GREAT NATIONAL WORK

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 26

GREAT NATIONAL WORK

ANEW SUPPLEMENT

SOME NEW ZEALAND

SUBJECTS

(Written for the "Evening Post" by A.M.)

The publication by the Oxford University Press of a new supplement to the Dictionary •of National Biography redirects attention to the merits .and history of that famous undertaking. Of' the leading encyclopaedias, probably the D.N.B. is consulted by the smallest number of people. It is owned by very few individuals, and there must be many newspaper offices, otherwise well equipped with reference books, that are without it. The Dictionary is essentially a library book. If, however, it is consulted by relatively few, its. value is enormous. Librarians,- historians, writers _of various-kinds,! swear by it, a'iid through them its" facts and opinions pass into the general body of British culture. The reason why it is not more common is obvious—its size and cost. In the original edition it ran into sixtythree volumes (since reproduced in twenty-two volumes), and there have been four supplementary volumes. A PUBLISHER'S MONUMENT. The D.N.B. was born of the enterprise and generosity of George Smith, famous in publishing history as principal of the house of Smith, Elder, and Co. The firm' published for many famous writers, including Browning, Thackeray,- and Charlotte Bronte, and George Smith founded the "Pall MallGazette" and the "Cornhill." The "Pall Mall" sprang from Thackeray's idea in "Pendennis," and it had an astonishing succession of editors — Frederick Greenwood, the discoverer of Thomas Hardy, and the begetter of the Suez Canal share purchase, John. Morley, W. T. Stead, and E. T. Cook. In the year 1882,.George Smith, finding himself, a wealthy man with a desire to give some return to the art by which he had made his money, resolved to publish, &\ his own risk, a monumental dictionary of biography. Such encyclopaedias had been published, but nonejhad. been satisfactory. This one was to be as complete as industry and judgment could make it; the best brains of the literary world were to be employed in writing the articles; and the utmost pains were to be taken to ensure accuracy. Abroad, such dictionaries were subsidised by the State; George Smith determined that this would be an independent venture, and when he planned it he estimated the loss at £50,000. Actually, the loss was between £50,080. and £60,000 on an outlay of £ 160,000. ■'Leslie Stephen was the first editor, and afterwards he was joined by Sidney Lee. There-were 653 contributors. The original project was completed in 1900. In that year the' Prince of Wales., (though one of his biographers doubts whether he ever read a book' through after he "left school") attended a dinner party to congratulate Smith on the event, and the Lord Mayor of London gave Smith and his editors a banquet, attended by men of the highest distinction in literature and public life. John Morley proposed the toast of the evening. THE CHOSEN. In the main dictionary and the first supplement, covering the whole of English history to the end of the nineteenth century, there were about 30,000 biographies. It is statedin the preface to the new supplement, a volume of 900 pages, that if the present rate of selection is continued throughout the present century, some 7000 lives will be added to the original total. These figures give a line on the proportion of greatness or conspicuous talent in a nation. The main value of D.N.B. lies not in its treatment of the peaks of fame and genius, but in its lives of what. Newbolt calls the "obscurely great." If we want to know about Shakespeare or Cromwell or Pitt or Gladstone we can find the information easily enough. ,Jt is .the men of second and third rank, or men preeminent in some non-spectacular activity, whose lives are hard to come by. The other day I wanted some information about Joseph Wright, the great philologist, who died a few years ago. One might look long before finding it. Here it is in the book before us,, an admirable sketch of an amazing career. Wright was the son of a weaver-quarryman, and began work as a donkey-boy at the age of six. At seven he was a mill-hand at 3s 6d per week; at thirteen he got nine shillings. Later he was the main support of his mother and two brothers. He taught himself to read and" write, studied at home, saved enough to go to Heidelberg, returned to England to teach, went to Germany again, and ultimately became a professor at Oxford and one of the foremost philologists of his time. It was Wright who edited and was responsible for the finance of the English Dialect Dictionary, starting 'work on a million slips that had been collected. • His entire savings, amounting to £2000, went into the undertaking, which cost £25,000. "I. have never been depressed in my life," Wright used.to.say. One doesn't wonder; he was too busy. GREATNESS RECONSIDERED. It-is impossible to do more than pick out a few examples from all the wealth in this supplement. The volume is particularly interesting to us .because it deals with men and women who lived in our time and about whom we have formed opinions. Those commemorated here died in the period 1922-30. Here are many of the leading figures of the war, their careers seen in the perspective of a few years, and summarised with much skill and judgment. Asquith gets twelve pages; Balfour, because he was a philosopher as well as a statesman, fifteen. CurzonV resplendent but chequered career takes nearly fourteen for its unfolding. Is it even now generally known that all his life this indomitable man suffered or was threatened by pain? "The steel corset which encased his frame and gave to his figure an aspect of unbending perpendicular, afflicted also the motions of his mind; there was no middle path for him between rigidity and collapse. Conversely, his determination not to be classed as a cripple led him to perform prodigies of industry which were often unnecessary." And the imponderable and material steel in which he encased himself did not prevent him from collapsing for several hours when his supreme disappointment came—the King's decision to pass him over in favour of Mr. Baldwin for the highest office of State. Here, too,, in admirable proportion and understanding, is the story of F. E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, who could not fuse his splendid gifts with self-control, and died in his prime

