In thanking you for your kind expressions towards me, I beg to add that I cannot allow you to incur any expense whatever for correcting your own edition of the _Inferno_. I consider it part of my duty, according to the terms of the _memorandum_ of the 23rd of October, as explained in my lettter to your Lordship on the 31st of the same month, to correct the press of that Cantica; I am at your Lordship’s orders, and ready to perform that duty to the best of my abilities. I suppose I shall hear from Mr. Pickering when I am wanted in that respect. With reference to the text of the first four editions, twelve cantos of the first (Foligno) are prepared for collation with those of Mantua, Jesi, and Naples. By midsummer I hope the greater part, if not the whole of the first part of the poem, will be thus collated and ready for press. The printing will proceed slowly, as I am to re-collate the whole in type. Yours, &c., &c., A. PANIZZI.” As early as September, 1849, there was already sufficient material for going to press; but though Panizzi continually wrote to his Lordship urging the necessity of beginning to print, a year elapsed without any communication on the subject, and without any progress with the work. From a letter in the month of June, 1851, Lord Vernon appears to have been somewhat discouraged; the booksellers not having taken up the matter in so spirited a manner as he anticipated, and Panizzi complaining, not without reason, that the work seems to have come almost to a stand still, consoled himself by addressing the following letter to Mr. E. White, his Lordship’s solicitor:— “British Museum, May 5th, 1852. “Dear Sir, It is not for me to suggest to his Lordship any course of proceeding; as, however, I am not totally indifferent with respect to the determination he may come to, I hope to be forgiven for saying a very few words on the subject. When I undertook to carry out Lord Vernon’s wishes expressed in the memorandum handed to me by Mr. Pickering, and confirmed by his Lordship’s subsequent letters, I was not only moved by the pecuniary remuneration which Lord Vernon was pleased to propose to me, I looked forward to the time when the work should be published, from which I expected some credit. I cannot, therefore, feel indifferent to his Lordship’s determination as to publishing; nor can I receive without some slight observation the sum which Lord Vernon proposed to me as a remuneration for a certain work, without fulfilling on my part the obligations I have incurred. These I am most anxious to perform, but it is impossible for me to do so if Lord Vernon does not order a printer to print the manuscript which I have not failed to prepare as agreed, and in a manner which his Lordship had fully approved of.