THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY.* ALTHOUGH the most recent volume
of The Dictionary of National Biography is largely occupied with unimportant Johnsons, Johnstons, Joneses, and Kennedy's, it yet contains an unusual number of interesting names, nearly all of which are adequately, and most of them admirably, treated. Samuel Johnson, Ben Jonson, Keats, Joule, Archbishop Juxon, Keble, Ken, the Keans, the Kembles, Angelica Kauffmann, Dr.
Keate, and Dr. Kennedy, are all included in the volume. 'The articles to which readers of literary tastes will first turn will, we think, be those upon the three persons we have first named, and they will certainly not be disap- pointed. Mr. Leslie Stephen's Life of Dr. Johnson is one of those model articles to which we have several times called attention in our notices of successive volumes of the Dictionary. Literally crammed with facts, stated in the most concise possible manner, to nearly every one of which its authority is appended, with here and there a word of pregnant and judicious criticism interspersed, it is yet always clear and eminently readable. It comprises not only the marrow of its author's Johnson in the "English Men of Letters" series, but new matter from the recent works of Dr. Birkbeck Hill and others, and gives us in sixteen pages not only a narrative of facts, but a real and graphic picture of the man. Professor Colvin, though resembling Mr. Stephen neither in style nor in method of treatment, has not the less produced an equally admirable article on Keats, and one which no one who takes it up will be able to lay down until he has read it through. Mr. Colvin on Keats, like Mr. Stephen on Johnson, writes on a congenial subject, to which he has already devoted much time and intelligent labour ; and the editor of the Dictionary is to be .congratulated in obtaining for the article the services of the accomplished writer whose monograph in the "Men of ..Letters" series, and whose excellent edition of the Letters of Keats, have already proved him to be so careful a biographer, and so thorough a master of his subject. Mr. Colvin, like Mr. Stephen, and, indeed, many less-known contributors, has not allowed the most recently published information on his subject to escape his attention.
We have not before noticed the name of Mr. C. II. Herford as that of a contributor to the Dictionary, but his article on Ben Jonson shows that Mr. Lee has obtained in the author of Studies on the Literary Relations of England and Germany, a recruit of exceptional ability and knowledge. Mr. Herford has not, indeed, cleared up the obscurities which envelop in several points the personal as well as the literary history of Ben Jonson, but he has given us a scholarly and satisfactory biography, and his criticism is sound and judicious :—
"Jonson's literary position," says Mr. Herford, "among his fellow-dramatists is quite unique. In passion, in buoyant humour, in spontaneous felicity of touch, he was inferior to most of them ; but he had constructive imagination in an extraordinary degree, a force of intellect and memory which supplied it at every point with profuse material, and a personality which stamped with ,distinction every line he wrote."
Although the name of James Prescott Joule is less known, and his life less interesting to the general reader than -those of the three eminent men of letters already noticed, yet the greatness of his powers, and the importance of his dis- coveries, entitle him to share with them the honours of the volume. The singular modesty, and even shyness, of the man who determined the mechanical equivalent of heat, prevented him from making that figure in the eyes of his countrymen to which his scientific genius entitled him. It was his un- willingness to put himself before the world, even more than the delicate state of his health, that caused him to decline the Presidency of the British Association at Bradford in 1872, and at Manchester in 1887. The biography of such a man is and can be little more than a record of his scientific work. This record of one of the greatest scientific names of the nineteenth century has been well, and for the first time
• Tho Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Sydney Lee. Vol. XXX. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1892.
adequately, set before us by Mr. R. T. Glazebrook, another recruit whom we hope to meet again in the future volumes of the Dictionary.
Three Churchmen next demand our attention, men not unlike in character, yet the events of whose lives could hardly be more dissimilar. If canonisation prevailed in the English Church, there are two names in its post-Reformation history which by universal consent would be entitled to it, and to which, in the absence of the official title, the epithet "saintly" is usually and most fitly prefixed. Each has a high place among the sweet singers of our Church ; but though it is not probable that any of Keble's hymns will ever rival the popularity of the Morning and Evening Hymns of Ken, yet the author of The Christian Year never descends to the dull mediocrity which characterises nearly all the other religious poems of the saintly Bishop. But though similar in their characters and in their tastes, no lives could be in greater con- trast than those of Ken and Keble. That the "shy, homely, unambitious man, living so retired a life, should yet have been the prime factor in the great religious movement of his time," is little less strange than that the equally unambitious Ken should have played a part in a great political and ecclesiastical revolution, should have been forced to share in political strife for which he was so unfitted, and to become one of the leaders in an ecclesiastical schism which was so little to his taste, and which scarcely commended itself even to his judgment. Canon Overton gives us an excellent life of Keble ; and the Rev. W. Hunt, whom we have known chiefly as one of the pillars of the Dictionary for medieval statesmen, shows us, in his article on Ken, that he is as well qualified to write on the religious and political history of the Revolution period as of medimval times.