because he warmed both hands before the fire of life too self-indulgently. Nearly always the biographers are mild in their criticism, but in French's case heavy censure cannot be avoided. His quarrel with Smith-Dorrien and the publication of its details are described as deplorable. The historian of the British Army used stronger language of the soldier whose high reputation fell so low in its most decisive testing. NEW ZEALAND SUBJECTS. I find four New Zealand subjects— Massey, Ward, Stout, and Katherine Mansfield. Sir Thomas Wilford deals with the first three. These biographies are competently done, but we miss the note of critical judgment such as one finds in Dr. J. C. Beaglehole's lively and sharp. history of New Zealand, though admittedly we can hardly look for quite so much freedom in a book of this kind. Some day these men, and Seddon too, will be examined in greater detail and with more frankness. This country is very weak in biography, partly, of course, because it is so small. Sir Thomas Wilford goes so far as to say of Stout that "his legal opinions were hot always shared by his colleagues on the Bench." Katherine Mansfield's "Life" is written, with some frankness, by C. O'Brien. His judgment of her work is that she "broke completely with the older tradition of English taletelling. Her influence in her own generation, which has been great, has served to render it conscious of the possibility of the short story as an art form presenting life at an arrested moment. Her 'Journal' and her 'Letters' belong to the permanent literature of self-revelation." THE LITERARY WORLD. Lovers of books may entertain themselves browsing among the judgments on authors who passed away in the period. They range from Thomas Hardy to Marie Corelli. Does anyone read Marie Corelli now? What a stir she caused in her time! Mr. Michael Sadlier deals with her in a fashion , becoming the accomplished biographer of Trollops. "The tragedy of Marie Corelli was her inability to understand either why she was popular or why she was unpopular." "She regarded hostile criticism of work which she genuinely believed to be inspired as a kind of blasphemy." The verdict on Conan Doyle seems to me a good deal less than just. "His novels, with no claim to literary distinction, are for the most part capital stories told in straightforward and vigorous style." , Well, it is a good deal to have written "capital stories told in straightforward and vigorous style." "Robinson Crusoe" could be so described. That' "The Refugees" and "Rodney Stone" have no claim to literary distinction is a hard saying. I must not omit John McTaggart, the famous Cambridge philosopher, who has a personal interest for us because he married a New. Zealander. McTaggart is described .as an atheist, a believer in immortality, and a keen supporter of the Church of England. Only in England, one supposes, is such a combination possible.

Finally, there is the light that this volume throws on the output of genius and character in our time. There is always a tendency to think that the breed of greatness has declined. There died in these years, 1922-1930, Asquith, Curzon, Rosebery, Balfour, Birkenhead, Haig, Haldane, Bryce, Hardy, Bridges, Conrad,. Hudson, D. H. Lawrence, G. O. Trevelyan, Ray Lankester, Shackleton, Treves, Sargent, Doughty, Ellen Terry, Gertrude Bell, Alice Meynell, and Mrs. Pankhurst. This is the harvest of a long period, but its quality and range are arresting. What will be thought of this group a hundred years hence?