Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/334

 the books are standard contributions to English biographical literature. A French translation of all the volumes came out in 1868. A supplemental compilation, 'Men of Invention and Industry,' appeared in 1884.

As early as March 1845 Smiles had delivered, at a small mutual improvement society at Leeds, an address on the education of the working classes, in which he showed how many poor men had created for themselves, with beneficial effect on their careers, opportunities of knowledge and culture. The lecture, which owed something to George Lillie Craik's 'Knowledge pursued under Difficulties' (1830-1), was constantly repeated with expansion, and was received with great applause in many parts of the country. By degrees Smiles enlarged the lecture into a substantial treatise under the title of 'Self-Help, with Illustrations of Character and Conduct.' The MS. was refused in 1855 by the publisher Routledge, but in July 1859 John Murray, who published Smiles's 'George Stephenson' and the other engineering biographies, undertook the publication on commission. An immense success was the result: 20,000 copies were sold in the first year; 55,000 by 1864; 150,000 by 1889, and 120,000 copies since. The book impressed the public to whom it was especially addressed, and Smiles was in constant receipt of assurances of the practical encouragement which he had given artisans in all parts of the world. 'Self-Help' was translated into almost all foreign languages — including Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Japanese, and the native tongues of India. In succeeding volumes, 'Character' (1871), 'Thrift' (1875), 'Duty' (1880), and 'Life and Labour' (1887), Smiles pursued his useful scheme of collecting biographical facts and co-ordinating them so as to stimulate good endeavour. Repetition in these volumes was inevitable, and the triumph of 'Self-Help' did not recur. 'Character' approached but failed to reach the great sales of its predecessor. Yet all but the latest of these books achieved exceptional circulations in English-speaking countries as well as in foreign translations In 1875 Smiles successfully brought an action against a Canadian publisher named Belford for smuggling into the United States pirated copies of 'Thrift.'

On 30 Aug. 1866 he left the South Eastern railway, receiving a service of plate from the directors and staff with a pass over the company's lines. He thereupon became president of the National Provident Institution, and in that capacity travelled much about the country. A lecture on a fresh topic, 'The Huguenots in England and Ireland,' which he delivered at Dublin to the Young Men's Christian Association, while on a business journey, was developed into a volume on 'The Huguenots : their Settlements, Churches and Industries in England and Ireland' (published Nov. 1867); 10,000 copies were rapidly sold.

A sharp stroke of paralysis, the result of overwork, in Nov. 1871 disabled Smiles for a year, and he retired from the National Provident Institution. But he made a good recovery, and thenceforth divided his time between literature on much the same lines as before, and travel during which he amused himself by close observation of racial characteristics. Besides tours in Ireland and Scotland, he visited the Huguenot country in the south of France, and embodied new researches in 'The Huguenots in France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; with a Visit to the Vaudois' (1874). He returned to the south of France in 1881 to study the Basque people and language, and in the Gascon country during 1888 he collected details of the biography of the barber-poet of Agen, Jacques Jasmin (1798-1864), whose career illustrated his favourite text and of whom he published a memoir in 1891. In 1871 and 1881 he made a tour in Friesland and neighbouring lands, and in 1884 through the west coast of Norway. He thrice visited Italy, where his works enjoyed a wide circulation, and on his second visit in the spring of 1879 he was accorded a great reception in Rome, where he visited Garibaldi and Queen Margherita. Next year he received the Italian order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus. On visits to Scotland he found fresh biographical materials of the kind which specially appealed to him, and he brought out lives of the self-taught Scotch naturalist, Thomas Edward of Banff, in 1876, and of Robert Dick, a baker of Thurso, who was also a botanist and geologist, in 1878.

Smiles lived at Blackheath until 1874, when he settled in Kensington. In 1878 he received the hon. degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh, and in the same year he issued a life of the philanthropist, George Moore, a task which he undertook reluctantly, but which was more popular than any of his later publications. He printed for the first time James Nasmyth's autobiography in 1883, but the edition had a scanty sale. Subsequently, for his friend and publisher John Murray, Smiles produced in 1891