



r.HITlslI Ml'SKfM, THK. 



IIIMTISH MrsKI'M. THK. 



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right hundred printed folio pages, and the (our volume* of Blue 

 Boolu which embody the reports are undoubtedly the nuwt valuable 

 of existing storehouses ot information on the Museum. It is to be 

 isgratud, however, Out much of the evidence relate* to penonal 

 matter* only, and that several poinU of the management of the 

 Museum on which light would be welcome to the public were l.'ft in 

 darirnem The committee of 1S35 recommended in-vital alterations 

 in the management of the Museum, some of which were adopted by the 

 trustees, who, in 1897, laid before the HOUM of Common* a series of 

 extract* from their minute*, to abow how far they had complied with 

 thea* *iiuia>iim The committee also strongly recommended increased 

 liberality to the institution oo the part of the Houne of Commons;* recom- 

 mendation which appear* to hare borne it* fruits, for from that time 

 to the present the apuit of the Houae of Common* has been evidently 

 in favour of the Museum, and ha* rather encouraged than repressed 

 proposal* for the extension of the national collection on the part of 

 the truaiee* and the Treasury. The Royal Commission was nominated 

 to inquire into the whole management of the Museum, but brought its 

 labour* to an unexpected clone after an inquiry almost confined to the 

 Printed Book department, and chiefly directed to the question* con- 

 nected with the Catalogue. The commissioners stated their wish that no 

 change should take place in the Board of Trustees, but that an Executive 

 Council, to be composed of a chairman, four members elected by the 

 trustees, and two named by the crown, the chairman and the two 

 royal member* receiving a salary, should be entrusted with the whole 

 patronage and management of the Museum. No measure founded on 

 this report has, however, been submitted to the legislature. In the 

 present year, 1859, a proposal for a committee of the House of Com- 

 mons on the Museum waa brought forward by Mr. Gregory, the 

 member for Galway, and acceded to by the Earl of Derby's govern- 

 ment, but had not yet passed through the necessary forms when 

 parliament waa dissolved. It was chiefly intended to inquire into 

 the expediency of removing the natural history collections from the 

 Museum. 



The Principal Librarian in the name assigned to the chief officer of 

 the Museum, in the Act of Parliament which founded it, and the name 

 is still continued, although his duties have no connexion with the library 

 more than the other departments, all of which, without exception, are 

 under his superintendence. The principal Trustees nominate two per- 

 sons for this appointment, one of whom is selected at pleasure by the 

 sovereign. The first principal librarian was appointed in 1756, and the 

 sixth in 1856, exactly a century after, giving twenty years as the average 

 term of tenure. It is remarkable that, from the first establishment, the 

 office has been alternately held by an Englishman and a foreigner. The 

 list is as follows : 



1. Gowin Knight, M.D., 1756-1772; 



2. Matthew Maty, M.D.. a Dutchman, 1772-1776 ; 

 :!. Charles Morton, M.D., 1776-1 799; 



4. Joseph Planta, a Swiss, 1799-1827 ; 



5. Sir Henry Ellis, K.H., 1827-1856 ; 



6. Antonio 1'anizzi, an Italian, 1856 (the present principal librarian). 

 Little is known of Dr. Gowin Knight, the first chief officer, whose 



claims to the appointment prevailed over those of Sir John Hill, the 

 botanist, an eager candidate for the post. Some notices of him are to 

 be found in Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes.' His successor, Dr. Maty, 

 had come to England, in 1740, at the age of twenty-two, but pub- 

 lished, in Holland, for some time after, a periodical in the French 

 language, containing an account of English literature, the 'Jauni.il 

 Britonnique ;' and Gibbon, who waa a contributor, nays, that the 

 humble though useful labour " of a reviewer " was not disgraced 'by 

 the taste, the knowledge, and the judgment of Maty." He was 

 appointed one of the under-librariana of the Museum at its first 

 institution in 1753, and when, after nearly twenty years' service, he 

 succeeded to the principal librarianship, much was expected of him, 

 but the hope was frustrated by his early death in 1776. His successor, 

 Dr. Morton, who like both his predecessors had practised as a physician, 

 had also been an un.ler librarian of the Museum from before its 

 opening hi 1756, and he held the appointment till his death in 1799, 

 at the age of eighty-three. He was author of a paper in the I'liil.. 

 nphical Transactions' on the supposed resemblance between the 

 Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Chinese character. Lives both of 

 Dr. Maty and Dr. Morton are to be found in Chalmers's and the usual 

 biographical dictionaries. The fourth principal librarian, Joseph 

 Planta, was born in the country of the Orisons, in 1744, and came to 

 England, in 1752, with his father, the Rev. Andrew Planta, who was 

 minister of the Reformed Church in London, and tutor in Italian to 

 Queen Charlotte, and who, in 1768, became an assistant-librarian at the 

 Museum. The son wa intended for a diplomatic career, but on the 

 death of hi* Dither, in 1773. succeeded to his post at the Museum, an.l 

 continued there from 1773 to 1827, holding, also like both liU pre- 

 decessors, a pot in the Royal Society. He published a ' History of 

 the Helvetic Confederation,' abridged from Johann von Miillor, and a 

 dissertation, in the ' Philosophical Transactions,' on the Romansh 

 language, spoken by the Orison*. The largest biography of him we 

 have seen was written by Kalkenstein, the librarian of Dresden, and 

 published in the German periodical, the ' ZeitgenosMn.' He was suc- 

 ceeded by Mr., afterward* Sir Henry, Ellu, the circumstances of !,., 

 appointment are curiously illustrated by some passage* in the pub- 



iflhed life of Fynes Clinton, whose name was sent up 1.1 tin- king with 

 li.it of Sir Henry, by the then principal trustees, in accordance with the 

 rule, that two names are to bo submitted to the sovereign for the vacant 

 post of principal librarian. Sir Henry is the author and editor of 

 mmcrous volumes, from the ' History of Shoreditch,' in 1798, to the 

 Pilgrimage of Sir Richard Guilford,' in 1851, and, among others, of 

 some volumes on the Townley marbles, and also on the Elgin and 

 Phigaleian marbles in the Museum, published in the ' Library of K.nt.-i - 

 taining Knowledge.' When he retired from the chief librarianahip in 

 1854, he had been fifty-one year* an officer of the establUI. 

