Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/149

Rh In 1806 he edited Fielding's works, in ten volumes octavo; Dr. Johnson's works, in twelve volumes octavo; Warton's essays, the "Tatler," "Spectator," and "Guardian," in fourteen volumes octavo; and assisted the Rev. W. L. Bowles in his edition of the works of Alexander Pope.

In 1807 he edited "Gibbon's Decline and Fall," in twelve volumes octavo, to which he prefixed a Life of the Author.

In 1808, and part of the following year, he selected and edited, in forty-five volumes, the popular work known as "Walker's Classics."

In 1809 he edited Bolingbroke's works, in eight volumes octavo. During this year, and the intervals of several that followed, he contributed many of the lives contained in that splendid work, the "British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits."

In 1810 he revised an enlarged edition of "The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper," and prefixed to it several biographical notices omitted in the first collection. During the same year, he published "A History of the Colleges, Halls, and Public Buildings attached to the University of Oxford." This work he intended to continue, but did not complete it.

In 1811 he revised Bishop Hurd's edition of Addison's works, in six volumes octavo, and an edition of Pope's works, in eight volumes octavo. During the same year he published, with many alterations, "The Projector," in three volumes octavo, a collection of original articles which he had contributed to the "Gentleman's Magazine," from the year 1802 to 1809.

In 1812 he prefixed a "Life of Alexander Cruden" to a new edition of "Cruden's Concordance."

During the last-mentioned year, also, Chalmers commenced the largest and most voluminous of all his literary labours, and the work upon which his reputation chiefly rests. This was "The General Biographical Dictionary, containing an Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the most Eminent Men in every Nation, particularly the British and Irish; from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Times." The original work, published in 1798, had consisted of fifteen volumes. Large though it was, Chalmers found it incomplete, and resolved to expand it into a full and perfect work. He therefore commenced this gigantic labour in May, 1812, and continued to publish a volume every alternate month for four years and ten months, until thirty-two volumes were successively laid before the public. The amount of toil undergone during this period may be surmised from the fact, that of the nine thousand and odd articles which the Dictionary contains, 3934 were entirely his own production, 2176 were re-written by him, and the rest revised and corrected.

After these toils, it might have been supposed that the veteran editor and author would have left the field to younger men. He had now reached the age of fifty-seven, and had crowded that period with an amount of literary exertion such as might well indicate the full occupation of every day, and every hour of the day. But no sooner was the last volume of the Biographical Dictionary ended, than he was again at work, as if he had entered freshly into action; and from 1816 to 1823 a series of publications was issued from the press that had passed under his editorial pen, chiefly consisting of biographies. But at last the "pitcher was broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern." During the latter years of his life, he had been employed by the booksellers to revise and enlarge his "Biographical Dictionary," and upon this he had continued to employ himself V.