Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/10

 apart from other considerations, calls in its pages for the tribute of an adequate memoir. On 25 May 1900, on the eve of the publication of the sixty-third and last volume of the substantive work, the late King, then Prince of Wales, honoured with his presence a private dinnerparty given to congratulate the late Mr. George M. Smith, the public spirited projector, proprietor, and publisher of the undertaking, on its completion. He then spoke with his customary grace and charm of his interest in the Dictionary, and he afterwards expressed in a letter to the Editor the satisfaction which the meeting gave him. On 25 October 1901, the day of the publication of the last volume of the First Supplement, the King furthermore sent a letter of congratulation 'on the final completion of this great work.' Finality is no attribute of a record of national biography, but in the late King's lifetime the Dictionary came to a close with its First Supplement. It will now stand completed with its Second Supplement.

In February 1902 his late Majesty was pleased to accept from Mrs. George M. Smith a complete set of the volumes, which he placed in his private library at Sandringham. In acknowledging the gift the King's secretary wrote that His Majesty, who regarded the work as 'one of the highest interest and utility,' would ' always value Mrs. Smith's kind present as a memento' of the late George Smith, 'who did so much for literature, and whose acquaintance it was a satisfaction to His Majesty to remember to have made.'

The number of names in the present Supplement reaches a total of 1660, of which 500 appear in this volume and the remainder fill two succeeding volumes. The contributors to this volume number 166.

The principles of selection and treatment are those with which students of the Dictionary are already familiar. Special care has been taken to make the genealogical data uniform and precise, and to give full particulars of memorial foundations, and of portraits whether painted or in sculpture.