Enjoying my surprise, the librarian became more communicative:
“They studied here together from May 4 until June 7, 1861, at the Magliabecchian Library,” said he, “and I can tell you even the titles of the books they consulted.”
Perhaps I showed my incredulity.
“I have discovered the very slips which Lewes signed when he took out the volumes,” he continued. “Would you like to see them?”
By this time Biagi knew me too well to await my response. So we walked together over to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, the library which became famous two hundred and fifty years ago through the reputation of a jeweler’s shop boy, Antonio Magliabecchi, and was known as the Biblioteca Magliabecchiana for more than a century before the Biblioteca Palatina was joined with it in 1860 under its present modern and unromantic name.
ANTONIO MAGLIABECCHI
Founder of the Magliabecchia Library, Florence
As we walked along Biagi told me of the unique personality of this Magliabecchi, which attracted the attention of the literary world while he was collecting the nucleus of the library. Dibdin scouted him, declaring that his existence was confined to the “parade and pacing of a library,” yet so great was his knowledge and so prodigious his memory that when the Grand Duke of Florence asked him one day for a particular volume, he was able to reply:
“The only copy of this work is at Constantinople, in the Sultan’s library, the seventeenth volume in the second bookcase on the right as you go in.”