THE DICTIONARY1OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY.* THE recent volumes of the;Dietionary of

National Biography show no falling-off from the uniformity of excellence which has so long characterised it. There are very few articles that fall below that high level of good sense and accuracy to which the editor has for some years past been able to bring up his con- tributors. -'- We have neither to comment upon the ignorance of some, the inaccuracy of others, nor the party spirit and partiality which, especially in the case of recently deceased persons, is so difficult to avoid. In fact, the high average excellence of the less important articles is the point that most surprises and gratifies us, and the editor is to be heartily con- gratulated on the thoroughly competent and efficient body of men that he and his predecessor have brought together as colleagues in this great national work.

The two volumes now before us—the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth, extending from Masquerier to More—present a remarkable contrast in respect of the importance and interest of the names which they include. While the thirty-seventh contains no name ofifirst-rate importance, and only a few of much interest, the two Mills and Frederick Denison Maurice being the chief, the thirty-eighth is more than usually rich in men of primary importance, and of others who are only one degree less so. Milton, Sir Thomas More, Simon de Montfort, the Parliamentary Earl of Manchester, General Monk, the fourth (the "wicked ") Earl of Sandwich, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mrs. Hannah More, Charles Mordaunt, third Earl of aPeterborough, and Thomas Moore, the poet, are among the names that at once attract our attention in turning over the pages, and of every one there is to be found not only a satisfactory and accurate biography, but one which:is eminently readable.

The honours of the thirty-seventh volume are carried off by Mr. Leslie Stephen, who writes on James Mill, and his more eminent son John Stuart Mill, and F. D. Maurice. Of James Mill, Mr. Stephen justly: remarks that he "was a curious

• Dictionary of National Biography Edited by Sidney Lee. Vols. %XXVII. and XXXVIIL London : Smith, Elder, and Co. 1894.

example of a man, who, while resolutely discharging every duty, somehow made even his virtues unamiable." Of his son we obtain a more adequate presentment, both of the man and of his writings, than is to be found elsewhere. His intellectual position is clearly and justly defined in a few words :—

"Brought up after the strictest sect of the utilitarians, the history of his development is mainly a history of his attempts

to widen and humanise their teaching Much of his thought is best understood as an elaboration of his father's principles, intended to supply gaps and correct crudities."

But while expressing no opinion as to the soundness of his teaching, Mr. Stephen does full justice to "the purity and energy of his purpose; and his immense services in the encouragement of active speculation, and of the most im- portant movements of his time."

Of one who was at the opposite pole not only in religious and philosophical opinion, but in style and in method of thought—Frederick Denison Maurice—we are almost sur- prised to find at once so sympathetic and so impartial an appreciation. After quoting the remarks of an early friend that he was the most Christlike individual he had ever met, Mr. Stephen adds," those who knew him well would generally agree in the opinion," and while admitting the indistinctness of his style if not of his thought, writes that "he was a man of most generous nature, of wide sympathies, and of great insight and subtlety of thought, and possessed of wide learning."

The greatest name in the thirty-eighth volume—John Milton—also falls to Mr. Leslie Stephen, whose article, as we should expect, is marked at once by fullness of knowledge and accuracy of detail, with here and there, though very rarely, a

sentence of pregnant and judicious criticism, always in the fewest possible words. No one is more competent to give us a lengthy and elaborate criticism on the writings of Milton than Mr. Stephen, and there is no one whose opinions on the subject would be more acceptable to the reader. But he has exercised a wise discretion in entirely abstaining from criticism

on "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," and in confining himself to a word or two on the minor poems, and on the prose pamphlets. It is not to an article in a biographical dictionary that we go for criticism on the greatest works in our literature, and the abstention of one so well qualified as Mr. Stephen is one more proof, though none was needed, of his thorough appreciation of what an article in a biographical dictionary ought to be. On the pamphlets on the Smectymnuus contro- versy, we expect and receive a brief but admirable judgment

They breathe throughout a vehemence of passion which dis- torts the style, perplexes the argument, and disfigures his invective with unworthy personalities. His characteristic self-assertion, however, acquires dignity from his genuine conviction that he is dedicated to the loftiest purposes ; and in his autobiographical and some other passages he rises to an eloquence rarely approached, and shows the poet of Paradise Lost' struggling against the trammels of prose."

Of Sir Thomas More, the greatest Englishman of his day, and one of the very few who were recognised throughout Europe as among the foremost of contemporary scholars and humanists, English literature possesses no adequate bio- graphy. Mr. Lee has, however, given us a monograph so elaborate and valuable, displaying so complete a mastery of the subject, and written with so entire an absence of party feeling, as to induce us to hope that when his editorial labours are finished, he would amplify his article into an exhaustive biography. In this, as in his other articles, and in those of Mr. Leslie Stephen, the bibliography, and the account of the authorities, are written with special fullness and accuracy. Mr. Lee is, however, in error in stating

that A. F. Doni was the author of the Italian version of More's Utopia, issued at Venice in 1548. The book was edited, with a preface, by Doni, but the translator, as Sansovino tells:us in his Govern() dei Regni (Ven. 1561), was

Hortensia Lando. The translation was reprinted at Milan in 1821.

