Sir Anthony Panizzi, K.c.b.[288:1]
Italy has been fertile in eminent librarians. Magliabecchi was probably the most learned librarian that ever lived; Audiffredi was the creator of scientific cataloguing; to Battezzati the practical librarians of the United States confess themselves indebted for some of their apparently most original ideas. But it is Sir Anthony Panizzi’s especial distinction to have added to much of the erudition of a Magliabecchi and all the bibliographical skill of an Audiffredi the more commanding qualities of a ruler of men. He governed his library as his friend Cavour governed his country, and in a spirit and with objects nearly similar, perfecting its internal organisation with one hand, while he extended its frontiers with the other.
Born on September 16, 1797, at Brescello, in the province of Reggio, in the duchy of Modena, at that time a part of the Cisalpine Republic, Antonio Panizzi came into the world as the citizen of at least a nominally free state, but grew up the subject, first of a foreign intruder, and afterwards of the worst of the petty despots of Italy. These circumstances indirectly determined his future career. As a man of thought and feeling he could but be a patriot; as a man of action he could but be a conspirator. After receiving his education at the Lyceum of Reggio and the University of Parma, which he quitted with honourable attestations of his proficiency, he prepared to practise as an advocate, but speedily became implicated in the political commotions of the time. It was the day of the Holy Alliance, when the Spanish Revolution had called the Italian into life:—
“Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder
Vesuvius wakens Ætna, and the cold
Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder.”
While Shelley was writing, Panizzi was acting. In 1821 he was denounced to the Modenese Government, saved himself by flight, narrowly escaped arrest by the Austrians at Cremona, and, after a short residence in Switzerland, whence he was expelled at the instance of Austria and Sardinia, arrived in England in the May of 1823. The Modenese authorities proceeded to try him in his absence, and having duly sentenced him to be executed in effigy (October 1823), sent him a bill for the legal expenses thus incurred. Panizzi, with equal humour, replied negatively in a letter subscribed “L’anima di Panizzi,” and dated “Campi Elisei, regno diabolico,” rather a shock to received ideas of geography.
The Elysian Fields were apparently at that time situated in Liverpool, whither Panizzi had repaired, provided with introductions from Ugo Foscolo to Dr. Shepherd and to William Roscoe, the men who, with James Martineau, have given Liverpool a place in the history of letters. Liberality of opinion united him to both these eminent persons, and his Italian origin and Italian enthusiasm necessarily proved the most potent recommendations to the historian of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Leo X. From Roscoe, indeed, he received all the affection of a parent, but these were the days of the Liverpool scholar’s adversity. Panizzi, nevertheless, probably owed to him the introduction to Lord Brougham which proved the turning-point in his career. He is said to have been of great assistance to Brougham in the Wakefield trial. In 1828, furnished with further introductions from Roscoe to Samuel Rogers and Sir Henry Ellis, he quitted Liverpool to assume, at Brougham’s invitation, the post of Professor of Italian in University College, London. He had supported himself while in Liverpool as a teacher of Italian; little record remains of the struggle, but it must have been severe. The present writer has heard him say, while lamenting the miserable salaries paid to supernumerary assistants in the Museum thirty years ago, that he had notwithstanding maintained himself upon much less. One indispensable acquisition he made at Liverpool, a ready command of our language, entirely unacquainted with it as he was upon his arrival in this country. Neither his accent nor his idiom was ever free from traces of his foreign extraction, but when he wrote the latter circumstance was rather favourable to him. The peculiarity of manner contributed to the general impression of originality, and the massiveness of his thoughts was agreeably relieved by the raciness of his style.
The study of Italian, an indispensable branch of polite accomplishment in Elizabeth’s time, was becoming a speciality or a tradition in George IV.’s. The professorship existed rather for the College’s sake than the students’. Panizzi produced an Italian Grammar and Reading Book, and gave oral instruction to the few who required it. His attention, however, was mainly engrossed by a much more important undertaking, which would have given him reputation, had he achieved nothing else. Nearly three centuries had elapsed without an edition of Boiardo’s “Orlando Innamorato,” of which the “Orlando Furioso” is but a continuation, and without which the latter poem is not fully intelligible. Some occasional rusticity of diction, so pedantic is Italian purism, had sufficed to obscure the merits of a poem which Signor Villari, writing in an age more familiar with generous ideas, celebrates for “its moral seriousness, its singular elevation, its world full of variety, of imagination, of affection,”—qualities, indeed, which had militated against it in the day of Italy’s degeneracy, and had caused preference to be universally accorded to the brilliant but half-jocular rifacimento by Berni. Sir Anthony Panizzi was the man to be attracted by such qualities; he must, moreover, have felt an especial interest in Boiardo as a native of the same district of Reggio from which he himself sprang. He determined to rescue him from oblivion, and effectually accomplished his purpose by editing him along with Ariosto (1830-1834). The first volume of this fine edition, dedicated to his benefactor Roscoe, is occupied by his celebrated dissertation on Italian romantic poetry, especially remarkable for the reference of mediæval romances to Celtic sources, and containing analyses of the “Teseide,” the “Morgante,” the “Amadigi,” and others of the less read Italian romantic epics. It is further graced by translations contributed by Lady Dacre, Mr. Rose, and Mr. Sotheby. The second volume is prefaced by a memoir of Boiardo, with an essay making him full amends for the long usurpation of his fame by his adapter Berni. The corrupt text of the “Orlando Innamorato” is restored with great acumen from a collation of rare editions principally contributed by the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville, and, as well as that of the “Furioso,” is accompanied by valuable notes. At a later period Sir Anthony edited Boiardo’s minor poems.
