" LEST WE FORGET." R ATTIER to our surprise, Mr. Morley
in his speech of Friday week on the completion of the " Dictionary of National Biography" missed the point which, more than any other, makes of that great undertaking a work of national importance. It will by degrees and in course of years correct a great national fault,—the tendency to forget men who are worthy of remembrance. The English live mainly in the present, and a. little in the future, and forget the past too readily. They like to move for. ward unencumbered, care nothing about legends, keep up no traditions, forgive their enemies in a way that to the rest of the world seems weak—who stops to curse Philip II. or Napoleon ?—and forget their benefactors with a rapidity which, but that every man thinks that he him- self will be an exception, would chill alike patriotism and philanthropy. With the exceptions of Alfred' and Elizabeth they scarcely 'remember their great-We-MP-67 even William III. being no longer to them the'Deliverer. Among their great Admirals they recollect only Nelson, their only Generals of the past are Marlborough find Wellington, and in their long list of illustrious statesmen only Sir Robert Peel is still a household word. Who in the street really knows anything of Simon de Mont- fort, or the first Cromwell, or Cecil, or Denby, or. Sir Robert Walpole, or the second Pitt, or even—this is, we believe, true, though it is so ' nearly ine credible—of the group of men who in the teeth of Peel and Wellington carried through that greatest and least bloody of revolutions, the first Reform Bill ? A. vaguely pleasant memory is all that is left of men whO in most countries would be household words perpetually used to dispense with the necessity of describing new aspirants. If at the next Election some elector who admires Sir E. Grey's policy says, "There are in him the materials of a Cecil," how many citizens of Berwick will even comprehend the praise P As for the smaller bene- factors of the country, the men who have founded or enlarged cities, or established great industries, or utilised new and beneficent inventions, their very names have passed into an oblivion only less deep than that which has fallen on the great men of America before Columbus. Mr: Sidney Lee at the Mansion House breakfast gave as an instance 'of such men the fcnnder of Sandhurst, Mr. Jarry, but there are a hundred stronger. Ask any man in the street the name of the man who made the canals ; or the history of Hargreaves, who invented the spinning jenny and so saved England from bankruptcy ; or of Stephenson, who began the great system of railways ; or of Brunel, who created steam traffic across the ocean ; or of Waghorn, who showed the true route to India and the Far East., and so practically reduced the size of the world by one-third,—and be will give you replies that do but conceal a nearly perfect ignorance. Who, not being an architect, knows the names of that long succession of great builders who have covered England with palaces? The very patients whom his discovery has saved from extremities of agony remember of Sir James Simpson just his surname, and will not remember even that about Lord Lister. As we have said before, the Englishman's regardlessness of the past sometimes disburdens him, but we cannot believe that this forgetfulness of persons has any compensating advantage. It must, to begin with, destroy one of the strongest incentives to energetic effort. The hunger for fame is not the noblest of impulses, but it is one of the most instinctive, no man, however disinterested, being quite content to be "thrust foully in the earth to be forgot," and even Leigh Hunt, who said "Write me as one who loved his fellow-men," wishing to be remembered for that Christian aspiration. In the second place, the knowledge that a man in one's own chosen line has succeeded before, has triumphed over difficulties, has filled up Chat Moss, makes the usual fate of the competent, which is waiting, ever waiting, for the crop that so often is blighted before reaping, more endurable, and acts as a deterrent against despair. If it is well to recollect the deeds of men—and if not, why study history ?—it must be well to, recall what manner of men they were who did them, and not from ignorance to fancy that they possessed powers which render emulation impossible or absurd. At least, we all say so when we put up statues, and no statue will recall an eminent individual as this Dictionary of Biography will recall them all. It is more than a great monument to the eminent, for it is also what a monument can seldom be,---a record of their deeds. To have designed and corn= pleted such a work is creditable to all connected with it, to the editors of the Dictionary, Mr. Leslie Stephen at first., and then Mr. Sidney Lee, and to the capitalist who found the great sum required—£150,000—with little hope of repayment, except perhaps in this,—that he has established a perfect claim to be remembered in the next edition.
To give a general opinion as to the merit of the record thus prepared is, we think, impossible. It is for such a, work singularly full, probably when the supplement is issued will be found to be almost without a flaw in the way of completeness. The biographies, too, so far as we have been able to- test them, are accurate, with much white light in them, and with a remarkable sense of the proportion between one life and another. The editors have, perhaps, been over merciful in their distribution of censure, and have sometimes avoided that " general estimate" for which the common reader hungers with needless scrupulosity. But as a whole the work, which involved an itifinity of labour, much judg- ment, and some shrewd insight into character, has been marvellously well done, so that the great book -will probably never be superseded, and will possibly for centuries give the first impress to the judg- ment of the inquirer into the history and doings of all English notables. It is a great thing to have completed it within the lifetime of its designer, and we can but hope that he will never feel as if he had wasted his substance upon a noble whim. We think he will not. The appre- ciation of his great book will grow as it is more con- sulted, and both in England and America it will be felt that he has done much to rescue the marked men of our common race from the oblivion in which, owing to the national fault above described, they would otherwise have been submerged. Millionaires are apt to be mindless, but Mr. George Smith's generous expenditure has lifted the tombstones from thirty thousand graves, many of them those of forgotten people, and we see ouce more, to our great instruction, if not to our pleasure, the actual features of the dead. The general effect is variety, such as exists in the leaves of a tree, but now and again the sculptor has used his chisel so as to produce the effect that the form to which he gives new life concealed no common man.
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