BOOKS.
THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAT4 BIOGRAPHY.*
THESE two supplementary volumes (to be followed, we under- stand, in a short time by a third) fulfil a double function They fill up any omissions that may have been left by ins&
• Supplement to the Dictionary of N Sidney Lee* Vol ational Biography. Edited by L " Abbott--Childers.• Vol. U., “Chippendale—Hoste." _ Smith and Elder. [15s. net per vol..] head--and not one of much importance. The selection of Dames for the second division of memoirs has been, we see, a task of considerable difficulty. The suggestions were more than four times as numerous as the names which actually
*Pear Probably it could be shown that the practice hitherto - followed has not been absolutely consistent, and that person-
Iwo have found admission to those volumes of intrinsically less interest or merit than belong to some who have been left outside. It has sometimes seemed to the present writer that some little space has been wasted on notorious criminals or eccentries about whom we can hardly say, to quote from the editor's preface, that "information is likely to be sought in the future by serious students." But this, after all, means but very little. The truth is that the competition for places has vastly increased. The avenues to posthumous fame are a crowded as the avenues to wealth and honour, and even livelihood, are crowded among the living. Verse writers who two centuries ago would have found their way into the
British Poets " now find it hopeless to obtain even the mintiest audience. The biographer cannot but recognise the fact and regulate his choice by it.
The first volume begins with a memoir, very properly clouding by itself, in which the editor relates the career of Mr. George Smith, to whom the great enterprise of the Dictionary of National Biography owes its conception and its accomplishment. In 1882 Mr. Smith formed in his mind the scheme of some great biographical work which should be a vvissis iss;. His first idea was to include the whole world ; a wise prudence narrowed the 'scheme within national limits. The last (the sixty-third) volume appeared in July, 1900, all the intermediate parts having been pub- lished with a regularity that never failed. Six months afterwards the founder died, after spending upon his enter- prise time and trouble without count, and no incon- siderable amount of money,—for it is an open secret that the Dictionary has not been financially a success. Its literary value has been universally acknowledged, but it could not hope to find an adequate public of purchasers. Its very bulk forbade it. Unfortunately, no public, or rather no official, recognition of this great service to the country was made, but by English scholars Mr. George Smith will be remembered to all time. There has never been anything in the whole history of literature that can be fairly matched with this magnificent enterprise.
The moat important article in this instalment of the supple- ment is, of course, Mr. Herbert Paul's memoir of Mr Gladstone. Its length is by no means exorbitant—not quite fifty pages; it compresses a vast amount of information within these narrow limits; and it is as impartial as one could expect. If Mr. Paul is, as duty binds him to be, neutral, he is benevolently neutral ; but he never assumes the role of the apologist. For the Gladstonian finance he has an unaffected admiration ; it is in this direction that he finds his hero's great achievements. And, indeed, when one reads the summary of them, and surveys the great revolution which transformed the British Budget from what it was in 1841 to what it became in the course of the next forty years, we wonder that any one can deny it. The Peel Budget of 1841 was in its details Gladstone's work. He was directly responsible for the Budgets of 1853-54, and again of 1859, and he made what was perhaps his greatest effort of this kind in 1860. In the five following years he had the same duty to perform ; it may safely be said that no Chancellor of the Exchequer ever accomplished more. Protectionists, secret or avowed, may cavil, but the enormous expansion of British trade would not have been possible without the Gladstonian
fin be But this is not the occasion for estimating a states- Inan'a career; Mr. Paul himself cannot be said to attempt the task; but he statea the whole case with conspicuous fairness. For those two strangely perverse acts, the appointment of Sir Robert Collier to a paid seat in the Judicial Committee, and the Presentation of a Cambridge graduate to the Rectory of Ewelme, he makes no excuse. The first was a really serious matter. The Act clearly requiled a qualification of previous judicial mien ee in the Dictionary, and they furnish biographies of eminent or notorious persons who may have died while the work was in progress, too late for their memoirs to be inserted in their proper place. Of omissions there were but few—not than fifty of the supplementary notices come under this
mon) experience--whollyreasonablem the case of a supreme tribunal, and it was scandalous to evade it by the threndayie occupa- tion of a puisne judgeship. The other was a trifle, which was made important only by Mr. Gladstone's relations with Oxford. In one little detail we must correct Mr. Paul. Mr. W. W. Harvey, the presentee, did not base his qualification on ad eunttens degree. That would have been inoperative. Her was incorporated at an Oxford College (Oriel).
When we pass from Mr. Gladstone to Lord Grey we seem to be getting into an earlier world of politics. Lord Grey was but seven years older, but he had practically passed out of the sphere of action at a time when his younger contem- porary's career of power was beginning. He never held office after 1852. It is possible that his seat in the House of Lords (to which he succeeded in 1845) is partly responsible for this exclusion. But Mr. Carr, who writes the memoiir• . does not conceal his opinion that he was somewhat im- practicable. A more considerable figure is Lord Randolph Churchill, whose memoir has been contributed by Mr. Sidney J. Low. It is less neutral in colour than such notices are apt to be. But then it is difficult to paint so striking a personage without strong colours. The fifteen pages which Mr. Low devotes to him are excellent reading; but we prefer to leave them without further comment. Of Churchmen the most eminent is Archbishop Benson, the story of whose life is told', by Mr. Beeching, an eminently competent and sympathetic biographer. On one point, however, he seems to have involVedr himself in something like a contradiction. Speaking of the trial of Bishop King for offences against ritual, he says that "the charges themselves were of a frivolous character." It is difficult to see how this could be if the judgment which the Archbishop delivered on them was of the transcendent im- portance which Mr. Beaching attributes to it. "The most courageous thing that has come from Latabeth during the last' two hundred years," was the description which Dean Church gave of it, and which Mr. Beeching adopts. How -a decision upon points of "a frivolous character" could mean so much, could, in the words of another great divine, " vindicate beyond reversal one master principle of his faith, the historic continuity of our Church," is a little hard to understand. In literature the most important names are "Robert Browning," by Dr. Edmund Gorse, and "Matthew Arnold," by Dr. R. Garnett.
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