The distinguished assistance which Panizzi had been able to command for his edition evinces the hold which he had already acquired upon the best English society. His urbanity and charm of manner, no less than his accomplishments, made him irresistible. He was intimate at Holland House, and on terms of personal friendship with most of the Liberal statesmen who mainly directed English policy for the next thirty years. His friends now came into power, and Lord Brougham used his influence as an ex officio Trustee of the British Museum to secure his appointment as an extra assistant librarian of the Printed Book Department (April 27, 1831). When one considers what Panizzi found the Museum and what he left it, one is in danger of being betrayed into injustice to the institution and its administrators at that period. Miserably inadequate as it must appear if tried by our present standard, there was no conscious deficiency on the part of its official representatives, and it fully corresponded to the ideal of the public. The nation, in fact, had scarcely the remotest idea of the organisation of literary and artistic collections as a branch of the public service. The records were in a shameful state of dilapidation; the Museum itself existed only by accident; the National Gallery did not as yet exist at all. Men like Hallam could honestly confess their perfect content with the Museum as it was, and, unquestionably, it numbered among its officers persons of the highest eminence. To mention only Sir Anthony’s immediate official superiors, the Keeper of the Printed Books was a most accomplished scholar, the Assistant-Keeper had made the standard translation of Dante. If there was an uneasy spot anywhere it was the catalogue. The old printed catalogue had become inadequate. Mr. Hartwell Horne had for some time been engaged on the compilation of a classed catalogue, which did not seem to promise good results. Mr. Baber, the Keeper, saw that a good alphabetical catalogue was the indispensable condition of a classed catalogue, and Panizzi loyally supported him. The Trustees appeared to be irresolute. While this question was in agitation the grievances of an assistant, very properly dismissed from the MS. Department, brought about a Parliamentary inquiry into the general management of the Museum. In July 1836, Panizzi appeared before the Committee, and courageously, yet with perfect good taste and official decorum, laid bare the enormous deficiencies of the national library. A still more valuable contribution was the mass of evidence supplied by him with reference to the condition and administration of foreign libraries, the result of journeys to the Continent undertaken with the express object of collecting it, and occupying many hundred folio pages in the Appendix to the Committee’s Report. Most valuable of all, perhaps, was his clear enunciation of the principle that the Museum ought not to be a mere show-place, as the Government and the country then practically concurred in regarding it, but a great educational agency. This principle, emphatically expressed by him before the Committee, gives the keynote of all his administrative action.
Merits like these could not go unrecompensed, even though they might have rather alienated than conciliated some of those whose duty it was to reward them. In July 1835, a proposal to raise Panizzi’s salary had been shelved in a manner which so excited Mr. Grenville’s indignation that he never attended another meeting of the Trustees. In 1837 Mr. Baber’s resignation of the Keepership of the Printed Books placed Panizzi in a delicate position. Mr. Cary, the translator of Dante, his immediate superior in office, had every claim to promotion on the grounds of seniority and literary distinction, but Mr. Cary had recently recovered from an attack of insanity. In reply to incessant insinuations, Mr. Panizzi’s high-minded conduct in the matter was reluctantly stated by himself before the Royal Commission of 1849, and the account is fully confirmed by a narrator who had himself had sharp conflicts with him, Mr. Edwards, in his “Founders of the British Museum.” Mr. Cary, it ultimately appeared, thought that his past services entitled him to “that alleviation of labour which is gained by promotion to a superior place”(!). It must be remembered that there were no superannuation allowances in those days.
