The Dictionary of National Biography

To one who reads and runs, a work of biographical reference, complete in sixty-three volumes, is not likely to appear a proper inspiration to rhetorical panegyric. Yet no one who has had occasion to summon the aid of the Dictionary of National Biography¹ in any serious literary undertaking, or has studied the work as a whole with a due regard to the conditions and qualifications of good biographical composition, will find it easy to write with sobriety of its merits. From the inception of the huge project every person connected with it has had an attentive ear for the counsels of perfection. It is obvious that the first qualification of such a work must be, so far as possible, absolute accuracy and completeness. It is true that from time to time, as the successive volumes of the set have come from the press, reviewers in the Athenæum and other periodicals have pointed out minor errors and some omissions ; but when the scope of the undertaking is

considered, the number of faults in this kind will seem infinitesimally small. This will seem the more remarkable when we remember that, save by such obsolete collections as Anthony à Wood’s or the Biographia Britannica, the field was virtually unbroken. The qualities of accuracy and completeness are shared by the Dictionary of National Biography with other biographical collections which have appeared, or are appearing, in France, in Germany, and in Belgium; but it has virtues — one may even say charms — all its own. It contains but few articles exhibiting the jejune traits of hackwork which characterize its fellows. Any writing directed to such an end will necessarily be, in a measure, depersonalized; under careful editorial control it will acquire a certain impressive homogeneity. But while the articles in the Dictionary, the work of several hundred different hands, — men of letters, scientists, publicists, specialists all, — are pervaded by a singular unity of tone, the reader is continually edified by flashes of vivid critical insight, or taken by touches of humor. The most striking feature of all is that, under the leadership of Leslie Stephen, a master craftsman in biography, and Mr. Sidney Lee, into whose hands the torch was finally given, the prime end of biography has been realized. In most instances the writers have contrived to “ seize their man,” and, while keeping their feet planted on solid documentary ground, to select the significant among multitudinous detail, so to present the lively image of their subject.

A critic who would discuss minutely the whole Dictionary of National Biography must needs have taken all knowledge to be his province, — a quixotic adventure nowadays. For it is conceivable that one perfectly competent to discuss Elizabethan dramatists or Pre-Raphaelite painters might be lamentably short in his knowledge of pioneers in tropical colonization; and, as learning now is, a man may know much of Browning and little of Sir Thomas Browne, or he may have an intimate acquaintance with the dramas of Oscar Wilde, yet never have heard of Tom Killigrew. Still, it may not be out of place to present some curious synoptical conclusions drawn from the substance of the set. Probably only small minds will be deeply concerned to learn that 195 persons with the surname of Smith have risen to the standard of eminence necessary for admission to the pages of the Dictionary, or that the Joneses are a good second with 132; but surely all Scotchmen will rejoice to know that the Stewarts, with 112 eminent representatives, take the third place of honor.

From the table of the chronological distribution of the biographies one may derive a sound perspective, and just sense of relative values in life, together with some illuminating historic suggestions. Thus, in the sixteenth century, the time of the Renaissance, in which many and multifarious interests, long disused, came to new birth, in which manifold activity filled the stage, we find the Dictionary commemorating four times as many worthies as in that relatively stagnant and barren century its precursor. In the seventeenth century, again, that complex age of subtle change and subterranean growth, the editors of the Dictionary found twice as many memorable names as in the sixteenth. That these significant phenomena do not arise wholly from the greater volume of biographical records as we approach our own time is shown by the striking fact that in the eighteenth century, preëminently a time of memoirs, letters, anecdotes, and human interest, but very few more names emerge than in the seventeenth century. In passing to the nineteenth, we discover that the operation of both sets of causes, fuller records and more varied activities, have again conspired to increase the representation twofold ; and this disparity is still further increased by the publication of the three supplementary volumes, dealing chiefly with notable persons who died after their alphabetical position in the substantive work was passed. But in studying these later volumes one observation forces itself upon the attention: that is, the predominance in them of men distinguished in pursuits quite other than learned. Thus, for example, within two pages of one of the volumes we meet with records of an Oxford professor of poetry, a classical philologist, a colonial politician, and a biscuit manufacturer. Now this may indicate either one of two things. It may prove that new channels for the attainment of eminence have been opened to an aspiring people, or it may prove that only a lettered repute is perennial. It is wholly possible that there were, in the fifteenth century, say, purveyors of creature comforts who were much in the public eye, but that there is such scant record of these simply goes to show that a fame writ in water biscuits is considerably less enduring than bronze.

