THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY.* ADEQUATELY and satisfactorily to review

a volume like one of these of the Dictionary of National Biography is by no means an easy task. How are five hundred articles by nearly a hundred different writers to be dealt with P The most con- scientious reviewer cannot pretend to read the whole. All that he can do is to read a certain number of articles on the best-known names, and perhaps by the best-known writers; a certain number more relating to the second, third, and fourth- rate persons of whom he knows, or fancies that he knows, some- thing; and then to turn over the pages, pausing here and there at a name or a sentence which accidentally arrests his eye. Probably in this way he will obtain some general and not altogether inaccurate idea of the character of the volume, and the merits or demerits of the biographies he has read ; but he still labours under the disadvan- tage that he may not really have lighted upon the best articles in the book, and that where he remarks faults, they are not necessarily in the feeblest or most .defective notices. Among the great mass of lives of second and third-rate people, he may have entirely passed over many which really reflect the greatest credit upon the writers, but which, con- sisting of unimportant facts, names, and dates, would convey to the reviewer, even if he had read them, no true idea of their intrinsic merit, or the labour and research which they may have cost their authors. Nor, again, is it easy, after so much has been written, possibly by the reviewer himself, certainly by others equally and perhaps better qualified to write on the subject, to say anything new, or anything with even an air of freshness.

One change we notice, partly with pleasure, partly with regret, on the title-page of the last four volumes. The in- dication of the failing health of Mr. Leslie Stephen which the name of a colleague as co-editor indicates, is a matter of the deepest concern ; but it has, alas! been an open secret to those who have watched with care the progress of the Dictionary from its commencen;ent, that the main, if not the whole of the editorial work for some time past has, owing to the ill-health of the editor, been performed by Mr. Sidney Lee, and performed, we hasten to add, with the utmost efficiency and ability. We rejoice to see his name on the title- page as co-editor, and are certain that the work could not be in better hands ; while we earnestly hope that release from the onerous and wearing editorial duties will enable Mr. Stephen to recover his health, and to continue, until the ter- mination of the Dictionary, the admirable series of articles on the men of letters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which have so signally contributed to the interest and value of the twenty-five volumes already issued.

As each volume of the Dictionary appears, its merits become more conspicuous and its faults leas apparent. The five now before us come short in no respect of their predecessors. The roughness and inequalities of some of the earlier volumes have almost entirely disappeared ; the editorial supervision is either more efficiently exercised, or the contributors have fallen into such habits of discipline that they no longer, except in rare instances, require it. Of the veterans who took part in the labours of the early volumes, some are still to be found at their posts. Mr. Archer, Mr. Bullen, Mr. Chichester, Mr. Thompson Cooper, Mr. Courtney, Canon Creighton, Dr. Garnett, Mr. Henderson, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Knight, Professor Laughton, Mr. Mackay, Dr. Moore, Canon Overton, Mr. Rigg, Mr. Tedder, Professor Tout, and Dr. Ward, amongst others, are still contributors, each dealing with the same class of persons that he took in hand in the early volumes, each giving us thoroughly workmanlike articles, which we should be sorry to see falling into other hands, and several of them showing in their recent biographies a marked improvement on the articles

* Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Leo. Vole. XXL-XXV. London ; Smith, Bider, and Co. 1890.91. they contributed to the earlier volumes. But half the writers- in the first volume have disappeared from the twenty-fifth, and each volume gives us the names of new and, in many cases, valuable recruits.

In the twenty-first volume, the lives of the four Georges are particularly well done. They are not only in themselves meritorious as biographies, but are of real historical value. For the last forty years, the tone of Thaekeray's Lectures has been almost universally adopted in writing of the Sovereigns of the House of Hanover, and hardly one of them has ever been mentioned save with a sneer or with an expression of contempt and ridicule. Without attempting to extenuate the faults and the littlenesses which characterised the first three Georges, they are here shown not to have been the contemptible- personages which we have been accustomed to consider them ; a view of their character to the formation of which their commonplace appearance, awkward manners, utter want of taste, and—in the case of the first two—their ugly German mistresses contributed. They had more personal bravery than their predecessors the Stuarts, and as one of their historians has told us, though perhaps with some flattery, "it was their maxim to reward their friends, do justice to their enemies, and' fear none but God." Of George I., Dr. Ward tells us that- " He was never passionate or in extremes, and in his electorate had doubtless been rightly esteemed a just and therefore benefi- cent prince. In the ease of those who had taken part in the re- bellion of 1715 and on other lesser occasions, he showed a complete absence of vindictiveness. Towards the exiled family of the Stuarts he repeatedly displayed generosity of feeling Unlovable in himself, and in his chosen surroundings, George I. was worthy of his destiny, and shrank from no duty imposed upon him by the order of things."

