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
The Secretary was, as has already been remarked, the Rev. Josiah
Forshall, and the government of the Museum was in his hands. By a most
preposterous regulation, while the inferior officer, the Secretary,
always attended the meetings of the Trustees, the Principal Librarian
was never present unless summoned. Mr. Forshall enjoyed the fullest
confidence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose hands, by a tacit
understanding which had become traditional, almost all administrative
arrangements were left by the Principal Trustees. He was entirely
opposed to all innovation tending to impart a more popular character to
the Institution; and was, in fine, as thoroughly the representative of
the principles on which the Museum had hitherto been administered as
Panizzi was of those destined to supersede them.
Mr. Millard, the trivial cause of the Committee’s great effect, did not
occupy much of its attention. It appeared that he had been removed for
two causes, either of which was in itself sufficient to justify the act:
he was incompetent, and his services had been dispensed with. The
inferior work on which he had been engaged was discontinued; he was fit
for nothing else. He had been treated with great and, indeed, with
immoderate indulgence, having been allowed to remain two years after his
virtual dismissal, in order “to give him an opportunity of finding
another situation.” His case, it appeared, had kept the amiable
Principal Librarian awake all night; the Keeper of MSS. himself,
strangely enough, had given him a testimonial to the Windham Club. His
patron endeavoured to prove his efficiency; but on July 2nd Sir
Frederick Madden, then Assistant-Keeper of the MSS. came down “_with
some instances of Mr. Millard’s mistakes, and some questions which I
should like to put him_.” For some sufficient reason the instances were
not adduced, the questions were not put, and no more was heard of Mr.
Millard. He had, however, made an outlet for the long accumulating
dissatisfaction with the Museum management, and the Committee found
themselves arbiters in contentions affecting every Department in the
Institution. They had to digest Mr. Forshall’s opinion that “_men
professionally engaged in literary and scientific pursuits_” were unfit
for the office of Trustee; and to reconcile Sir Henry Ellis’s statement
that literary and scientific men looked up to a Trusteeship as the blue
ribbon of their calling, with his admission that not one of them had
ever obtained it. They had to enquire whether Sir Henry had made an
adequate examination of the Baron de Joursanvault’s manuscripts,
magnanimously offered by that nobleman to the English nation for 100,000
francs and permission to import 500 pipes of Beaune wine duty free. If
he had not done so, was it because the collection was shelved so high
that Sir Henry could not get at it without a ladder, and was it really a
fact that no ladder could be found in the whole town of Pomard? Was it
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