The life and correspondence of Sir Anthony Panizzi, K.C.B., Vol. 1 (of 2): Late principal librarian of the British museum, senator of Italy, etc.Fagan, Louis
History
The life and correspondence of Sir Anthony Panizzi, K.C.B., Vol. 1 (of 2): Late principal librarian of the British museum, senator of Italy, etc.
Fagan, Louis
Panizzi, Anthony, Sir, 1797-1879
I wrote to you from Palermo a letter, which you will receive
almost at the same time as this.
It will show you how very far I was from entertaining any unkind
feeling towards you.
On my arrival here yesterday I found a letter from you, written in a
very hostile tone. I can only repeat that I feel great gratitude to
you in all this business, that I am sure you never meant in any way to
be unfriendly towards me, and that if I differed from you as to the
propriety of your letter to the _Times_, I am willing to suppose that
you on the spot might have better means of judging than I had....
Knowing how easily you take fire, I should have been more guarded in
writing to you; but I know also that hot as you are, you easily cool,
and that your indignation never really interferes with your kind
feelings for old friends.
Yours sincerely,
HOLLAND.”
So ended satisfactorily this notable controversy. Nor was this the only
complication of the kind in which the importance thrust on Panizzi
served to involve him. To none were his relations closer than to the
family of the late Lord Langdale, formerly Master of the Rolls, who, it
may be remembered, in 1850, refused the office of Lord Chancellor,
offered to him on the retirement of Lord Cottenham.
Panizzi’s acquaintance with Lord and Lady Langdale speedily ripened into
a warm intimacy, and of their daughter, the Countess Teleki, he was the
especial favourite. On the death of his Lordship, which happened on the
18th of April, 1851, Panizzi wrote as follows to Lord Rutherfurd:—
“April 24.
“Nothing but your own handwriting could have afforded me any real
pleasure in the deep grief I feel at the loss of both the friends
respecting whom you write. Lord Langdale’s I feel most, as I was often
with him, and as he has given me, at all times, and at some
particularly of a comparatively recent date, such proof of affection
and, what is more, of thorough esteem and regard, as I shall never
forget....
Thine, ever _di cuore_,
A. PANIZZI.”
Panizzi’s intimacy with the Langdale family was, notwithstanding this
great loss, kept up as of old, and to her last days Lady Langdale was a
frequent guest at his house. After her husband’s death, she, laudably
anxious to perpetuate the memory of so worthy a man, committed the
materials for his biography to Mr. (afterwards Sir T. D.) Hardy. The
book was published in 1852, and it happened that, as in the former case,
Lord Holland had aroused the fears of Lord John Russell, so in the
present, for like reasons, was the wrath of Lord Brougham evoked by the
“Memoirs of the Right Honourable Henry Lord Langdale.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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