welfare of that Institution as you have.

“I have admired your conduct in that respect, and been extremely pleased by it. I have not imitated you for years I confess. The minute of which I gave you the copy in Mr. Forshall’s handwriting, and which conveys an ample and deserved acknowledgment of your good services, was a disgraceful and unjust act towards you, and insult to me. They reserved for me to do what they never had done to any one else, and they behaved ill to you to vex me, I believe ... (as I dissented, he added). Well, well, may be they or some one who had influence on them, counselled them to punish you. I felt so much their conduct that, as you know, I left the room when I saw what they were bent upon doing, and never went again to their meetings, and I felt very much inclined never to speak again to Lord Farnborough, who, after having both in private to me and at a Committee agreed with the justice of doing what the Committee suggested, got up at the general meeting which he and Mr. Forshall had packed to move the rejection of the Committee’s report. I then was more than ever determined to leave my library to the Duke of Buckingham, to be kept at Stowe as a heirloom. But your generous conduct made me think that if you, who had been much more injured than I was, forgave them, I ought.

“I knew, moreover, that you would be delighted to have my books, and I often thought that the coming into your hands from mine was the very best thing that could happen to them, as well as the most pleasing to me. I was determined partly by these considerations to alter my will, and still more so—or rather much more so—by another circumstance.

“You know that I have enjoyed for a long series of years a very good sinecure. Although, as I have sometimes told you, my cousin, Lord Glastonbury, left me a large fortune and made me rich, yet I could not have formed such a library (which I think cost me nearer £50,000 than £40,000) without my income from the sinecure. I have, therefore, determined to bleach my conscience, and to return to the Nation what I got from it, when I could have done without—but which would have been given to some one else if I had given it up myself—by bequeathing my library to the British Museum, and I have altered my will accordingly. I shall direct that part of my will to be printed, that my motives be understood, and that no one should think that I take the library from my nephew the Duke, to whom I have told that I have left it to him, from any unkindness or unfriendly feeling, which I certainly have not, as the rest of my will will show. I could not in my Will say anything about you, and the treatment you have received from those you have served and serve so well and so faithfully, but I thought it a proof of my great friendship for you to inform you of what I have done, and of my motives for so doing. But, although I cannot say anything about it, the public and the Trustees must be well aware that you have not taken any mean or unfair advantage of my great regard for you, my dear friend, to turn me from doing what I had done. I hope the Trustees will be more just to you in future; indeed, you tell me they are, and have been lately, and am glad of it. I thought they would not change; they must feel they have wronged you, and I thought they would never like you in consequence. Even my friend the Archbishop, one of the very best and most amiable men living, was no doubt influenced, perhaps unconsciously, by such feelings when he made objections to your appointment to succeed Mr. Baber. There is some one who has great influence on the Archbishop, who is no friend of yours. Take care, I know it. But I trust now that you are better known you will be appreciated as you deserve.’[deserve.’]

“This was the substance, and, as far as I recollect, these were the very words of the communication which was delivered uninterruptedly, with his usual energy and clearness, and without appearing the least fatigued, or being stopped by coughing or anything else.

“I made the best acknowledgment I could for the honourable proof of confidence he gave me. I told him, strongly moved, almost to tears, that I hoped the day would be far distant when the British Museum should profit by his munificent gift; and here we shook hands most heartily and warmly, and I thanked him as well as I could for the affectionate manner in which he had spoken of me and of my conduct.

“He replied it was only justice. Then he added that he left the whole unfettered; that he thought we should have many duplicates among ours of his books, but that he thought we ought to have them; at the same time, he said, he did not care whether the Trustees sold his duplicates. I said they never did it. Very well, he answered. Then he went on to say that he would desire his executors to express a wish that the whole of his books should be kept together, and that a catalogue of them all should be published. But, he said, I shall not add these as absolute conditions, only as my wish.

“We spoke of cataloguing, of how the books could be kept together, &c., which I said could and should be done, as was done for Sir J. Banks, Cracherode, &c.; even without their desiring it. But the Dutch Minister, was announced; we began to speak of indifferent things; and presently I took leave and left them together at about four o’clock.

“A. Panizzi.”

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