also imposed upon him the duty of writing the life of Mr. Smith himself, who died on 6 April 1901. So while the life of the founder served as a preface to the three volumes, that of the Queen formed the epilogue.
Lee had known Mr. Smith for nearly eighteen years, there were fragments of an autobiography available, and the family supplied all the additional facts required. He grouped round the figure of the publisher the great writers whose books he had printed, and made the story of his career a chapter in the history of Victorian literature.
The article on the Queen presented problems far less easy to handle, and Lee undertook it with many misgivings. The life of a constitutional sovereign is a long series of external events minutely chronicled, behind which the will and character of the individual lie concealed. The reticence of living witnesses and the absence of documentary materials increased the obscurity. Neither the Queen’s letters nor the portions of her diary, since published, were then available. ‘The only part of the Queen’s career which has been fully dealt with is her married life’, wrote Lee. Information about her part in political events, her private opinions, and her feelings during the last forty years of her reign was scanty or lacking altogether. Lee sought help from private sources, and employed the reminiscences he obtained to eke out and interpret his imperfect materials. He claimed to have stated facts accurately, to have judged them with sympathy as well as candour, and to have respected alike public interests and private feelings. The article was published as a book in 1902, and reached a third edition in 1904. Its production in 1901 was a remarkable feat.
The completion of the Supplement made it possible to plan and produce what was originally entitled the Index and Errata, and is now styled the Concise D.N.B. It appeared about March 1908. During the summer of 1904 it was followed by the volume of Errata, presented gratis to all subscribers to the Dictionary. The three hundred pages of small print which it contains show what scrupulous care Lee devoted to maintaining the accuracy of the Dictionary. There were inevitably many real errors besides accidental misprints. Stephen accepted the fact philosophically. ‘A book of which it is the essence that every page should bristle with facts and dates is certain to have errors by the thousand.’[1] Lee’s attitude was more apologetic. He industriously accumulated the corrections made in reviews and periodicals, and those sent to him by critical readers, penitent contributors, or aggrieved relatives. This often involved correspondence with the author of the article as well as with the critic. The validity of each objection had to be examined, and proof required, before any alteration was made. Lee repeatedly pledged himself that all proved errors of fact should be corrected as soon as opportunity offered. Some were corrected in reissues from the stereotyped plates; more, when the sixty-six volumes of Dictionary and Supplement were compressed into twenty-two in the edition of 1908-1909. These small but continuous repairs in the fabric of the Dictionary—the process of reparation Lee called it—were all that it was possible to do without resetting the type. Lee was conscious that time, the progress of historical research, and the publication of new historical materials would eventually render a new edition necessary. When that
- ↑ Some Early Impressions, p. 161.
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