Miss Kate Norgate has long been known as one of the most meritorious contributors to the Dictionary, and her article on Simon de Montfort is one of the ablest and most learned in the volume. Here, as elsewhere, she shows a masterly grasp of our early mediteval history, and a thorough acquaintance with the authorities; and having had an advantage which did not fall to any of her predecessors, in consulting the store of documents bearing upon Simon's government in Gascony, his diplomatic relations with France, and his personal relations with Henry III., preserved in the national archives of France and the British Museum, she has been enabled to give a more complete history of Simon de Montfort than is to be found elsewhere. Yet we are disposed to think that she scarcely sufficiently appreciates his position as a statesman. That he was not the author of the representative system, nor the creator of the House of Commons, has indeed been shown by Bishop Stubbs. Whether he himself was conscious that he had created a new force in English politics, when he issued the writ that "first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the parliament of the realm," we cannot say; nor how far he was the actual author of the complicated executive machinery set up by the Provisions of Oxford ; but he cer- tainly is entitled to the credit of both these political acts, and his statesmanship is interwoven not only, as Miss Norgate admits, into the Government of Edward 1., but into all our subsequent history. We are a little surprised not to find any notice of Simon de Montfort's acquisition and administration of the great earldom of Chester, which he acquired after the battle of Lewes, and administered for some time, either personally or through his son Henry.

One of the articles which has specially interested us in the last volume is Dr. Garnett's scholarly and sympathetic biography of Thomas Moore. He perhaps gives higher praise to Moore, both as a poet and as a man, than most of us would be able to agree with, though indeed he admits that Moore "never surprises by any incommunicable beauty, or anything savouring in the remotest degree of preternatural inspira- tion." But all who know his writings will agree that "his most congenial sphere is the satiric epigram, where his supremacy is unquestionable," and that his best lampoons "are the perfection of stinging satire, the very impersonation of gay, witty, airy malice. Form and matter are equally admirable, and they are not likely to be surpassed." It is strange that his satirical compositions are at the present day so little read and so rarely reprinted.

The Rev. W. H. Hutton has written an interesting and

detailed biography of Bishop Richard Montagu, awarding him, both as a scholar and a theologian, though perhaps not as a controversialist, higher merit than has been generally allowed to him. He may have been as powerful an influence in theo- logical literature as Andrewes, but surely not as Jeremy Taylor. In his account of the circumstances in which Montagu's great work, the Analecta Ecclesiasticarum Ezercita- tionum, was written, Mr. Hutton has fallen into several errors :— "On the death, in 1614, of Isaac Casaubon, with whom he had previously corresponded (Epp. Casaubon, ed. 1709, ep. 698, not 693, as in Pattison's Casaubon) about the Exercitationes ad Baronii Annales, Montagu was directed by the King to publish that work. It appeared the same year, and in 1616 James requested him to prepare an answer to Baronius on similar lines. This work was at first apparently suppressed at Archbishop Abbot's command (Mark Pattison, Casaubon, p. 375) ; but it was issued in 1622 under the title of Analecta Ecelesiasticarum Exercitationum."

Now, there is no trace of any correspondence between Casaubon and Montagu about the Exercitationes, and we have failed to find in Pattison's Casaubon any reference to Epistle 693. Certainly Epist. 698 (which is correctly referred to by Pattison) does not relate in any way to the Exereitationes or to Baronius, but is wholly occupied with Bellarmine and the Tortura Torii of Andrewes. Moreover, although in the edition of the Epistolic of Casaubon, given by Almeloveen in 1709, Epistle 698 is addressed Ilichardo Montacuto, a perusal of it makes it clear that it was really written (like the other letters addressed in the printed volume to Richard) to Tames

Montagu, Bishop of Bath and Wells. It is difficult to under- stand what Mr. Hutton means by the statement that on

Casanbon's death Montagu was directed by the King to publish the Exercitationes. The work was published two months before Casaubon's death, and though it may not be inaccurate to say that Montagu's answer to Baronius was at first suppressed at Abbot's command, Mr. Hutton's statement does not convey to the reader the fact that the book which was suppressed by the influence of Abbot, and which pro- bably formed the basis of the Analecta, was one which

Montagu had written, and the proof-sheets of which had been printed two years, at least, before Casaubon's death.

We might fill a column with a list of articles of little less excellence than those already mentioned, and yet omit many

equally deserving of commendation, but among those which have specially interested us we may mention Professor Tout's entertaining article on that well-meaning but injudicious and tactless personage, Archbishop Meopham, Professor Laugh- ton's on the fourth Earl of Sandwich and on Peter- borough, and Mr. Firth's on General Monk, all of which are full of information, well written, and marked by impartiality and moderation. Nor is less praise due to the articles by Dr. Garnett on Dean Milman, Mr. Saunders on Lord Houghton, Mr. Seceombe on Lord Mohun, and Mr. Knight on the two Charles Mathews and the Duchess of St. Albans.