358
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. OCT. 29,
entry into the house of Sampson Low, about 1846,
the recollections open. In the library and reading-
room of Low, in Lamb's Conduit Street, we come
upon traces of many distinguished men of what
now begins to look like a remote generation, Mac-
aulay, Samuel Warren, G. P. R. James, as well as legal
luminaries the Bethells, Pollocks, and Thesigers.
Ten years later Mr. Marston became a partner, and
his personal reminiscences begin with Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton, the first Lord Lytton, for whom
the house undertook to publish 'A Strange Story.'
It is curious and interesting to find on the agree-
ment for the publication of this four signatures :
those of Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer
Lytton, Sampson Low, Son & Marston, Charles
Dickens, and W. H. Wills, the last at one time
well known in connexion with the Daily News,
Household Words, and AH the Year Hound. To
this period belongs the publication by the firm of
'Moredun: a Tale of Twelve Hundred and Ten,'
the authorship of which was ascribed to Sir Walter
Scott. Literary celebrities and publishers divide
the attention of the reader, the portraits of the
Sampson Lows, pere et fits, Fletcher Harper,
Joseph Whitaker, and John Francis alternating,
it might almost be said, with those of Lytton,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wilkie Collins, Charles
Reade, and R. D. Blackmore. The frontispiece
consists of a portrait of Sir Henry M. Stanley,
Innumerable likenesses of other men of eminence
appear, and the book, in that respect alone, forms
a pleasant addition to any library. Blackmore and
Stanley, the former especially, are among the most
important contributors to the volume, Blackmore's
letters having often great interest. It is pleasing
to come upon a capital portrait of poor Fred
Burnaby, whose premature death in action was a
loss to literature and arms. The pen picture sup-
plied of him is also excellent. General Sir W. F.
Butler, Capt. Mahan, Mr. W. Clark Russell, Jules
Verne, and the author are among those of whom
portraits are supplied. The book (which, as our
readers must know, is by a frequent contributor
to our columns) is well written, and, besides being
pleasantly chatty and gossiping, supplies much
valuable literary information. We see a great
number of interesting people in sidelights, and
obtain much striking information upon social and
business conditions during the latter half of the
nineteenth century.
Dictionary of National Biography Errata. (Smith,
Elder & Co.)
THIS sixty-seventh and complementary volume of the * Dictionary of National Biography ' has been carried out by the editor at the instance of Mrs. George M. Smith, by whom it has been presented to the subscribers. Its value is, of course, signal, and one can only wish that in works of similar "long breath" similar consideration had been dis- played by the projector and the executants. In the preface it is pointed out that two million facts and dates are supplied in the work, and it is pleaded that no human care could ensure complete accuracy under such conditions. This may willingly be conceded. All against which we are disposed to protest is the inclusion of the entire contents under the head of errata. Some genuine coquilles there are ; there are errors in dates, difficult of avoidance when, necessarily, so long a period intervenes between writing the article and correcting the proof, that the examination of every item involves
doing the work over again. So far as we have-
traced, however, the more important alterations
consist of additions. After all possible use had
been made of 'N. & Q.,' a date in some rather
obscure life remained undiscoverable. After the
publication of the volume in which the life appears
fresh intelligence is brought to bear upon it, and
some one inaccessible in our columns say a sur-
viving relative or a descendant supplies it. This
is not an erratum. We would, therefore, prefer to-
have had the volume headed ' Errata and Addenda.'
As the volumes are treated in the order in which/
they appeared, the arrangement is necessarily alpha-
betical. It would be invidious to work through the
volumes and show which of the seven hundred
contributors are the more or the less careful. Such
an investigation would, moreover, be unfair. The
man who writes the life of an obscure artist finds
few men on his track. He, on the contrary, who
is responsible for the life of a great poet or states-
man will have many to correct him if he makes a
slip. Full acknowledgment is made by Mr. Sidney
Lee, to whose energy and erudition the ' Dictionary y
itself is principally due, of the sources of informa-
tion employed in the preparation of the new volume.
Few of our readers will be surprised to hear that
W. C. B., whose emendations of successive volumes
have been a marked feature in ' N. & Q.,' is the*
recipient of special recognition.
SchioierigkeUen des Englischen. Von Dr. Gustav Kriiger. III. Teil. Syntax nebst Beitragen zur~ Stilistik, Worthunde, und Wortbildung. 2 vols. (Dresden and Leipzig, C. A. Kochs.) THESE two volumes are part of Dr. Kriiger's ' English Syntax,' and we have given the title- pretty fully in order that our readers may have ome idea of the extent of the ground covered.. There are no fewer than 2,602 sections, which consist mostly of rules, followed by examples in English and German, and the whole presents a wonderfully complete survey of the differences of expression and form in these two great languages. Dr. Kriiger's industry and research are extra- ordinary, and his collection of examples shows a. width of reading which is almost unexampled, we should say, in a foreigner.
We think, indeed, that his work is, if anything, too massive. Confronted with a similar plan, we should have confined ourselves to the best English, 3y which we mean the English of the best taste, if we may use the phrase. Such can be secured in select company only, from writers and speakers wha by happy instinct, ' or love of their own tongue, or philological zeal, use the English language properly. And here we may explain our position a little. We* are no pedants, and some knowledge of other lan- guages has taught us that freedom of idiom is preferable to an unthinking apotheosis of grammar. Such freedom in speech is, to us, the ideal, for we rank grammar with the conventions of society as means to an end means which in both cases may- become intolerable and may in the stress of actual life be justly disregarded. Having made this much clear, we may say that Dr. Kriiger has attempted too much in including Americanisms, oddities of speech meant to be comic only, definite mistakes which belong to what we may call low ver- nacular, and usages which are not tolerated by the select body we have referred to above. Our lan- guage is," we regret to say, slack enough without references to such lapses, and we think that the
