“Dear Panizzi, What a d—— fellow you are; a man of taste and accomplishment to write such a cursed illegible hand, that only the devil himself could decipher you. The truth is that when you spoke to me about your note, I really did not see the point of its contents. I opened it in my office full of angry Jew creditors of a client. I just ran through it, could not decipher half, and seeing it was on literature, no business, I interred it alive in a box—the mausoleum of my merely private correspondence—waiting leisure to peruse it. It so happened that I never opened the said box till to-night, when I took up your body. Really an illegible handwriting ought to be a statutory crime, and shall be when I get into Parliament. I can’t now decipher _two_ of your words till daylight in the morning. The next time you send me an illegible note I will return it to you, not prepaid, to be copied by your secretary. So good night, and I could not sleep without giving you this cat-o’-nine-tails. I never was so put to it in my life as when you accosted me in the club, for thought I to myself, I will be hanged if I know the subject matter of his note; what can I feign? Yours nevertheless truly, J. P.”[O] ----- Footnote O: Joseph Parkes, Lawyer and Politician, died 1865. ----- The next is to the Editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, and relates to certain articles written therein by Panizzi:— “Saturday, British Museum, (1844). “My Dear Sir,