The first of the three volumes of the Supplement is distinguished by a prefatory memoir, from the pen of Sidney Lee, of George Smith, the publisher of the Dictionary of National Biography, and in a very real sense its “onlie begettor.” To Smith, doubtless, as much as to the editors, were due the conception, organization, and administration of the marvelous machine which produced thirty thousand biographical notices, comprehended within sixty octavo volumes of some five hundred pages each, which, with unbroken precision, came from the press upon the first day of each quarter throughout a period of fifteen years.

The career of George Smith, an amicus as well as an obstetrix musarum, has been so recently recounted in various magazines that it is not important to discuss it in detail here. He was a singularly attractive type of the man of high voltage, the all-round man of affairs. Coming, at the time of the breaking of his father’s mind, suddenly, a very young man, into the administrative control of an intricate business not in the best of condition, Smith developed an organizing genius of the highest order. An extract from Mr. Lee’s narrative will make this clear: —

“ Astonishing success followed Smith’s efforts. The profits rose steadily, and the volume of the business, which was well under £50,000 when he assumed control of the concern, multiplied thirteen times within twenty years of his becoming its moving spirit. The clerks at Cornhill in a few years numbered 150. An important branch was established at Bombay, and other agencies were opened at Java and on the West Coast of Africa. There was no manner of merchandise for which Smith’s clients could apply to him in vain. Scientific instruments for surveying purposes, the testing of which needed the closest supervision, were regularly forwarded to the Indian government. The earliest electric telegraph plant that reached India was dispatched from Cornhill. It was an ordinary experience to export munitions of war. On one occasion Smith was able to answer the challenge of a scoffer, who thought to name an exceptional article of commerce — a human skeleton— which it would be beyond his power to supply, by displaying in his office two or three waiting to be packed for transit.”

But, however various and titanic Smith’s business affairs were, his first love and his chief concern were always for the printing and publishing of good literature. In this direction his mind proved to be eminently foreseeing and constructive. His relations with the Brontës, Miss Martineau, Trollope, Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, and Browning are already known to most readers; and he is likely to be longer remembered for the Cornhill Magazine and the Dictionary of National Biography than for his share in the construction of the Ganges Canal. On the other hand, one is diverted to learn that a large proportion of his wealth proceeded from the shrewd and lucky purchase of an Apollinaris spring, which proved even more profitable to him than his trade in the flowings of the Castalian fount. In short, George Smith was a type we are wont to think more American than British, the modern equivalent of both Alexander and Midas.

Passing from the introductory memoir to the text of the Supplement proper, the reader encounters in the first volume many articles of timely interest. The first of consequence, and, all things considered, perhaps the most notable in the volume, is Matthew Arnold, by Dr. Garnett. This article is comparatively short, but, in view of the fact that its only considerable predecessor was Professor Saintsbury’s idiosyncratic monograph, it is an exceedingly valuable summary document. It contains some lines of just and lucid criticism which will bear quotation: —

“ If a single word could resume him [Arnold], it would be ‘ academic; ’ but, although this perfectly describes his habitual attitude even as a poet, it leaves aside his chaste diction, his pictorial vividness, and his overwhelming pathos. The better, which is also the larger part of his poetry is without doubt immortal. His position is distinctly independent, while this is perhaps less owing to innate originality than to the balance of competing influences. Wordsworth saves him from being a mere disciple of Goethe, and Goethe from being a mere follower of Wordsworth. As a critic, he repeatedly evinced a happy instinct for doing the right thing at the right time. . . . His great defect as a critic is the absence of a lively æsthetic sense; the more exquisite beauties of literature do not greatly impress him unless as vehicles for the communication of ideas. . . . Yet if Arnold cannot be praised as he praises Sophocles for having ‘ seen life steadily and seen it whole, ’ he at all events saw what escaped many others ; and if he exaggerated the inaccessibility of the English mind to ideas, he left it more accessible than he found it. This would have contented him; his aim was, not to subjugate opinion, but to emancipate it, contending for the ends of Goethe with the weapons of Heine.”

Proceeding to the B’s, we find an imposing array of memoirs, including Aubrey Beardsley, Mrs. Booth, John Bright, Browning, Burne-Jones, and Sir Richard Burton. Here is much attractive material to be commended to the diligent and discursive reader. Browsing through the succeeding volume, such an one will certainly pause over Canon Ainger’s account of Du Maurier, and Mr. Joseph Knight’s record of Helen Faucit, while Hunt’s Freeman and Pollard’s Froude constitute an engaging pair of parallelœ vitœ. Reading onward, one is somewhat disconcerted to find that the important biography of Gladstone has been intrusted to that brisk but baffling writer, Mr. Herbert Paul. It must be said, however, that the narrative of 35,000 words is surprisingly well done, full of information and anecdote, and, as a record of the more visible activities in Gladstone’s career, tolerably sufficient.