Panizzi did not expect or intend his labours to be alleviated by promotion. He took office at a most critical time, when the books were being transferred from Montague House to their new quarters, when the question of the catalogue was ripe for decision, and when the public were beginning to suspect the deficiencies of the library. The removal was promptly effected, and some of the assistants temporarily engaged to aid in it remained, and proved most valuable officers of the Museum. The undertaking of the catalogue led to much tedious discussion, but in December 1838, Panizzi declared his readiness to accept this formidable addition to his ordinary duties, and early in 1839 the cataloguing rules, which have ever since been regarded as models, were framed by him with the assistance of Messrs. Winter Jones, Watts, Parry, and Edwards. Mr. Jones assumed the general direction of the catalogue; Mr. Watts undertook the arrangement of the new acquisitions on the shelves; the cataloguing of these was chiefly intrusted to the Rev. Richard Garnett, Mr. Cary’s successor as Assistant-Keeper. A misunderstanding, for which Panizzi was in no respect responsible, interfered with the progress of the general catalogue. It was announced that it must be proceeded with in alphabetical order, and much time was lost before Panizzi was permitted to resort to the more expeditious plan of cataloguing the books shelf by shelf. The Trustees were further represented as demanding that it should all be in type by a fixed date, and much time and labour were accordingly wasted in printing the first volume, containing letter A, which, as books requiring to be entered under headings commencing with this initial constantly occurred during the subsequent progress of the catalogue, inevitably proved exceedingly defective. The catalogue has nevertheless been now for a long time substantially completed in MS., and for the most part incorporated with the much more extensive supplementary catalogue of books acquired during its progress; the question whether and how it should be printed is too extensive to be entered upon here. Even more of Panizzi’s attention was claimed by his third task, the ascertainment of the deficiencies of the library. Rich in classics, in the bibliographic treasures collected by such amateurs as Mr. Cracherode, in history and some other subjects to which especial attention had been paid by the King’s Librarian, in its unique collections of English and French revolutionary tracts, in the departments of natural science represented by the Banksian Library, the Museum was still deplorably poor in most branches of general literature, in German almost ludicrously so. Aided by Mr. Jones and Mr. Watts, Panizzi commenced an active investigation into the condition of the library in this respect. The results were embodied in his celebrated report of 1845, subsequently published as a Parliamentary paper, which, backed by his political and social influence, caused an increase to £10,000 of the annual grant for the purchase of books. Another important step in the same direction was the enforcement of the Copyright Act, hitherto but negligently attended to by the Secretary to the Museum. Upon this duty being intrusted to Panizzi, he discharged it with a vigour that soon brought reluctant publishers to their senses, and he even personally undertook an expedition through Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, for the sake of enforcing the observance of the Act. Yet another accession due to him was the matchless Grenville Library, perhaps the finest collection of books ever formed by a private individual. Mr. Grenville himself declared that the nation was solely indebted to Mr. Panizzi’s influence with him for this magnificent gift; and Panizzi’s minute instructions for its removal, addressed to Mr. Rye, afterwards Keeper of the Printed Books, are still extant to evince his anxious care for the collection, his perfect knowledge of it, and his grasp of every administrative detail, from the greatest to the smallest. With such accessions from so many sources, it is hardly surprising that the volumes originally under Mr. Panizzi’s charge should have multiplied fivefold by the time he quitted the Museum. It would be endless to describe his numerous improvements in such matters of library detail as stamping, binding, and supplying the Reading Room. The most important of any was the introduction of movable and multifold slips into the catalogue, largely due to a suggestion from Mr. Wilson Croker.
The Royal Commission of 1847-49 deserves to be considered the turning-point of Sir A. Panizzi’s administration. Up to this time, however caressed in highly cultivated circles, he had been unpopular with the public, who could not be expected to know how his plans were cramped and thwarted, and were in many instances illiberally prejudiced against him as a foreigner. The Commission gave him a welcome opportunity of at once challenging inquiry into complaints, and of making known the signal improvements already effected by him. His invitation to complainants to come forward—widely circulated through the notice taken of it by this journal—elicited a number of attacks, which, with the replies, may be found in the Parliamentary Blue Book, and form as instructive and amusing a body of reading as ever Blue Book contained. The Commissioners, who included men of letters like Lord Ellesmere, and men of business like Lord Canning and the present Duke of Somerset, could but report that not one charge had been established in any single particular. It is abundantly clear that very few of the complainants had any definite notion of what they wanted, and the frivolousness of their imputations, even had they been well founded, arouses something like indignation when contrasted with the immense services which Panizzi was at the time rendering without receiving any credit at all. This triumphant vindication of his management, however, made him omnipotent with the Trustees and the Government, and paved the way for the greatest undertaking of his life. It is needless to describe a structure so familiar to all English men of letters as the new Reading Room. The original design, sketched by Mr. Panizzi on April 18, 1852, was submitted to the Trustees on May 5 following. By May 1854, its originator’s indomitable perseverance and extensive influence had prevailed to obtain the large grant necessary for the commencement of the work, which was completed and opened to the public in May 1857. The part generally visible—Mr. Smirke’s contribution to the plan—though architecturally the most imposing, is hardly the most remarkable portion of a structure providing space for three hundred readers and a million volumes on ground previously wasted and useless. Every detail was either devised or superintended by Sir A. Panizzi, and it is not too much to affirm that no edifice has existed more perfectly reconciling grandeur of general effect with an accurate adaptation of means to ends in the very smallest things. One thing alone is wanting, that the reference library should be as far above competition as the Reading Room, and this, too, will be accomplished when the exigencies of space allow the present Principal Librarian’s plans to be carried out. The attempts that have been made to deprive Sir A. Panizzi of the credit of the conception are futile. Any one could see that the space in the quadrangle was wasted. The present writer himself made the remark to an officer of the Museum at the age of fourteen. But it was one thing to discern the evil and another to provide the remedy.