Of George II., Mr. Rigg says that "he was totally incapable of any sort of dissimulation or even simulation ; honourable also, except when spite or avarice intervened ; loyal to his allies, and an exact observer of his pledged word." George III. is described by Mr. Hunt as remarkably calm in moments of danger, as having considerable insight into men's characters, and as being inspired by a genuine desire to do good to his people ; and while he justly comments upon the homeliness of the King's manners, his lack of dignity in private life, and the minute economy of his domestic arrangements, he reminds us that the King's virtues and failings alike were such as won the sympathy of average Englishmen of the middle class. That Mr. Hamilton finds little good to say of George IV., arises, we fear, from the character of the First Gentleman in Europe, of whom it is perhaps difficult to give greater praise than that—

"ho bowed with a grace, And had taste in wigs, collars, cuirasses, and lace."

"There have been," writes his biographer, "more wicked Kings in English history, but none so unredeemed by any signal greatness or virtue."

To enumerate the many excellent articles to be found in these volumes would more than fill the space allotted to our whole paper, and if we call attention to the life of William Grocya by Mr. Lee, of Robert Grosseteste by Dr. Luard, of George Grote by Professor Croom Robertson, of Sir Matthew Hale by Mr. Courtney—the bibliography of which is specially good —of Emma, Lady Hamilton, by Professor Laughton, of Sir John Harington by Canon Creighton, of William Hazlitt by Mr. Stephen, of William Harvey by Dr. Norman Moore, of Sir John Hawkwood by Mr. Rigg, we do so because each of these articles strikes us as marked either by distinctly original research or by judicious criticism. We mention them as a few in which we have been specially interested, and are not unmindful that many other articles of equal merit are con- tained in the volumes.

Here and there we are agreeably surprised in the notices of apparently uninteresting and utterly forgotten persons, at finding incidents and traits of character that are well worthy of record. Who now remembers that the Rev. James Granger, the eponymous hero of the Grangerites, was one of the earliest of the clergy to protest in the pulpit against cruelty to animals P We learn from Mr. Thompson Cooper that his sermon, preached in 1722, and printed under the title of Apology for the Brute Creation; or, Abuse of Animals Censured, gave almost universal disgust to his parishioners, and that "the mention of horses and dogs was censured as a prostitution of the dignity of the pulpit, and was considered, as a proof of the author's growing insanity !"

There is one department of the Dictionary which we think is capable of decided improvement ; it is that which deals with the lives of recently deceased persons. The notices of our contem- poraries are, in general, marked by unstinted, and not unfre- quently even fulsome eulogy, though sometimes by undue depre- ciation; but rarely is there even an attempt at a critical or judicial appreciation of the characters, actions, or writings of the persons treated of. A hundred years hence, the Dictionary will probably be the chief book of reference for the lives of hundreds of men and women of the nineteenth century ; and we cannot but think it a misfortune that the same care should not be given to them as we find in the ease of those who lived a century earlier, The life of Bishop Hampden is an instance of what we mean. A man of learning and ability, there probably never was a person so utterly devoid of tact, so determined to run his head against a stone wall whenever possible, or one who more readily laid himself open to the attacks of his enemies. To write that "the main point -objected to in his Hampton Lectures was a statement that the authority of the Scriptures was of greater weight than the authority of the Church," shows an ignorance of the con- troversy which we could hardly conceive possible in any one who had even looked at the authorities cited in the article ; but to say, when Hampden was appointed Bishop of Hereford, that "the new prelate fully confirmed the opinion held of him by the Prime Minister and his friends," and that "he ad- ministered the affairs of his diocese for twenty years to the great benefit of his charge," will indeed be news to every one who knows anything of the state of the diocese of Hereford during Bishop Hampden's episcopate. Of all the Bishops of the day, he was—with a single excep- tion—the most unpopular, and it is hardly too much to say that the affairs of his diocese were not adminis- tered at all during the twenty years that be occupied the See. Surely it would be possible to do full justice to the many good qualities of Dr. Hampden, without speaking of him in terms which must seem ridiculous to every one who knows the facts of his life, or the history of the controversies in which he was engaged. Again, in the case of Greville the diarist, Mr. Hamilton might have remembered that there are persons, and these not ill-informed, who doubt the accuracy, and still more the "perfect impartiality," of the diaries, and • who consider Lord Rosslyn's satire, though severe, not wholly cofounded :—

