On these strictures, just as fair as they are to the point, with reference to his character as an author, Panizzi pertinently remarks:— “Did you choose an editor to start a _magazine of calumnies_, or to continue a review of _works_? If the latter was your object, can you say what the above slang has to do with the Italian Romantic Poetry, and my edition of Bojardo and Ariosto?... That I was utterly unknown in Italy as a man of letters, when, scarcely twenty-five years of age, I fled the country, is perfectly true; and, had I continued there, I doubt not that I should have died without ever being known as such; but the question propounded is, whether my edition of Bojardo and Ariosto is good or bad? As the Reviewer says that ‘it has everything to recommend it,’ is it discreditable to me that I should have turned a man of letters, when driven into exile with nothing in the world but my head, which I had the wit to keep on my shoulders, although not without trouble? ‘Indignata malis mens est succumbere: seque Præstitit invictam viribus usa suis. * * * * * * En ego cum patria caream _gazisque_ domoque, Raptaque sint, adimi quæ potuere mihi; Ingenio tamen ipse meo comitorque fruorque. _Hostis_ in hoc potuit juris habere nihil.’”[D] ----- Footnote D: PARAPHRASED:— Uprising in unconquer’d strength, the soul Scornfully braves the storms of fate. * * * * * * So I, bereft of fortune, house, and home— Of all that could be torn away, My talents still retain and can employ: O’er these no foe has aught of power. What seems especially to have aroused Panizzi’s anger (and herein may be remarked his sincere affection for the land of his refuge and rest), was that he should be called a “_foreigner_.” If to be domiciled in England and naturalized by an act of her legislature makes a man an Englishman, then was he an Englishman to all the then necessary intents and purposes. “It is true,” says he, “that I am not ungrateful; I love my adoptive country as much as the one wherein I was born, and being able to gain a very honourable and independent subsistence, by making use of those talents which Providence has been pleased to bestow on me, no wonder that I do not allow murmurs and sighs to escape me.” His alleged disposition towards Rossetti, the foundation for which he declares to have been derived from advantage taken of certain private conversation, grossly misrepresented by his reviewer, he thus vindicates from a charge which he declares to be “_utterly false_.”