The third volume is richest of the three in famous names, containing as it does, among others, Huxley, Jowett, Martineau, Max Müller, Millais, William Morris, Coventry Patmore, John Ruskin, Sir Arthur Sullivan, and Queen Victoria. The life of Huxley, by Professor Weldon, will doubtless seem to many too exclusively concerned with Huxley’s scientific teachings, with too scant notice of his position as a dialectician and man of letters. But it is a fair answer that the latter phases and aspects of Huxley’s career have been duly recorded in the recent book by his son, whereas it is pretty certainly his work in pure science that is most likely to be the subject of intelligent inquiry by an appreciable number of persons in succeeding generations, which is the test the editors of the Dictionary have constantly proposed. Mr. Mackail’s Morris is, of course, in the best tradition of condensed and pregnant biography. It is a little odd that he should repeat the trite and superficial opinion, savoring strongly of the parlor lecture, that Morris’s poetry is Homeric in tone. As if there could be any analogy, other than the most superficial, between the fluent but languorous and unreal romanticism of The Earthly Paradise and Homer’s grandeur, vivid reality, and bright speed! But in writing of Morris’s work in other lines Mr. Mackail has much admirable criticism, very felicitously phrased.

“Morris,” says Mr. Mackail, “was a singular instance of a man of immense industry and force of character, whose whole life, through a long period of manifold activity and multiform production, was guided by a very few simple ideas. . . . In fact, all these varying energies were directed toward a single object, the reintegration of human life; and he practiced so many arts because to him art was a single thing. ”

Not far from the article upon Morris is a noteworthy account of the deeply lamented F. W. H. Myers. It is perhaps worth while to record the curious fact that this delightful poet and cautious investigator of psychic phenomena, the author of one of the best essays in the world upon Virgil as a romanticist and a humanist, should likewise have attained the rather Byronic notoriety of being the first Englishman to swim the Niagara River below the falls. The remainder of the minor notices we may pass summarily by, pausing only to note a fact of curious interest mentioned by Mr. Seecombe in his notice of Oscar Wilde. Wilde, it seems, left in manuscript an apologia pro sua vita ; and this is now in the hands of his literary executor, and may presently be given to the world.

It was fitting that the work which is likely to remain — the Oxford Dictionary being incomplete as yet — the chief scholarly monument of the Victorian age should contain in its concluding volume a life of the Queen. Mr. Sidney Lee has written this in person, and has performed the delicate task with exceptional fidelity and tact. Both of these qualities were to be expected from the best biographer of Shakespeare. But there are qualities in the present work not found in the Shakespeare. There the ideal was siccum lumen, but here, with no less care for accuracy, we have Mr. Lee writing in a more genial and romantic vein. Without any of the unbalanced rhapsody common in lives of great persons recently deceased, we have here some humor, and more pathos, informing a very clear and orderly account of the Queen’s life. The narrative approximates to 90,000 words,—about the length of the average novel. It is to be hoped that, as in the case of the Shakespeare, Mr. Lee may see fit to reprint the life of Victoria in a suitable separate form.

Notwithstanding the fact that the pages of a biographical dictionary are sure to be full of the records of high emprise and happy attainment, the continuous perusal of them is a melancholy proceeding,—a ramble in the “dormitories of the dead.” At the conclusion of such a course of reading, one is less disposed to construct synoptical theories of the conditions of success than to quote Latin about the transience of sublunary achievement. But if quoting there is to be, no better choice can be made than part of Mr. Lee’s final estimate of Queen Victoria, which, while it closely characterizes the Queen, is subtly symbolical of the temper of the age to which she gave her name : —

“Queen Victoria’s whole life and action were, indeed, guided by personal sentiment rather than by reasoned principles. But her personal sentiment, if not altogether removed from the commonplace nor proof against occasional inconsistencies, bore ample trace of courage, truthfulness, and sympathy with suffering. Far from being an embodiment of selfish whim, the Queen’s personal sentiment blended in its main current sincere love of public justice with stanch fidelity to domestic duty, and ripe experience came in course of years to imbue it with the force of patriarchal wisdom. In her capacity alike of monarch and woman, the Queen’s personal sentiment proved, on the whole, a safer guide than the best devised system of moral or political philosophy.”

Ferris Greenslet.