The third Churchman whose name attracts us in this volume, and who resembled Ken and Keble no less in the simplicity and piety of his character than in their somewhat rigid and even narrow churchmanship, though he attained a much higher rank than either of them, is a far less interesting personage. The single ecclesiastic who for more than four centuries has filled the great place of Lord High Treasurer of England, Archbishop Juxon., is one of those menwho had greatness thrust upon them. Single-minded, and absolutely free from even a suspicion of corruption or self-seeking, he was possessed of no great ability, but was an eminently commonplace person, whom the accident of his attendance on Charles I. at the scaffold has invested with a share of the Royal martyr's halo. Mr. Hutton has done full justice to his life and character, but attributes to him qualities which it may be doubted whether he possessed. That "as a churchman Juxon was simple, spiritual, and sincere," is certain ; but when he is described as "strong and loyal, self-contained yet sympathetic," we can only say that we have failed to find anything either in his actions or his language to justify the epithets " strong " and "sympathetic."
Turning from the Church to the Stage, we get capital notices of the Keans, the Kembles, and Mrs. Jordan, from the congenial and capable pen of Mr. Knight, whose admirable series of articles on our actors and actresses will form, when the Dictionary is completed, an exhaustive history of the English Stage. The only fault we have to find with these articles is that the writer confines himself to quoting the opinions, frequently diverse, of others, concerning the merits of the persons whose careers he reviews, and seldom gives us —as his experience so well entitles him to do—his own judgment of the position of each as an actor. We should be disposed to place Charles Kemble somewhat higher than Mr. Knight seems to regard him. Without being the equal of his brother John or of the elder Kean in the highest walk of tragedy, competent judges considered him as an almost perfect personifier of personages just below the highest, though this may seem to justify Macready's rather disparaging remark that he was a first-rate actor of second-rate parts. As Cassio, Falconbridge, llitacduff, and Mercutio, he was unequalled. No member of his family enjoyed the same affectionate popularity as Charles, or was so sincerely mourned at his death :—
" We shall never in Cyprus his revels retrace, See him stroll into Anglers with indolent grace, Or meet him in bonnet at fair Dunsinane, Or greet him in moonlit Verona again."
Each of the two famous schoolmasters, Beate and Kennedy, has a well-written notice. Mr. Page tells us all that we want to know about Kennedy; but we could have wished a fuller and rather more detailed account of the last of the old sehool of Head-Masters than Mr. Archbold has given us. Mr. Antitin Dobson writes a pleasant and appreciative article on his friend Charles Keene, whom he justly describes as "a most consum- mate artist in black-and-white." Mr. Morse Stephens does full justice to Sir William Jones, and Mr. Sutton to Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth.
We are disappointed by the Life of Edward Kelley, the alchemist, to which we had looked forward with a hope that we should at length have an adequate account of the adven- turous career of a remarkable man. But the article adds hardly anything to the notices of Kelley in Mr. Cooper's life of Dr. Dee in the fourteenth volume, or to the accounts of him to be found in nearly every biographical dictionary. Though a charlatan and an impostor, he was undoubtedly a man of great scientific attainments and ability, and deserves a serious bio- graphy by some one who has read his works as well as those of his master, Dr. Dee, and who has made an intelligent and ex- haustive use of the authorities cited in the Dictionary.
We have noticed in this volume the omission of two names which we think should have been included. No mention is made of that whimsical but amusing and accomplished writer, Charles Kelsall, whose Classical Excursion from Rome to Arpin°, Phantasm of an University, and Idea of a Constitution for Italy, to say nothing of half-a-dozen other volumes and pamphlets, certainly entitled him to an article. A niche might also, we think, have been found for the author of that most popular and admirable of law-books, Jarntan on Wills, editor also of Bythewood's Precedents of Conveyancing.
The Dictionary is now in its third quarter, and in four or five years will be complete. If the volumes continue to appear as they have hitherto done, with the regularity of clockwork, it will be a single instance in our literary history—we think we might say, in the literary history of the world—of an under- taking of this magnitude which has proceeded with such regularity of publication, and such uniformity of excellence.
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