lic position or pecuniary circumstances. Another literary undertaking, the preparation of the catalogue of the library of the Royal Society, produced an embittered quarrel, which fortunately terminated in a pamphlet instead of a lawsuit.
In 1834 the trustees, dissatisfied with the unsatisfactory progress of a subject-catalogue of the museum library, which had long been in progress according to a scheme framed by the Rev. Thomas Hartwell Horne [q. v.], called upon Baber to prepare a plan for an alphabetical catalogue. Baber proposed that the execution of this work should be entrusted to the superintendence of Panizzi; but an inferior plan was adopted, and Panizzi shared the task with others. It soon appeared that he performed more work than any two of his colleagues, and a sub-committee of trustees recommended that his salary should be raised in consequence. The rejection of this proposal by the general board occasioned Grenville's secession from the trustees' meetings. At this time the governing body was imperatively summoned to set its house in order by a parliamentary committee presided over by Mr. Sotheran Estcourt, but mainly inspired by Sir Benjamin Hawes [q. v.] This inquiry, to which Panizzi contributed important evidence and ample statistical information, though set on foot through the intrigues of a discarded minor official, produced valuable reforms, and constituted an epoch in the history of the museum. The new era was most effectively symbolised in Panizzi himself, who succeeded Baber as keeper of printed books in July 1837, the year after the termination of the committee's sittings. His elevation over his senior in office, the Rev. Henry Francis Cary [q. v.], occasioned much comment and remonstrance, but was inevitable, Cary being by his own admission incapable of the fatigue of a laborious post. Panizzi behaved with perfect delicacy, and nothing would have been said but for the illiberal prejudice against his foreign extraction from which, to the discredit of his adopted country, and though he had been naturalised as early as 1832, he suffered more or less during all his life in England.
Panizzi assumed office at a critical period, when the library was to be removed from Montague House to its new quarters, when the catalogue had to be undertaken in earnest, and when the deficiencies of the collection had to be ascertained and made good. The first undertaking, under the immediate supervision of John Winter Jones and Thomas Watts [q. v.], was carried out with a celerity and an absence of friction which astonished everybody. The progress of the catalogue was by no means equally smooth and rapid. The trustees left it optional with Panizzi to undertake or decline this vast addition to his ordinary labours, which he accepted in December 1838. The next step was to frame the catalogue rules, in which, with the assistance of Jones, Watts, and others, Panizzi proved himself the greatest legislator the world of librarianship had yet seen, and his work, in essentials, will never be superseded. Some of the rules may be over-minute, and the undertaking may in some respects have been planned on too extensive a scale; but the real causes of the delays which excited so much criticism were insufficiency of staff and the unfortunate decision of the trustees, in spite of Panizzi's warnings, to proceed in strict alphabetical order, and print each letter as soon as it could be made ready for the press. This occasioned enormous hindrance—first, in ascertaining, or rather trying to ascertain, what books should come under a particular letter, and afterwards in carrying on the printing of one portion of the catalogue simultaneously with the preparation of another. The only visible result of Panizzi's labours for many years was the solitary volume printed in 1841, and great dissatisfaction prevailed. But in 1849 Panizzi persuaded the trustees to dismiss the idea of printing for the present, and to engage an efficient staff of transcribers to copy titles on movable slips, after a plan suggested independently by Wilson Croker and Mr. E. A. Roy of the library. He was thus enabled to place the groundwork of a comprehensive catalogue before the public in September 1850. It must be admitted that Panizzi did not see the advantages of print, either as regarded the circulation of the catalogue or the economy of space. His manuscript catalogue, after serving excellently for a time, at last proved impracticable under the multitude of accessions; it assumed unwieldy proportions which rendered it increasingly difficult to consult, or even to house. The extent of the accessions was mainly due to the success of Panizzi's efforts to supply the deficiencies of the library—efforts in which no other librarian of his period could have succeeded, for no one else possessed his personal influence either with the treasury or with public-spirited collectors. Having in 1843 prepared, with the assistance of Jones and Watts, a most able exposition of these deficiencies in nearly every branch of literature but classics, he procured in 1845 an annual grant of 10,000l., the judicious administration of which, under him
