Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/283

 9* 8. VIII. SEPT. 28, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

275

Upon his brow shone the white stamp of truth ;

And lips like thine did give the traitor kiss ! The above is in the play addressed by Charles to Lord Moray. ROBERT PIEBPOINT.

(9 th S. viii. 146.)

In 'Thirlby Hall,' by W. E. Norris, vol. i. p. 315, the lines are :

If you your lips would keep from slips,

Five things observe with care : To whom you speak, of whom you speak, And how, and when, and where.

J. J. FREEMAN.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Sidney Lee. Supplement. Vols. I. and II. (Smith, Elder & Co.)

Two volumes out of three of the Supplement to the ' Dictionary of National Biography _ have now seen the light, and the third volume, bringing the work up to the close of the reign of Queen Victoria, will in the course of another month be in the hands of the public. Calamitous as it was in other respects, the death of the late Queen furnished a convenient landmark. With a single exception, accordingly, no survivor of her late Majesty will be included in this monumental work. That solitary exception consists of Mr. George Smith, the founder of the work, to whose enterprise, munificence, and public spirit the conception and execution of the task are due. The memoir of Mr. Smith, which is written by the editor, appears as a prefix to the first volume of the Supplement, is accompanied by a reproduc- tion of the admirable portrait by Mr, G. F. Watts, and constitutes a separate portion of the work. Some of the information it contains was contributed by Mr. Smith himself to the Cornhill Magazine. As a record of a life energetic and exemplary in all respects it is a superb piece of biographical work, and it gives a full account of the rise and progress of a house which, thanks to the ' Dictionary ' itself, ranks in the estimate of the bibliophile with the Alduses, the Etiennes, the Elzevirs, and the Didots of former generations. It brings the reader, more- over, into the closest association with Thacke- ray, the Brontes, Leigh Hunt, Ruskin, and other celebrities of the last half century. Of George Smith's career the ' Dictionary ' in which his por- trait and life are enshrined constitutes the chief glory. Authority, always tardy and not seldom churlish in its recognition of literary claims, with- held until too late the distinctions which all felt to < be due. It is now presumably sensible of a lost opportunity, and might well seek occasion for atonement.

The feeling with which one enters on the perusal of this Supplement is widely different from that with which one read successive volumes of the work itself. In the ' Dictionary ' we recognized a stately tribute to national glories. At present each page that we turn over brings to us recollections of personal loss. Scores ay, hundreds of times we come across the names of those whose hands but yesterday we clasped, to whose voices we were in the habit of listening, at whose tables we sate. Herein are men from whose fingers the pen dropped when they were writing some communication for our own columns. With us the feeling is that of a

man who wanders through a churchyard and sees on every stone the names of those with and among whom he has lived and worked, and by whom his world has been constituted. The first thing that strikes the man who takes up the book is the fact that, while the entire alphabet is to be covered in three volumes, the first volume ends at Childers and the second at Hoste. A satisfactory reason for this at once suggests itself. Sixteen years have elapsed since the appearance of the letter A, and only a few months since the completion of the alphabet. The names go accordingly diminuendo, and while A and B occupy 365 pages, the last three letters will probably not occupy so many lines. A great change is visible in the names of the contributors. Mr. Lee himself, content with the lives of Queen Victoria (which has yet to appear) and of Mr. Smith, retires practically from the competition. His place is filled by Mr. Seccombe, who is re- sponsible for many brilliantly written lives, and thoroughly deserves the eulogy bestowed on him, together with Mr. Pollard and Mr. Irving Carlyle, in the preface. Mr. Seccombe has acquired the grace of assigning to bare particulars all the shapeliness and interest with which they are capable of being charged. Some of the less interesting lives are naturally brief and void of literary quality, the extreme difficulty being to compress within the space at disposal so many particulars. The more important biographies are naturally those to which one most readily turns. Gladstone occupies more space than any other name in the present instal- ment, though the space devoted to him is pro- bably considerably less than will be assigned Victoria R. Mr. Herbert Paul, to whom has been confided the task of writing the life, displays tact and reticence, and his account will answer most requirements. Had another ten years intervened before it was written, the estimate might have been different ; but that is, of course, unavoidable. For a bibliography of Gladstone the reader is referred by Mr. Paul to ' N. & Q.' By the side of Gladstone will naturally be studied John Bright, a good memoir of whom is supplied by Mr. I. S. Leaoam. Prof. J. K. Laughton contributes the life of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg. Difficult lives to write are those of Sir Richard Burton and his wife, which have been entrusted to Mr. J. S. Cotton. The fact that Burton was " three-parts an Oriental at heart," and animated by a pro- found curiosity concerning everything relating to humanity, accounts for much in his work that shocks modern beliefs. Burton's failure at Damascus is attributed in part to Lady Burton, who "mixed herself up with an unorthodox, if not semi-Catholic movement among the Muham- madans." Mr. Cotton also sends a pleasant and an edifying account of Grant Allen. Deeply interest- ing is the life of Sir Edward Burne-Jones by Mr. T. Humphry Ward. The estimate of Burne- Jones's merits and the nature of the appeal he makes are eminently satisfactory. With this it is natural to associate the appreciative life of Ford Madox Brown by Mr. F. G. Stephens, one of the two surviving members of the famous P.R.B. Sir W. Armstrong, dealing with Aubrey Beardsley, attri- butes to delicacy of constitution what some have found unpleasant in the work of that young artist. Mr. Gosse's Browning gives a full and trustworthy account of the poet, and is eminently eulogistic. Dr. Garnett contributes many biographies, of which the most interesting and sympathetic is that of