These few specimens will satisfy any one of the justice of my assertion that it was impossible to correct such a work. I am fully aware of the difficulties, nay, of the impossibility, of compiling any catalogue which shall be free from errors of a very grave description. No work requires more indulgence than one of this sort; but the specimens which I have given are such as cannot admit of excuse or palliation: they must at once convince the most indulgent observer that those who committed them were incapable, utterly incapable of performing the task they had undertaken. After what we have seen, shall we wonder that Newton’s _Principia_ should be misplaced? We cannot wonder; but by Your Royal Highness, who has the honour to fill the chair once occupied by that immortal man, and by those Fellows of the Royal Society who are not unworthy of the distinction, something like sorrow must be felt, when they see in the catalogue of their Library that work classed among _pure Mathematics_, as if _Mechanics_ had nothing to do with it.”
How amusing are some of Panizzi’s remarks, and how fully do they evince the supreme contempt he must have felt for the ignorance displayed in the sheets, which were submitted for his correction. It is impossible not to help dwelling on and re-quoting such a sentence as this: “It is a fortunate thing for _feu_ Mr. Da Cunha that this libel (the utter non-appreciation of the word _feu_) on his fair name was not published in his own country (he was a Portuguese) when he was living, and when the fashion was not only to burn books, but authors.” This must have been a cutting but amusing hint for His Royal Highness, and then we perceive the manly tone of Panizzi when he added: “So dangerous an insinuation by the Royal Society of London might have exposed him to the chance of paying dearly for their blunders and bad French.”
In October, 1833, the New Catalogue, entrusted to Panizzi was commenced; not, however, left to his own discretion, for _cabined, cribbed, confined_, he was called on to follow a plan, concocted by the Library Committee, of which he incidentally remarks: “_Heaven forbid that I should ever be supposed guilty of having approved of it, or be suspected capable of selecting such a plan, had I been at liberty to execute the work as I pleased. I agreed to carry their plan into execution on my own responsibility._”