21 JULY 1917, Page 3

Oxford has received a gift splendid in itself and peculiarly

appropriate to a great seat of- learning. The family of the hate Mr. GeorgeSmith, of Smith and Elder, have presented the Dictionary of National Biography to the University of Oxford, and that great and inspiring treasurehouse, which owed its existence to the enterprise and munificence of Mr. George Smith, now panics into the keeping of the Oxford University Press. it is a gift we feel sure he would himself have entirely approved. The honorary degree conferred on him by Oxford was the only public recognition he received for what was the most public-spirited literary venture on a great scale undertaken by any publisher in the Victorian Age.