In 1856 Sir A. Panizzi succeeded Sir Henry Ellis as Principal Librarian, being himself succeeded as Keeper of the Printed Books by Mr. Winter Jones. His administration of the Museum as a whole was carried on in the same spirit as his administration of the library, but, except for the great impetus given to purchases generally, was not distinguished by equally striking incidents. His work for the library had been mostly performed, and the affairs of the other departments afforded less scope for the display of his peculiar qualities. Two or three slight administrative mistakes may be admitted without derogation to his fame, for they can be shown to have originated in every instance from an excessive regard for what he himself considered the true interests of his subordinates. This was ever a passion with him, and every improvement in the position of the officials of the Museum effected during his connection with the establishment may be traced to his influence. Exhausted at length with work, he retired on his full salary in July 1866. He took up his residence in Bloomsbury Square, almost within call of the Museum, and ceased not to the last to exhibit the warmest interest in the institution. In 1869 he accepted the honour of knighthood, which he had frequently declined. His death on April 8 has already been recorded in our pages.
Little can be said here of Sir A. Panizzi’s activity as a politician and patriot. It was probably little less important or beneficial than his activity as a librarian, and possibly occupied hardly less of his time and thoughts. It was, however, wholly below the surface, and the materials for defining and appreciating it are at present wanting. There can be no question that he served the cause of Italy most effectually by his intimacy with the leading English statesmen, who admired and confided in him. Thoroughly Anglicised, he knew how to appreciate the currents of English sentiment, and predicted to Lord Palmerston that the Conspiracy Bill would occasion the downfall of his government. With this statesman, as well as Lord Russell, he was most intimate; and he received touching proofs in his last illness of the regard of Mr. Gladstone, whose famous pamphlet on the Neapolitan prisons sounded a note originally struck by Panizzi. Sir James Hudson, the English Envoy at Turin, was one of his most trusted friends, and their mutual understanding was of great service to the Italian cause. Cavour thoroughly confided in him, and vainly tempted him to a political career in Italy by the offer of a senatorship. Though devoted to the house of Savoy, he cordially sympathised with Garibaldi, in whose English reception he had a great share, and whom he accompanied on that occasion to the tomb of Ugo Foscolo. He reckoned the Orleans princes among his friends, and a community of literary tastes especially linked him to the Duke d’Aumale. While his sympathies and connections were thus Liberal, his relations with statesmen on the other side were always most amicable. We believe that the flattering resolutions of the Trustees passed on occasion of his resignation were moved by Mr. Walpole and seconded by Lord Beaconsfield.
Besides the works we have mentioned, Sir Anthony Panizzi was the author of an essay in Italian entitled “Chi era Francesco da Bologna?” in which that artist, the inventor of italic type, is identified with the great painter Francesco Francia; and the editor of Lord Vernon’s sumptuous verbatim reprint of the first four editions of the Divine Comedy, respectively printed at Foligno, Jesi, Mantua, and Naples. He further wrote some pamphlets on questions connected with the British Museum and the Catalogue of the Royal Society’s Library, and contributed several articles on political and literary subjects to the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and North British Reviews.
Sir Anthony Panizzi’s was a rich and complex nature, and his character cannot be sketched in a phrase; else we might feel tempted to sum it up in two characteristics, magnanimity and warmth of heart. Other traits, however, must be added to complete the portrait—prodigious power of will, indomitable perseverance, hatred of inefficiency and pretence, active and disinterested kindness, impetuosity held in check by circumspect sagacity. He might be said to combine the characteristics of the land of his birth and the land of his adoption: his moral nature seemed English, his intellect Italian. Warmth of feeling gave after all the keynote to his existence. He was, indeed, jealous of his well-won fame, but fame was not his main object. If he greatly helped his Museum, his country, his colleagues, it was because he began by greatly caring for them. In labouring for the public he erected an imperishable monument for himself:—
“Ipsa quidem virtus sibimet pulcherrima merces;
Dulce tamen venit ad manes, cum gloria vitæ
Durat apud superos nec edunt oblivia laudem.”
