“My dear Haywood,
I have information on the perfect accuracy of which I may rely, that at Saturday’s Cabinet my appointment was decided on. You may rest assured—there is no doubt.
Of course you must be one of my securities for £2,500, I believe; I have informed Booth, who is now my other security for £750, of what is likely to happen. Ellice wishes to be my other security. The Master of the Rolls too offered, and so did Cureton, my old colleague, who cried when he learnt how the matter had been decided. You have no idea how many friends have spontaneously come to my assistance. But of the Government, Ellesmere has taken it up as a personal matter.
Yours ever,
A. Panizzi.”
It is incumbent on the gentlemen holding higher appointments in the British Museum to name two securities; these, in Panizzi’s case, were Mr. Francis Haywood and Mr. James Booth, both of whom, of course, were accepted. In order to commemorate the great event, the new Principal Librarian invited some of his intimate friends to dinner at Blackwall, amongst these should be mentioned Mr. John Kenyon, the philanthropist, philosopher, and poet. This gentleman died on the 3rd of December, 1856, and as a practical proof of the esteem in which he held Panizzi, left him a legacy of £500 and all his wines.
Lord Macaulay, who had been a Trustee of the British Museum since February, 1847 (an office which he highly esteemed, and to which he attended with much assiduity and greatly to the public advantage), showed, as we gather from his life by Trevelyan, no small anxiety as to the impending appointment. In writing (February, 1856) to Lord Lansdowne, he said:—“I am glad of this, both on public and private grounds. Yet I fear that the appointment will be unpopular both within and without the walls of the Museum. There is a growing jealousy among men of science, which, between ourselves, appears even at the Board of Trustees. There is a notion that the Department of Natural History is neglected, and that the Library and Sculpture Gallery are unduly favoured. This feeling will certainly not be allayed by the appointment of Panizzi, whose great object, during many years, has been to make our Library the best in Europe, and who would at any time give three Mammoths for an Aldus.“
With all due deference to Lord Macaulay’s statement, we do not hesitate to say that the appointment was not unpopular, and shall, therefore, begin first by giving Panizzi’s letters, addressed to the Keepers of the various Departments, some replies to these letters, and afterwards a selection of other correspondence from subordinate officers, summing up with sundry quotations from the numerous letters of congratulation from persons in various positions.
In relinquishing the Keepership of the Department of Printed Books, the new Principal Librarian thus wrote to Mr. Winter Jones, his successor:—