Two writers of the present day, whose books and essays
every one with any real love for lettere reads eagerly and delights in (though indeed, the social and political opinions—may we say paradoxes P—of one of them sometimes irritate his warmest admirers), and who, differing in all else, yet resemble each other in this, that each displays a catholicity of taste, and a power of appreciating good literature of every kind, rarely to be met with,—Frederic Harrison and Andrew Lang,—in the two in- teresting books they gave us a few months since, The Choice of Books and Letters from Dead Authors, have each of them, almost in the same words, sneered at the interest frequently dis- played for remote and trivial biographical details when accompanied by a neglect of the works of the author whose distant connections are investigated with extreme and minute interest. The one ridicules "the ceaseless explanations of what John Milton saw or did not see, and who married his great- aunt ;" and the other speaks of " the exercises of men who neglect Moliere's works to gossip about Moliere's great-grand- mother's second-best bed." But, in fact, these " trivialities," as Mr. Lang justly calls them, are not without their interest, and frequently have no inconsiderable bearing on the actual life of the great writer at whose shrine the Dryasdusts sincerely (though ignorantly) worship. But though minute and trivial details are admissible, and even welcome, in the lives of the greatest men, they are quite out of place in notices of insignifi- cant persons or those recently deceased. No one cares to be told, or expects to find in a Dictionary of National Biography such information as that Ben Count the pugilist was " well known as a pigeon-shooter," or that Bishop Briggs, of Beverley, was "remarkable for his lofty and commanding stature," or that the favourite amusement of one Joseph Capper was "killing flies with his cane." Indeed, the amount of space devoted to comparatively undistinguished and recently deceased per- sons is far too great, and is a fault which seems rather to increase than diminish as the work progresses. Three columns for Dr. William Budd, five for Sir Mark Isambard Brunel and four for his son, one and a half for Sir J. C. Barrows, a worthy Mayor of Brighton, three for Bishop Brown, of Newport, four and a half for Robert Brown the botanist (Thomas Brown the conchologist is not mentioned), three for Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh—not the humouriet who wrote Rub and his Friends, but his father—(whose works are described- as "somewhat commonplace in thought and expression, and without permanent value"), are greatly in excess of the space given to men their superiors in reputation and merit, but who had the misfortune to live a century earlier.
In turning over the pages of the Dictionary, it is curious to notice how certain professions or tastes seem to ran in par- ticular names, though the bearers of them are apparently un- connected by family ties. In one of Miss Sinclair's now forgotten novels, which were among the favourites of our youth, she gives a receipt for conversation at an Edinburgh dinner-party,—" If you can't think of anything to say, ask your neighbour if she knows Dr. Brown or Captain CampbelL" Long before she has enumerated and attempted to identify the innumerable Dr. Browns or Captain Campbells of her acquaintance, the dinner will be at an end. Out of one hundred Browns or Brownes recorded in the Dictionary, no leas than twenty- nine are entitled to the prefix " Dr. ;" while of the fifty-three Campbells who were neither Dukes, Marquises, nor Earls, no lees than nineteen at some period of their life woad have been styled " Captain," while if we include all the members of the
Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Leslie. Stephen. Vole. ILL-1%. London Smith, Elder, and Co. 1885-67.
Peerage who were military commanders, we bring the number up to thirty-five. What is still more curious, only eight out of the hundred Browns or Brownes were soldiers or sailors, and only four of the Campbells have the title of " Doctor."
The biographies by the editor still maintain their high standard, and are models of what such articles should be,— full of facts and details, without a superfluous word, and yet eminently readable. Those on Byron and Carlyle, in the last volume, are specially good, though we are not prepared to agree in all respects with Mr. Stephen's view of Byron's character, or. with all the criticisms on his writings. Not only is there an entire absence of that tendency to undue panegyric which we remark in some of the contributors to the Dictionary,. but Mr. Stephen possibly inclines too much, as it appears to us, to the moat unfavourable view of Byron's character. But we are glad to see that the editor does not confine himself to the greater lights of our literature. Many of his articles on insignificant persons have no less merit ; though in his life of John Byrom,. we are surprised to see no mention of by far the moat celebrate& and most popular of Byrom's productions, the best Christmas carol we possess, known and sang wherever the English language. is spoken Christiana awake, salute the happy morn r' We shall not attempt to notice the many excellent articles which have struck us in looking through these seven volumes. Barely to enumerate them would take up more space than could be here allowed, and we should even then run the risk of omitting many equally deserving of mention, for the best biographies in the Dictionary are not always either the longest,. or those upon the most eminent names. Many very brief notices of comparatively unknown persons possess great merit, and must have caused their writers more labour and investigation than some of the longer and more elaborate articles, especially those on recently deceased persons, which seem often to be com- piled merely from newspaper obituary notices.