 having, in 1805, succeeded the Rev. Samuel Ayscough' as assistant- 

 librarian. His acquaintance with the Museum had commenced even 

 previously, Sir Henry having been in 1795, as he still is in 1859, a 

 frequenter of the reading-rooms. The united experience of the third 

 and fifth principal librarians is thus seen to extend over the wh..le 

 history of the Museum, from its commencement to the present time, a 

 period of more than a century. 



Mr. Panizzi is well known as the editor of Boiardo and Ariosto, to 

 whose two poems united he prefixed an admirable essay on the narra- 

 tive and romantic poetry of the Italians. Even in the present year, 

 1859, he has added to his labours on Italian literature by the publica- 

 tion of a collation of the four first editions of Dante, with a biblio- 

 graphical preface. He entered the Museum in 1831 as extra assistant- 

 keeper of the printed books, and in 1837 was appointed keeper of the 

 department, a post which he filled for nineteen years with remarkable 

 efficiency. Previously to his engagement at the Museum, he was pro- 

 fessor of the Italian language and literature at the present University 

 College, then called the London University. 



The next most important office to that of the principal librarian 

 is that of secretary to the trustees, which was held separately by 

 the Rev. Josiah Forshall from 1837 to 1849, when he resigned, an.l th- 

 office has since been held by the principal librarian. 



The Museum is at present divided into eight departments, umler 

 separate officers : the Departments of Printed Books, of Manuscripts, 

 of Antiquities, of Prints and Drawings, of Zoology, Geology or Pate- 

 ontology, Mineralogy, and Botany. To each of these departments, tlicre 

 is a chief officer called a Keeper; to those of Natural History ti- 

 also a newly-appointed superior officer, who bears the name of superin- 

 tendent. The departments are of very different extent and importance : 

 the keeper of the Printed Books has under him two assistant-keepers, 

 twenty-five so-called " assistants," who ore gentlemen of education and 

 acquirements, chiefly employed in making the catalogue, thirteen tran- 

 scribers, and more than forty attendants ; while the keeper of the : 

 and drawings has but one transcriber and two attendants, and the 

 keeper of the mineralogy one attendant only. In the earlier stages of 

 the Museum history the officers were often removed from one depart- 

 ment to another, a practice which renders it desirable to say what 

 is to be said on the biography of the most prominent offu . 

 connection with the general history of the institution, rather 

 than with that of the separate deportments. One of the t 

 officers, as keeper of the natural history department, was James 

 Empeon, who hod been in Sir Hans Sloane's lifetime, keeper of his 

 museum. The name of Dr. Solander, a Swede, who hod accompanied 

 Sir Joseph Banks in his voyage round the world, and who was assist- 

 ant librarian and then keeper, between 1765 and 1782, the date of his 

 decease, is preserved in perpetual remembrance by his invention or 

 contrivance of " Solander cases," a kind of easily manageable box in 

 the shape of a volume which is useful for the preservation of unbound 

 pamphlets. The Rev. Charles Godfrey Woide, a Prussian, an assistant 

 librarian (1782-91), edited with much care the New Testament, from 

 the Alexandrian Codex, hereafter to be mentioned, a peculiarly valuable 

 manuscript of the Scriptures preserved in the Museum. The Rev. 

 Henry Hervey Babcr, who entered as assistant librarian in 1807, .mil 

 became keeper of the printed books in 181S.eonral*t*)d the undertaUnf 

 by editing the Old Testament portion of the Alexandrian Codex ; and 

 was finally rewarded for doing so by the presentation of a valuable living 

 in the country, to which he retired in 1837, resigning his post at the 

 Museum. The Rev. Samuel Ayscough had been for some time in il"- 

 employment of the Museum, when in 1787 he was appointed to an 

 assistant librarianship, which ho retained till his decease in 1805. Mr. 

 Ayscough seems to have had a peculiar pleasure in making indexes and 

 catalogues. He compiled the consolidated indexes for the sets <>f tin- 

 ' Monthly Review,' the ' British Critic,' and the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' 

 :ui.l the index to the remarkable passages and words in Shakespere, 

 \\liii-h was the completest concordance to Shakspere, till that of 

 Mrs. Cowden Clarke. He made, in 1782, the catalogue of the manu- 

 script* at the Museum, belonging to the Sloane and Birch collections, 

 a book far from correct, but still of use till supplanted by a better. He 

 also assisted in the compilation of the catalogue of the printed books 

 i if the Museum, published in 1787, in two volumes folio, of which the 

 other portions were taken by the Rev. S. Harper assistant librarian 

 II..MI 1756, and keeper from 1765 to 1808 and the Rev. Paul II. my 

 Maty, a son of Dr. Maty, who like Planta,, entered the Museum on 

 the death of his father, and only survived till 1787, the year of the 

 publication of the catalogue. Andrew Qifford, D.D., assistant keeper 

 of the manuscript* from 1756 to 1784, was remarkable for having at 

 his decease, bequeathed to the Baptist Library at Bristol, several rare 

 printed book*, including a copy of an edition of Tyndalo's Testament, 



