I feel it would be indiscretion were I to trespass any longer upon your time, as I was inclined so to do on this last occasion. I shall therefore conclude, offering you my sincerest thanks for the kindness with which, sometimes even in spite of the enraged elements, you have honoured this course of lectures. I know full well that the subject must have been so agreeable to a choice audience like that by which I have been favoured, so as to be a powerful attraction for them to attend. But I cannot and will not think that I am indebted for your presence to the merits of the poems I lectured upon rather than to your benevolence to me. I have known Liverpool so long and so well, and have had so many occasions of experiencing the hospitality of its inhabitants, that my heart cannot allow me to think that you came to hear me as you would have done a stranger. I am not a stranger in this town to which the noblest of sentiments—gratitude—ties me. I beg you will continue to entertain for me the kind feelings which you have hitherto done, being certain that I am fully sensible of their value, and proud in thinking that you have not found—and I hope you never will find me either unworthy of them, or not appreciating them as fully as they deserve.
It is pleasing to trace in these words the grateful heart of Panizzi, reflecting as they do the warmth of his feelings, and acknowledging the kindness shown him by Liverpool friends at a time when he sadly needed sympathy and support; we now leave him, through such aid, in better worldly circumstances than he had but recently encountered.
CHAPTER III
Foscolo; At Holkham; First Article; Departure from Liverpool; Brougham; Miss Turner; London University; Botta; Lady Dacre; ‘Orlando Innamorato’; W. S. Rose; Keightley; Moore’s Verses; Correspondence with Mr. Grenville; First Appointment.
Panizzi being established in Liverpool in 1826, it may be concluded (and, indeed, in a letter to be presently quoted he admits as much) that he was now earning sufficient to satisfy his immediate wants, and to enable him to enjoy a certain degree of luxury. He resided at 93 Mount Pleasant, an eminence overlooking the town, and celebrated in Roscoe’s poem of the same name. From the invitations he received, constantly dining out, it may be inferred he moved in the best society and was leading a comfortable life. Far otherwise was it with Ugo Foscolo, his fellow-exile. For Foscolo, of whose celebrity in England, as of the reverence paid to his name by the youth of his native Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini writes so warmly, was now living in London in a state bordering on destitution.
“Stern and somewhat aggressive in temperament,” says Mazzini, speaking of Foscolo, “his mind nourished and fortified by severe study, little calculated for laying new foundations, but endowed with mighty faculties for destruction, he effectually overthrew (except for those who bow down kindly before precedents) a whole edifice of errors which barred the way to the study of Dante. In his different writings, especially in his “Discorso sul Testo,” etc., etc., etc., he cleared the ground for a better understanding of the ‘Commedia’ and the poet.”
