30th April, 1857.
“Sir,
As the credit of suggesting the site and originating the work recently built in the quadrangular court of the British Museum is popularly assigned to you, whilst I claim to have devised and made known the scheme in the first instance, I hope you will hold me excused for asking you to be so good as to give me the means of placing the matter rightly before the public by informing me whether the project to the same effect which I laid before Lord Ellesmere’s Commission in 1848, and communicated to the Trustees of the Museum in 1849, had been seen by you before you devised the present work.
My plan, with an abstract of the description which accompanied it, was, after the drawing which presented it came back from the Trustees, published in the Builder, as you know; for I sent you a copy of the print, and that was two years before the scheme lately carried out was made known to the public.
I am, yours, &c.,
William Hosking.”
To this Panizzi lost no time in replying:—
“British Museum,
May 1st, 1857.
“Sir,