Footnotes
[288:1] Athenæum, April 19, 1879.
THE LATE JOHN WINTER JONES, V.P.S.A.,
Principal Librarian of the British Museum, and
first President of the Library Association
of the United Kingdom.[304:1]
The conference of the Library Association at London, in 1881, was painfully signalised by the funeral in the same city of its first President, who had presided over its inauguration at the preliminary London conference four years previously, and to whose countenance it had been indebted for much of the success which attended its establishment. A short notice of Mr. Winter Jones’s distinguished career as a librarian seems to be demanded by his services to the Association and his peculiar relation to it as its first President, no less than by the position which, in his capacity of Principal Librarian of the British Museum, he so long occupied at the head of the profession of librarianship in this country.
John Winter Jones was born at Lambeth, June 16, 1805, and belonged to a family long established in Carmarthenshire, and already honourably connected with literature. His father, John Jones, Esq., author of “Hawthorn Cottage” and other tales, for many years edited the Naval Chronicle and European Magazine. His grandfather, Mr. Giles Jones, had been secretary to the York Buildings Water-Works, and according to the unanimous tradition of the family was author of several of the admirable little books published for children about the middle of last century by Newbery & Co., including the renowned “Goody Two Shoes.” No more conclusive proof of the merit of “Goody Two Shoes” could be given than the able argument by which Mr. Charles Welsh has recently sought to attribute the authorship to Goldsmith. While agreeing with Mr. Welsh that the book is not unworthy of Goldsmith in humour, philanthropy, and simple truth to nature, we are unable to discover any such similarity of style as to warrant its being ascribed to him. On the other hand, the peculiar vein of dry humour characteristic of “Goody Two Shoes” reappeared in Mr. Winter Jones’s conversation in so remarkable a degree as to justify the impression that he had preserved a family trait. Assuredly, had he ever essayed his powers in the field of imaginative literature, “Goody Two Shoes” is the kind of work which one would have expected him to have produced. A great-uncle, Mr. Griffith Jones, had been the friend of Johnson and Goldsmith; an uncle, Mr. Stephen Jones, was also known in literature, especially as the author of “Masonic Miscellanies,” and editor and continuer of Baker’s “Biographia Dramatica.” Mr. Winter Jones’s mother, Mary Walker, was cousin to the academician Smirke; nor, in the list of remarkable persons connected with him, should his nurse be forgotten, Anne Parker, widow of the unfortunate Parker who was executed as ringleader of the mutiny at the Nore.
Mr. Jones received his education at St. Paul’s School. He does not appear to have been eminent as a classical scholar, but some youthful letters show how early he had acquired the power of writing excellent English. He was, moreover, unusually precocious as an author, although his first attempt was by no means ambitious. In 1822 appeared an anonymous little book, now exceedingly rare, “Riddles, Charades, and Conundrums: with a Preface on the Antiquity of Riddles,” containing a considerable number of original enigmas—a truly quaint and exceptional performance for a youth of seventeen. Mr. Jones’s juvenile ambition, however, was stimulated to this undertaking by an accomplished lady, Mrs. Davies, mother of Sir Lancelot Shadwell, who thought highly of his talents, and had a considerable share in it.
The profession designed for Mr. Jones was that of a Chancery barrister. After leaving school he became the pupil of Mr. Bythewood, of Lincoln’s Inn, the most eminent conveyancer of his day, who had a very high opinion of him.[306:1] He must, however, have devoted much of his time to studies not of a legal nature, for about this time he became an excellent scholar in the modern languages, not taught, or taught imperfectly, in St. Paul’s School. His proficiency is proved by a little volume undertaken for his own amusement, but published at the suggestion of his sister: “A Translation of all the Greek, Latin, Italian, and French Quotations in Blackstone’s Commentaries, and in the notes of the editions by Christian, Archbold, and Williams. By J. Winter Jones, 1823.” He also made the index to the new edition of Wynne’s “Eunomus, or Dialogues concerning the Law and Constitution of England.”
Just as Mr. Jones was looking forward to being called to the Chancery Bar his prospects were clouded, and his course in life altogether changed, by a most serious illness, greatly aggravated by the improper treatment of a physician who entirely mistook the nature of the complaint. The result was a temporary loss of voice, accompanied by a weakness of the chest which for several years rendered any speaking in public impossible. Between ill-health and the want of introductions and connections in any but the legal profession, Mr. Jones seems to have been unable for some years to follow any definite calling. He pursued his studies as far as possible, learned Spanish from the refugees who at that time abounded in Islington and Somers Town, and even acquired some knowledge of Russian, destined to be very useful in future years. To this time also belonged his acquaintance with Jerdan and Godwin. He knew the latter intimately, and was impressed by his intellectual eminence, but used to describe him as a man selfish in minor things, who must, like Harold Skimpole, always have his plate of fruit, no matter the price or the season. Of the second Mrs. Godwin he had a higher opinion than seems to have been usually entertained by her acquaintance. A narrow escape of his life which he had at this time may be best narrated in his own words, so characteristic of the man’s coolness and aversion to fuss or display, even when the occasion might seem to excuse them:—
“Southampton, September 9, 1833.
