have been under of drinking wine every day has almost totally removed my complaint. I have nothing now to complain of but a considerable degree of nervous debility, which I hope will depart in a few days."
The conclusion of the rural peregrinations of the Commission at the beginning of 1837 threatened Mr. Jones with loss of employment, although he was still engaged in town in reducing its voluminous proceedings to print, and the extant correspondence shows that his work was very important. He says in a letter of this period:—
"I am ready to be knocked down to the highest bidder in any honourable service, and have no objection to write speeches and pamphlets and frame bills for laws and schemes for mines provided I am properly remunerated, but there's the rub." The real occupation of his life, however, was unexpectedly at hand. Within two months after writing as above he was appointed (April 1837) to the situation of permanent assistant in the Printed Book Department of the British Museum. The suggestion that he should apply for this post seems to have come from his friend Mr. Nicholas Carlisle, an assistant-officer who had come to the Museum from Windsor, along with the King's Library, and who is perhaps best remembered by a work on the endowed grammar schools of England, valuable in its time. The application was, moreover, strongly supported by Mr. Johnstone, a member of the Charity Commission,
who had been greatly impressed by Mr. Jones's efficiency in his secretaryship, and who enlisted his father, Sir Alexander Johnstone's, influence with the Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose hands all appointments to the Museum then practically rested. At the end of 1837, upon the resignation of the Assistant-Keeper, Mr. Cary, Mr. Jones became a candidate for the office. Short as his connection with the Museum had then been, he still had the claim of seniority. But he had gained the esteem and confidence of Mr. Panizzi, the Keeper, and Mr. Panizzi was obnoxious to persons influential with the Archbishop, who accordingly replied that "his connection with the establishment is of recent date," and apprehended "that due consideration for the claims of others will put it out of my power to serve him upon the present occasion." Who these others were did not appear, and it seemed still more difficult to identify them when, after some delay, the appointment was conferred upon a gentleman, undoubtedly possessed of the highest talents and the greatest attainments, but who could have no claim upon the Museum, as he had no connection with it. It is to Mr. Jones's honour that he manifested no resentment, and always maintained the most friendly relations with his successful competitor, whose son now records the fact. "But," he said to the writer many years afterwards, "from that hour I determined that I would be Principal Librarian."
From this time forward Mr. Jones's history is almost entirely identified with that of the library of
the British Museum. He was entering upon his duties at the period of the most important changes that have ever taken place in that institution. The Parliamentary Committees of 1835-36 had proved the necessity for extensive reforms in every department of the Museum. The Trustees had already been for some years occupied with plans for a new catalogue of printed books. The removal of the library from its old quarters in Montague House to the new buildings was about to take place. It was fortunate, indeed, that just at this juncture the library should have acquired so eminent an administrator as Sir Anthony Panizzi, and in Mr. Jones an assistant who, though not especially gifted with the power of initiative, was in diligence, fidelity, accuracy, intelligence, and calm good sense as efficient a lieutenant as an able administrator could desire.
After the removal of the library had been completed, with the assistance of Messrs. Watts and Bullen, the next important task was the preparation of the rules for the new catalogue, in which it is probable that Mr. Jones took the largest share. They were prepared under Mr. Panizzi's chief direction, with the co-operation of Messrs. Jones, Watts, Parry, and Edwards. The extent of time devoted to them, and the extreme thoroughness of the discussion, appears from Mr. Parry's evidence before the Royal Commission of 1849, and Mr. Edwards's history of the British Museum. They were finally accepted by the Trustees and officially promulgated in July 1839. In one important
respect, the rule to be adopted for cataloguing anonymous books, the judgment of the compilers was overruled by the Trustees, and this is the source of many of the criticisms to which the rules themselves have been subjected. As a whole, they have received almost universal approbation; and their merit is sufficiently established by the circumstance of their having formed an epoch in bibliography as the basis of all subsequent work of the same nature. Very much of the discrepancy of opinion as regards cataloguing results from the failure to distinguish between the requisites of large and small libraries. The present writer is bound to say that in his opinion the alteration introduced by the Trustees is justified by a consideration of which the Trustees probably did not think, its indirect effect in providing, in the case of anonymous books, some kind of a substitute for what was then, and is still, the great deficiency of the British Museum library, an index of subjects. The same remark applies to the adoption of the headings "Academies," "Ephemerides," and "Periodical Publications," the introduction of biographical cross-references, and other features of the catalogue, perhaps exceptionable in theory, but assuredly very convenient in practice.
The catalogue was now (August 1839) fairly commenced under the immediate personal direction and responsibility of Mr. Panizzi. Mr. Jones, however, held from the first a primacy among the assistants actually engaged in its compilation, which became enhanced as the difficulties of the task
became more apparent from day to day. It had been supposed that the old titles might pass with slight examination: they proved to require the most careful revision; and the work of the revisers needed to be in its turn revised. Subject to a reference to Mr. Panizzi in extreme cases, Mr. Jones was the ultimate authority. His clear head, legal habit of mind, and attention to minute bibliographical accuracy, rendered him invaluable in this capacity, and his decisions constitute the basis and most essential part of the body of unprinted law which unforeseen exigencies gradually superinduced upon the original rules. He also took a leading part in the revision of the proofs. The causes of the suspension of the printing of the catalogue have been so fully treated by the writer in a paper at the Cambridge meeting of the Library Association, that it is needless to enter upon them here. It made no difference to the amount of Mr. Jones's labours, except as regarded the correction of the press. He continued to work upon the catalogue and also upon the supplementary catalogue of books added to the library, both as reviser and as general supervisor, until he became Keeper of Printed Books in 1856. His other duties were numerous and important: he exercised, in particular, the immediate control of the attendants, a responsibility the more onerous in proportion to the continual increase of the establishment. In 1843 he was engaged along with Mr. Watts in collecting the materials on which Mr. Panizzi based his famous report on the deficiencies of the library, which ultimately occasioned