" For forty years he listened at the door, He heard some secrets and invented more,"

Take, again, the life of Mrs. Grote, which is excellent as far as it goes, and contains not .a single line with which we can find fault; but not one word is said of the peculiarities—we snight almost say eccentricities—of manner and conversation which characterised that accomplished lady, and the alisence of any reference to which makes the account given of her not • only one-sided, but absolutely colourless. On the other hand, Lord Glenelg receives scant justice at the hands of Mr. Rapson. His Colonial policy was not wholly unsound, nor his administration wholly unsuccessful. He was certainly more unpopular, but perhaps not more incompetent, than his .colleagues in Lord Melbourne's Cabinet, by whom, as Lord Brougham said, "he was praised and thanked and betrayed."

But we are glad to say that all the articles on our contem- poraries, even by those who knew and loved them best, are not open to censure. Mr. E. Gosse has shown, in his interesting notice of Philip Henry Gosse, that it is possible even for a son to write of his father with affectionate admiration, and yet with candour and impartiality. Nor is less praise due to Mr. Lee's life of J. 0. Halliwell-Phillipps, where full justice is done to Halliwell's merits, without the slightest attempt to ignore or gloss over the matters which cast a shadow over his many good qualities and undoubted talents.

We are not sure whether we have been more amused or surprised at the notice of a now forgotten adventurer of the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, who styled himself "Sir Levett Hanson, K.J." All the marvellous stories of the distinctions he had received from European Sovereigns, and of his intimacy with great personages of every kind, which this worthy was wont to narrate, arc given to us as actual facts on the authority of his own Letters and Papers. We are gravely told that "Prince Philip of Lim- bourg, Duke of Holstein, created him his Councillor and Knight of his Order of St. Philip," and that "later on he was made Vice-Chancellor and Knight Grand Cross of the Order."

But Mr. Lionel Oust forgets to tell us that the potentate de- scribed as "Prince Philip of Limbourg, Duke of Holstein," was a gentleman of the same profession as Sir Levett himself, a wandering adventurer, a pretender without dominions, whose title was not acknowledged by a single Sovereign in Europe.

Mr. Oust tells us that, in 1800, Sir Levett" was created Knight

Vice-Chancellor of the Order of St. Joachim," an undoubted grain of truth ; but he does not tell us that the Order of St. Joachim was an association instituted by the younger

members of some princely and noble houses in Germany, of

which, at the time Hanson became connected with it, a Count of Westerbourg-Leiningen was styled "Grand Master ;" and he seems unaccountably to have missed almost the only authentic record which we possess of Sir Levett's history and connection with this Order. The late Mr. Beltz, in his Review of the Chandos Peerage Case (p. 225) writes :— "The affairs of the soi-disant order were, for many years, ad- ministered by Levett Hanson, Esq., a gentleman of Yorkshire, who resided entirely abroad, adopted the style of 'Sir,' and trans- ported the chancery and archives of the order from city to city. It was long understood, that owyennant a certain not inconsiderable deposit at a banking-house in Pall Mall, the dis- tinction was at the service of any one who might have a fancy for it; and that letters-missive were soon forthcoming from Sir Lovett, containing due notification of election by the equestrian, secular, and chapteral order' at its last sitting at Bamberg, Hamburgh, Lubeck, or wherever that personage happened at the time to be domiciliated."

We do not think the proprietors or editors of the Dictionary have any cause to complain of the reception which the work has met with at the hands of the Press. Though errors and

shortcomings have been pointed out, the successive volumes have been received with an almost universal chorus of praise.

But something more than praise is needed. Dr. Jessopp—him- self a valued contributor to the book—has called attention in the pages of a contemporary to the fact that, before the work is completed, it will have cost the proprietors about £100,000. Mark Pattison somewhere expresses surprise at the large number of people in easy circumstances who do not expend

£50 a year in books : a little over 50s. is sufficient to procure the four yearly volumes of the Dictionary, and there certainly ought to be a much larger number of private persons and public libraries among its subscribers than we fear are at present to be found. The book ought to commend itself to as wide a circle of buyers as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.