Panizzi showed the practical affection he had for his friend by his presentations of rare and expensive books from time to time; these were accompanied by letters, and Mr. Grenville invariably attached them to the volume.

The following is a specimen:—

“B. M., May 2, 1845.

“My dear Sir,

I hope you will do me the honour of placing in your library a Latin poem, by one Thomas Prati, printed at Treviso about 1475, on the martyrdom said to have been suffered in that year by one Simon or Symeon, at the hands of the Jews of Trento. The event seems to have created a great sensation at the time, and even at a much later period its truth has been the subject of learned investigations.

It may be true that a boy was murdered at Trento in March 1475, but that he fell a sacrifice to the Jews hatred of our religion, is as incredible as it is unproved. So late as about a hundred years ago, a dissertation was inserted in the 48th volume of Calagierò Raccolta d’opuscoli, page 409 (De cultu Sancti Simonis—the martyr has been canonized and his life and miracles are chronicled in the Acta Sanctorum Pueri Tridentini et Martyris apud Venetos). That dissertation, written to prove the truth of the story, seems to me conclusive against it.

Several poems are said to have been written on this subject. One of them in Italian stanzas, utterly worthless, by one Fra Giovanni Padovano, was printed so late as 1690, at Padua, and is in the British Museum. Federici (Tipografia Trevigiana, p. 91) mentions four tracts printed by Celerio in 1480, on the martyrdom of Simon, but none written by Prati. He moreover mentions two (p. 52) printed by Gherard de Lysa, one of which would seem to be precisely like that which I now offer to you, if we were to judge from the title only, but the particulars into which he enters show, 1st, that Federici never saw even the book which he describes; 2nd, that whatever that book be, it is a different one from this.

As you possess the very rare edition of Dante, published by Tuppo at Naples, in the colophon of which Tuppo alludes to the murder of Simon “non sono molti anni,” and as the fact is said to have happened in 1475, according to all authorities, it may be of some interest to you to possess an uncommonly rare book, which may be of use in fixing at about 1480 the date of your Dante, the very year when Tuppo began to print separately from Reussinger.

Yours, &c., &c.,

A. Panizzi.”