A true copy. Pedreschi, Chancellor.
These hair-breadth escapes may be very amusing and pleasant to read about, but to the principal person concerned, who was thoroughly capable of appreciating the various positions and vicissitudes of life, they must have conveyed anything but agreeable impressions, or conduced to the ease of mind so acceptable to mankind in general.
Panizzi remained but a short time in London. The celebrated Ugo Foscolo, to whom the Ugoni had introduced him, had strongly advised him at once to quit the metropolis and to try his fortunes at Liverpool, where there was more likelihood of his obtaining employment. Foscolo furnished him with letters of introduction to William Roscoe, author of the life of Leo X., and also to other distinguished Liverpool men. How he was received by Roscoe, the following passage in the biography of the latter (Lond. 1833), vol. ii., p. 406, will show:—“It was the good fortune of Mr. Roscoe to retain, even to the close of his life, that power of attracting the friendship of others which had been from his youth one of his most marked characteristics. Amongst these, the friends of his age, there was no one who became more sincerely attached to him, or for whom he himself felt a higher degree of esteem and affection than Mr. Panizzi, an Italian gentleman, who had been compelled, in consequence of political persecutions, to abandon Italy and to take refuge in England. Soon after his arrival in this country he settled in Liverpool as a teacher of the Italian language, where his talents and worth soon won the regard of Mr. Roscoe. To the kindness and attention of Mr. Panizzi, which rather resembled that of a son than of a stranger, he owed many happy hours.” Mr. Roscoe died on June 30th, 1831.
At his death Panizzi received the following letter:—
Lodge-lane, 30th June, 1831.
So affectionately attached as you have been to my father, I cannot let you learn the sad intelligence which this letter will convey from anybody but one of his own family.
He was seized last week with a violent cold or influenza, accompanied with fever. At first we thought him getting over it, but on Monday night he was attacked with a shivering fit, and being put to bed he never rose again. His strength failed him rapidly, and this morning at 11 o’clock he breathed his last quite peacefully.
It is a great consolation to know that he suffered no acute pain, and his mind seemed perfectly composed.
Yours, &c.,