The next thing to be done was to find a good sub-editor. Stephen said that he wanted ‘a man of knowledge, good at abstracting, looking up authorities, and so forth, and an efficient whip in regard both to printers and contributors’. Various candidates for the post were considered, but Furnivall, who, as a Trinity Hall man had influence with Stephen, strongly recommended Lee, and after an interview Lee was chosen. In him Stephen found more than he had demanded: an assistant whose zeal never flagged, and whose ability was greater than he expected; a subordinate whose loyalty to his editor laid the foundation of a lasting friendship.
Lee began his duties in March 1888. ‘The Dictionary’, wrote Stephen about that time, ‘is more or less launched and, like other work, so far as my experience has gone, it is rather a humbug; that is, one talks a great deal and lets other people talk more about the immensity of the task, and after all one finds it to be really simple when it is once got a little into order.’ A system was devised and gradually elaborated by the light of experience. The first task was the compilation of a list of the names to be included. Up to the beginning of the letter M this was done by Mr. Thompson Cooper, one of the authors of Athenæ Cantabrigienses, whose collection of biographical data proved of great service. ‘An ideal Dictionary’, said Stephen, ‘would be a complete codification or summary of all the previously existing collections.... It is bound first of all to include all the names which have appeared in any respectable collection of lives, and in the next place to supplement this by including a great many names which for one reason or another have dropped out, but which appear to be approximately of the same rank.’ Lists compiled in this way appeared at intervals in the Athenæum from June 1888 onwards. Eventually they came out twice a year, each consisting of the 900 or 1,000 names which it was meant to include in the next two volumes of the Dictionary. Readers were invited to suggest additions, and in order that the editor might judge the value of their suggestions, to refer him at the same time to the sources of information available. By this means the co-operation of scholars was ensured, and the number of omissions greatly reduced. The revised lists, printed in pamphlet form, were sent to intending contributors, who were asked to say what articles they would undertake. As soon as their offers were received, the editor assigned the articles, and when there were several applicants for the same article decided between them. In the first list it was stated ‘that the editor, in assigning articles to contributors, would ‘inform them what space can be allowed for each name’. But that plan was soon abandoned: it became the exception, not the rule. In the case of the ‘great lives’, Stephen told a contributor, ‘I have found it best to suggest a limit, not of course quite absolute, but as the amount to be aimed at.’ The scale was fixed by comparison; if so-and-so could be adequately dealt with in twenty pages, twenty or at most twenty-five would suffice for a man of equal rank. But this method could not be applied to the minor lives. Often the editor could not know till the article came in what there was to say about the man; and so instead of fixing a limit beforehand he cut down the article to the size which the facts justified him in allowing.
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