Admirable as the work is on the whole, excellent as are the majority of the articles, there are yet a certain number which are not up to the general standard ; while several contributors seem entirely unaware of the importance of accuracy and pre- cision in dates and facts. There is no purpose for which we so. frequently turn to a biographical dictionary as to ascertain the date of a man's birth or death, or of some event in his life. In a few cases it may not be possible to discover these ; yet there are many articles in the Dictionary where a little trouble and. a reference to well-known printed sources would have enabled the writer to give the necessary information. We should have supposed that the author of one of the most popular devotional works in the English language, which has reached at least seventy-five editions, would receive special care and attention not from the contributor only, but even, if it were needed, from the editor. That the writer of the life of Lewis Bayly, Bishop of Bangor, the author of the well-known Practice of Piety, is unacquainted with the paper on the Bishop and his book by Mr. J. E. Bailey, which appeared in the Manchester Quarterly for July, 1883, is perhaps excusable ; but there can be no excuse for the carelessness with which the article is compiled, nor for ignorance of the sources cited by Mr. Bailey, most of them well known and easily accessible books, reference to which would have enabled the writer, to give the date of the Bishop's birth-1565—and to add an accurate and exhaustive list of his preferments,. with their several dates, instead of those irritating, because vague and dateless, statements with which his article abounds. In the life of W. Balcanquhall, Dean of Durham, the only two points of interest connected with his' name are omitted. On the arrival of the Scotch invaders in 1640, he fled so hastily that his flight left among the Durham people, the saying, still current there, and applied to breathless fugitives, "Ron away, Dr. Boconcky," (which also gives—what, at least to Southrone, the spelling does not convey—the true pronuncia- tion of the name). The other matter (to which our attention has been called by a friend) is still more interesting. In the Dean's sermon, preached and printed in 1634, is to be found a reference showing that Defoe's celebrated epigram was not original, but only the adaptation of a common saying,—" Our proverbe, where- soever God bath a church, the Divell hath a chappell." Hales's Remains, Niohol's Armenius, the Calendars of State Papers,. and other well-known books, afford ample matter for a more adequate account of " Dr. Boconcky."
The family of Berkeley is not only honoured with an elaborate
general article, but in addition, of many insignificant persons of whose lives we have there all the details we require, we find separate and lengthy notices. Why this should be the case with the eighth and thirteenth Barons, we cannot conjecture. They were absolutely undistinguished, and the column devoted to each is merely a record of his parentage, marriage, succession, death, and children. Hundreds of omitted Peers were mach more important and interesting personages. The single claim to distinction of George Berkeley, son of the second Earl— namely, his marriage with Lady Suffolk, the mistress of George IL—hardly entitles him to a separate article. But the family quarrels of the fifth Earl and his sons, to whom nine columns and a half are given, should have been all dealt with by the same writer, and might easily have been compressed either into the genealogical article, or at most into the life of some one or two, and we should then have been spared the contradictory statements and repetitions which are found in abundance. The fact that George, ninth Baron, was created Viscount Dareley and Earl of Berkeley in 1679, is stated at length no less than three times. Even Mr. Hunt does not here display his usual accuracy, for after mentioning (correctly) that William, eldest son of the fifth Earl, by Mary Cole, was born in 1786, he tells us a few lines further on that this son " William, commonly called Vis- count Dnrsley, and at that time M.P. for the County of Gloucester, obtained leave in 1799 " (he being then thirteen years old) " to lay his pedigree before the Lords' Committee of Privileges." In the life of Grantley Berkeley, we have the extraordinary state- ment that his elder brother Moreton was," by the decision of the House of Lords, declared Earl of Berkeley." The House of Lords, as is correctly mentioned in two other articles, did nothing of the kind; all that it declared was that the alleged marriage with Mary Cole in 1785 was not proved, and that the claim of William, afterwards Earl Fitzhardinge, was not made out. The "brutal reflections on his mother's character" which were pub- lished by Grantley Berkeley in 1865, if referred to at all, ought to have been mentioned in the life of Grantley, and not in that of Maurice.
In every case where a scarce book is cited, authority for its existence should be given. This is hardly ever done; yet we do not hesitate to say that in no way would the value of the Dictionary be so much enhanced as by attention to and uni- formity of practice on this point. It is easy to ascertain whether a book is in the British Museum, or in any other of our great libraries, and nothing can be simpler—though, we admit, not always gratifying to the vanity of a contributor—when he has not seen a copy, than to state the authority on which he gives its title. In the vast majority of cases this has not been done, and the consequence is that books and editions are noted some of which are certainly non-existent, while of others the details are entirely inaccurate. Where the list given is a mere repetition of the more or less incorrect notices of Lowndos, Watt, or other similar books, it is of the utmost importance to know that such is the case, and that it is not the result of independent research on the part of the contributor.
If we have pointed out in the foregoing remarks a few short- comings that we have noticed, we hope we shall not be reckoned among those who "rail by precept, and detract by rule." Deep gratitude to the editor and his associates is the only feeling which can actuate the student of English history and English literature, for the mass of carefully digested and generally accurate information now for the first time laid open in respect of our national worthies and their works. For our own part, whether writing or reading, we find it necessary to have the book constantly at hand; and it is already difficult to under- stand how any serious biographical, literary, or historical study relating to Englishmen whose names begin with A, B, or C, could have been possible before the appearance of the nine volumes of The Dictionary of National Biography. We look eagerly for the appearance of each successive quarterly instal- ment with increasing interest and increasing admiration.
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