“My dear Father,—I am extremely sorry that I cannot profit by your directions for swimming. On Friday week I went to bathe at the new baths, being my second attempt in cold water. No one was in the bath at the time, nor was there any rope, but as I thought the place was perfectly safe, I plunged in backwards according to the directions I had received. I sank, of course, and throwing up my chest rose immediately, but when in the water I lay on my back motionless from cramp in my stomach. By no effort that I could make could I force down my feet or turn, and my struggles caused my head to dip so frequently that had assistance been delayed a minute longer I must have been suffocated. I fortunately recollected having read that persons are sure to float if they throw back the head as far as possible, thereby elevating the chest, and remain quite quiet. This saved me. I mentioned the circumstance to Dr. Shadwell, and he strongly recommended me to abstain from the water at present, as it evidently did not agree with me.”
About two years from the date of this letter, Mr. Jones obtained his first important public employment as a secretary to that then itinerant body, the Charity Commissioners. The charitable institutions of England, long corrupted and misused, were receiving a much-needed overhauling, one of the indirect fruits of the Reform agitation. Perambulating bodies of commissioners were traversing the length and breadth of the land, “wanting to know, you know,” and eliciting an amount of information which could not have been obtained without the direct personal pressure of inquisitors upon the spot. Their labours produced much excellent fruit, and restored a vast amount of charitable endowment to its legitimate uses. The records survive in ponderous Blue-Books; and the student of general literature may derive an idea of the nature of their investigations, which it is to be hoped he will not take too literally, from the lively ridicule of “Crotchet Castle.” When the satirist declared that the labours of the Commissioners did no good to any living soul, he certainly ought to have excepted Mr. Winter Jones, who accepted his appointment—as he told the present writer—mainly in the hope of re-establishing his shattered health by a course of travel and living in the open air. This object he fully attained. The few letters he wrote to his family on his tour that have been preserved are full of racy humour, and suggest what a page of English life might have been presented by a record of the more private experiences of the Commission, too familiar to be registered in Blue-Books. As nothing of the sort exists, it may not be improper to preserve two specimens here, notwithstanding their want of connection with bibliography:—
“Market Harborough, Nov. 20, 1836.
“Harborough is a monstrously stupid place, possessing no interest that I have yet discovered either in the form of situation or antiquities. The inhabitants of the county are principally graziers and fox-hunters, men of substance, coarse in their manners, and tolerably hospitable. Of the few clergymen I have yet seen, little can be said in praise. One has been suspended for his profligate habits; another drinks so hard that he is incapable of performing the duties of his church, being frequently insane; and a third attended yesterday at our board with his church-warden, both of whom were so fuddled that they could with difficulty make themselves understood.... We have a vast deal of business to transact, and every prospect of our work increasing. The labour is not so much occasioned by the extent or intricacy of the charities, as by the provoking stolidity of those who ought to be fully informed upon the subject. There exists in this part of the county a very extraordinary charity founded by a clergyman named Hanbury, who prepared seventeen deeds for the foundation of various branches of one grand charity. The property settled is directed to accumulate until the proceeds amount to £10,000 per annum (they are at present about £500), when a cathedral is to be erected at a cost of £150,000, and professorships of music, poetry, philosophy, botany, &c. &c., established. One of his deeds he heads, ‘Beef for ever,’ another, ‘Organs for ever,’ a third, ‘Schools for ever,’ with much of the same oddity. He has published a thick octavo volume with an account of his charity and a copy of his foundation deeds. The latter occupy 248 pages of the work, so if I have to abstract the whole of them it is impossible to say when my labours will end.”
“Leicester, Feb. 5, 1837.
