THE FINAL VOLUME OF THE " DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY."
Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Sidney Lee. (Smith, Elder, and Co. 15s. net.)—Perhaps the three most interest- ing names in the final volume of the Dictionary of National Biography are Wordsworth,. Sir Christopher Wren, and Wycliffe. " Wordsworth," by Mr. Leslie Stephen, seems to be a model of what a short biography should be. It covers some fifteen pages, and is, of course, packed with facts, but these are so arranged and so commented upon that not one line of the memoir is with- out interest. Mr. Stephen devotes little space to his apprecia- tion of Wordsworth's poetry, but one sentence we quote as
seeming to us particularly happy : " He had the power of arresting simple thought with the magic of poetical inspiration." The first part of the article upon Sir Christopher Wren is devoted to his life and work outside of architecture, to which he did not turn his mind till he was nearly thirty. "Had his philosophical par- suits," we are told, "not been interfered with by the absorbing work of the arduous profession-to which he devoted himself in later life, he could not have failed in securing a scientific position higher than was attained by any of his contemporaries, with, of course, one exception,—Newton." Wren was one of the men who founded the Royal Society, which used to meet in his private rooms. Four days after the Fire of London was extin. guished, Wren laid before Charles II. a plan for rebuilding the city. This plan is still in existence,—a record of his genius. He was not allowed to attempt so huge an undertaking, but " found employment enough in rebuilding a Cathedral, more than fifty parish churches, thirty-six of the Companies' halls, and the Custom House, besides several private houses and provincial works. For the Cathedral and the parish churches the stipend he asked was £300." In youth Wren was considered very delicate, and he never attained the ordinary stature. His delicacy seems not to have affected his power of work, his vitality, or his serenity. Isaac Barrow truly said of him that it was "doubtful if he was more to be commended for the divine felicity of his genius or the sweet humanity of his disposition." He died—of a chill—at the age of ninety. The biography of Wycliffe is full and interesting. Dying in 1384, he had anticipated most of the general principles of the sixteenth-century Protestants. He accepted the definite and final authority of the Bible,—translating part of it and causing the rest to be translated. He denied the Real Presence, declaring the Eucharist to be only the " effectual sign " of Christ, pleaded for clerical permission to marry, preached that confession was unnecessary, that clerical excommunication was meaningless, that temporal Lords could at their pleasure take away temporal goods from ecclesiastics habitually delinquent, and, though no teacher of revolution, that the people may correct delinquent Lords. He condemned the monastic system in principle and operation, with all waste of time in mechanical devotions. " The Gospel was to him mainly a revelation of practical duty, and its essence the law of charity." His followers were of course persecuted, but "his own immunity from personal attack is no doubt remarkable, and is a striking witness to the strength of his influence with all sorts and conditions." Among the shorter Lives we would mention those of William of Wykeham, which should interest old Wykehamists, and of Edward Young, the poet, and Arthur Young, the traveller, the best known of whose works, "Young's Travels in France," is by no means his only claim to fame. He travelled all over England and Ireland, mainly with a view to studying different methods of farming, and "he remains the greatest of English writers upon agriculture." Of his tour in Ireland Miss Edgeworth said that it contained the most faithful portraiture of the Irish peasantry that had yet appeared. The account of Edward Young, of the " Night Thoughts," is amusing. Beginning as a man of letters, he took Orders late in. life,—thinking it his best chance of worldly success. The poet's sentimental melancholy evidently does not appeal to Mr. Leslie Stephen, who says : "Young's gloom was, no doubt, partly that of a disappointed preferment-hunter, but, probably, was genuine enough in its way,—as sincere as that of most writers who bring their churchyard contemplations to market." Young was the man who first said "Procrastination is the thief of time."
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