I wrote to you two or three times inviting you to dinner for the 26th. Receiving no answer, I concluded you were dead, and I invited your executors. News, however, came that you were out of town. I should as soon have thought of St. Paul’s or the Monument being out of town, but as it was positively asserted, I have filled up your place. I hope to be more fortunate on another occasion.
Yours, &c., &c.,
Sydney Smith.”
During this part of his career—as indeed so long as he could himself write—Panizzi’s general correspondence was too voluminous to allow of much selection; for the notes and explanations thereon, when at hand or to be obtained, would inordinately increase the bulk of this work. We, therefore, subjoin but a few specimens, which mostly speak for themselves:—
“Westminster,
Dec. 4, 1842.
“Dear Panizzi,
What a d—— fellow you are; a man of taste and accomplishment to write such a cursed illegible hand, that only the devil himself could decipher you. The truth is that when you spoke to me about your note, I really did not see the point of its contents. I opened it in my office full of angry Jew creditors of a client. I just ran through it, could not decipher half, and seeing it was on literature, no business, I interred it alive in a box—the mausoleum of my merely private correspondence—waiting leisure to peruse it. It so happened that I never opened the said box till to-night, when I took up your body. Really an illegible handwriting ought to be a statutory crime, and shall be when I get into Parliament. I can’t now decipher two of your words till daylight in the morning. The next time you send me an illegible note I will return it to you, not prepaid, to be copied by your secretary.
So good night, and I could not sleep without giving you this cat-o’-nine-tails. I never was so put to it in my life as when you accosted me in the club, for thought I to myself, I will be hanged if I know the subject matter of his note; what can I feign?
Yours nevertheless truly,