“Our third and last visit was to a Mr. Hildebrand, a clergyman, and head-master of the Kibworth free grammar school. This poor fellow has just had his wife, mother-in-law, eight children, and two servants confined to their beds with influenza, and I never beheld an assemblage of more ghastly objects than we formed at the dinner-table. With the exception of one, we had all pale cheeks, red eyes, and every other sort of phizzical ugliness, the excepted one had a blue complexion approaching to black. Mr. Hildebrand, however, assured me the next morning at breakfast that the hearty dinner he had made, and drinking as much wine as pleased him (he was, by-the-bye, a long time in being pleased) had completely removed his disorder. I may make the same remark respecting myself. The necessity I 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 so large an increase in the annual grant. In 1849 he prepared for the Royal Commission that crushing exposure of Mr. J. P. Collier’s notions of short and easy methods of cataloguing which should be especially valued by librarians, as it is perhaps the best practical illustration to be found anywhere of the difficulties attaching to the correct bibliographical description of a book. He was also enabled to devote some attention to literature. About 1842 he wrote a large number of articles for the Dictionary of Universal Biography, edited by Mr. George Long for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a great and meritorious undertaking, unfortunately not carried beyond letter A, although the continuation as far as Be was actually in type. Mr. Jones’s articles chiefly treated of obscure or forgotten writers, and required much research. He also contributed to the Quarterly and North British Reviews; his article in the latter on the British Museum Library (1851) is the best account of its administration to be found anywhere. He carried on an extensive correspondence with Mr. Wilson Croker, who continually had recourse to him for information on literary subjects. In 1847 he contributed to the Archæologia “Observations on the Division of Man’s Life into Stages,” with especial reference to Shakespeare’s descriptions of the seven ages of man, and about this time wrote several other papers. In 1850 he edited for the Hakluyt Society “Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America”; and in 1856, “The Travels of Nicolò Conti in the East,” translated from the Italian of Poggio Bracciolini. In 1858 he translated for the same Society the Oriental travels of Lodovico di Varthema, edited, with a preface, by his friend Dr. G. P. Badger.
Upon the death of the Rev. Richard Garnett in 1850, Mr. Jones became Assistant-Keeper of Printed Books, and succeeded Mr. Panizzi as Keeper upon the latter’s promotion to the Principal Librarianship in March 1856. His period of office as Assistant-Keeper was chiefly distinguished by the erection of the new Reading Room, and the libraries in connection with it. The design of this grand and commodious structure belongs entirely to Sir A. Panizzi; but Mr. Jones saw the original sketch (engraved in the catalogue of the Reading Room reference library) as soon as it was made, and was consulted upon every detail during the progress of the work. One of his first duties as Keeper was to edit, with a valuable preface, the above-mentioned catalogue, which had been entirely prepared by Mr. W. B. Rye, late Keeper of the Printed Books. As Keeper Mr. Jones paid the greatest attention to the organisation of his department, which he maintained in the highest condition of efficiency. The number of titles written annually for the catalogue was unequalled before or since, and the department never had so many assistants of literary distinction. He followed in his predecessor’s steps in using every possible endeavour to increase the library, both numerically and by the acquisition of special bibliographical treasures. The annual grant, long diminished from want of room to store accessions, was raised to £10,000 in 1857, and Mr. Jones proceeded to expend it with the assistance of the vast literary knowledge of his colleague Mr. Watts, and valuable aid in the acquisition of German and other old foreign books from Mr. Albert Cohn, of Berlin; in American literature from the enterprising and indefatigable Mr. Henry Stevens; and in ancient service-books from Mr. William Maskell. Among the many important official documents prepared by him may be mentioned a memorandum of objections to the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners; and reports on additions to the staff, on the superannuation of assistants, on Civil Service examinations, and on vellum books.
In July 1866, Mr. Winter Jones, having previously acted as Deputy Principal Librarian from December 1862 to May 1863, became Principal Librarian on the retirement of Sir A. Panizzi. It will have been inferred from the tenor of the preceding narrative that his abilities rather qualified him to maintain an existing system in a high state of efficiency than to initiate alterations, and such was precisely the part marked out for him by the character of the times. The institution, thoroughly reorganised during the last thirty years, required rest, and no impulse was felt towards the reforms and developments which have proved practicable and salutary under his successor. The great question of the removal of the Natural History collections to South Kensington had been determined for good or ill before he took office, and no question of corresponding public interest arose under his administration. He presided, however, over a committee formed to consider the proposed transfer of the South Kensington Museum to the Trustees of the British Museum, but its deliberations led to no result. He was especially careful in ascertaining the qualifications of persons recommended for appointments in the Museum. His method, clear-headedness, and general capacity for business rendered him highly acceptable to the Trustees, especially those who, like the Duke of Somerset, Mr. Walpole, and Mr. Grote, took a peculiarly active share in the affairs of the institution. With Mr. Grote he was particularly intimate, and frequently visited him, and subsequently his widow, at their charming residence near Shere.
In 1877 his health, which for the last forty years had been good, began so far to fail as to render a winter residence in London exceedingly difficult to him. He obtained a four months’ leave of absence, in the hope of an amelioration which did not take place. That his mental, and to a considerable degree his physical vigour were unimpaired, he had just proved by the transaction which entitles him to a record in the Transactions of the Library Association. It will be remembered how upon the foundation of the Association, a proposition, well calculated to enlist support, was made, that its presidency should be conferred upon a gentleman whose writings have laid the profession under deep obligations.[320:1] It is not the least of Mr. E. B. Nicholson’s many services to the Association which he called into being, to have discerned that it could not in its infant stage prosper without official patronage, and that, without prejudice to individual claims, its fitting head at that period would be the chief librarian of the chief library, the Principal Librarian of the British Museum. He accordingly invited Mr. Jones to accept the office of President, and to invest the young society with the sanction of official prestige, by consenting to open its first Congress, and deliver an inaugural address. Mr. Jones, however favourably disposed to Mr. Nicholson’s project, might well have declined on the ground of engrossing public duties and delicate health, but he did not. The members of the Association will long recollect his appearance in the chair at the preliminary London meeting of 1877; the staunch persistence with which, though evidently suffering from indisposition, he delivered his carefully prepared inaugural discourse; and the firmness and dignity with which he conducted the proceedings until the close of the morning’s meeting. It was his last act of importance as a librarian. His temporary retirement during the ensuing winter having failed to recruit his health, he resigned in August 1878, receiving a farewell address from his colleagues, and the individual tributes of several of the leading Trustees. He withdrew to Henley, where he had erected a residence at a considerable elevation, commanding a charming view; his winters were spent at Penzance, where, not long before his death, he showed his undiminished interest in research by delivering a lecture upon the Assyrian discoveries. The present writer visited him at Henley in June 1881, and found him, although suffering somewhat from asthma, in tolerable health and excellent spirits, interested in the affairs of the world, and happy in the affection of his family. On the morning of September 7, after having entertained a party of young people to a late hour with great good humour, he was found dead in his bed. He had died of disease of the heart. He was interred at Kensal Green, his funeral being attended by most of his Museum colleagues then in town. He had married in 1837 the daughter of William Hewson, Esq., of Lisson Hall, Cumberland, a very amiable lady, who predeceased him by a few years, and whose protracted indisposition in the latter years of her life occasioned him much sorrow. He left one married and one unmarried daughter.
It may surprise those slightly or only officially acquainted with Mr. Jones to be informed that one of his principal characteristics was extreme kindness of heart, but such would be the opinion of all who knew him intimately. He was not emotional, but his affections were warm and deep: he was not impressionable, but kindness was with him an innate principle. If he ever seemed to act with harshness, it was from a constraining sense of official duty, and it might easily be seen that the necessity was very disagreeable to him. It was exceedingly difficult, for instance, to get him to take steps for the removal of attendants whose incapacity from ill health had long been notorious: and he may be censured for having sometimes closed his eyes to circumstances of which he should have taken notice. What seemed in him stiffness—and had all the disadvantageous effects of stiffness—was in reality a reserve which made him appear constrained where men of less real courtesy and kindness would have seemed facile and genial. His was indeed by no means an expansive nature, but it was a very genuine one; he was deeply beloved in his family; his friendships were solid and lasting; and he exhibited that general criterion of a good heart, kindness to children and animals. He says in an early letter: “On Friday last I went out fishing. The weather was very fine for sailing, but not at all adapted for the sport we had in view: which was a great source of satisfaction to me, for spitting the poor worms for bait was a dreadful task to my unpractised nerves; and tearing the hook out of the throat of the animal when caught was, if possible, still worse.” He despised claptrap popularity, and was perhaps even unduly indifferent to the shows and surfaces of things. This concern for reality, however, combined with his legal education, made him a lover of justice; and he thus earned the respect and confidence of his subordinates, who knew that they might fully rely upon his equitable consideration, and his support in trials and difficulties. His judgment of men was in general very correct, though he was capable of being swayed by long intimacy or personal liking. He was on various occasions subjected to considerable obloquy, but as this always arose from his opposition to the interested views of individuals, it only redounded to his credit with those acquainted with the circumstances. His literary tastes were such as befitted the bibliographer, but he admired many poets and novelists, especially Shakespeare, Goethe, Ariosto, and Wieland. He possessed a peculiar vein of dry humour, which he occasionally manifested with great effect. Intellectually, he represented one of the most frequent types in the generation to which he belonged—the generation of Grote and Mill and Cornewall Lewis—the essentially utilitarian.
He was not the man to innovate or originate, but was admirably qualified for the work which actually fell to his lot—first to be the right hand of a great architect, then to consolidate the structure he had helped to erect, and prepare it for still vaster extension and more commanding proportions in the times to come.
Footnotes
[304:1] Contributed to the Transactions of the Library Association, 1882.
[306:1] Mr. Bythewood bequeathed to Mr. Jones his gold repeater watch, valued at one hundred guineas; and Mr. Jones received in after years a precisely similar legacy from Sir Anthony Panizzi.
[320:1] Mr. Edward Edwards.