9* s. vm. NOV. 2, loci.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
375
being used in cloth covers before binding.
Moreover, the cloth covers last for many
years unless in a public library. The alterna-
tive is to keep the volume for six months or
a year, and then issue it bound to the
department AYEAHR patronizes.
RALPH THOMAS.
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.
Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Sidney Lee. Supplement. Vol. III. How Woodward. (Smith, Elder & Co.) THE great national task begun under the charge of Mr. Leslie Stephen, and continued under that of Mr. Sidney Lee, is now completed, and the ' Dic- tionary of National Biography,' Supplement and all, is in the hands of the public. All that remains to be issued is a general index to the entire work, which will necessarily add to the facility of refer- ence. The commendable punctuality observable through many consecutive years has been main- tained to the close, and the production within the time allowed of the last volume, which includes the life of Queen Victoria, is a tour de force. This life, which is all but the last in the volume, oc- cupies some 110 pages, or more than double the space assigned to Shakespeare, and so is, of course, as regards length, much the most important bio- graphy in the work. In the case of one who has so recently departed, who has, moreover, exercised so overshadowing an influence upon the thought, senti- ment, and aspiration of the empire, the abandon- ment of the general rule of proportion was inevit- able. The reader is to be congratulated upon the fact that conditions existed rendering such neglect of proportion imperative. No authoritative or indeed considerable life of Queen Victoria previously existed, and the present biography, which is in every sense a model, will answer all purposes of the student. It is, of course, essential to the scheme that men of all classes lawyers, statesmen, soldiers, journalists of to-day, concern- ing some of whom books will hereafter be written, should be assigned more space than they would have been held to merit had they lived a couple of cen- turies ago. Mr. Sidney Lee's accomplishment is beyond praise. Rising from a first perusal of the life, we find it admirable alike in accuracy, com- prehensiveness, arrangement, and style. A memoir which can, as we have proved, be read with undying interest, has, so far as we can detect, no blemish. It is not all eulogy. We are told that Queen Victoria in the early years of her reign " was of an imperious, self-reliant, and somewhat wilful disposition." Of her immediate predecessors Mr. Lee writes, with curious outspokenness and lack of reverence : " Since the [nineteenth] century began there had been three Kings of England men all advanced in years of whom the first was an imbecile, the second a profligate, and the third little better than a buffoon." The description of the Queen's early days has re- markable narrative charm. Mr. Lee is also respon- sible for the lives of Cosmo Manuche, or Manucci, and George Warrington Steevens (1869-1900), the latter a brilliant journalist, one of the victims of the Boer invasion of Natal. Mr. Lee estimates very highly the work accomplished by him i his short
and adventurous career, and, though holding that
the conditions under which Steevens wrote gave
" the reader the uncomfortable impression of a man
straining after effect," thinks that a premature
death prevented the fulfilment of high literary pro-
mise. To Manuche, the Cavalier dramatist, Italian
by birth, the known author of three dramas, are
assigned, on the authority of Bishop Percy, nine
manuscript plays in the library of the Marquis of
Northampton at Castle Ashby.
The feeling we expressed concerning the two pre- vious volumes of the Supplement is even more strongly conveyed in the concluding volume, in which the deaths recorded are naturally even more recent. We cannot go on quoting names, but close together, in death as in life, are those twin Presidents of the Royal Academy, Lord Leighton and Sir John Everett Millais, whose disappearance affected the world of social intimacies as much as that of art. Once more we seem to be in the presence, rubicund and benign, of Sir Frank Lockwood, or to hear the brilliant paradoxes of Henry Duff Traill, delivered with that half stammer which was as pleasingly cha- racteristic of his style as of that of the previous and kindred humourist Charles Lamb. No time is there for such retrospections. Among the biographies in the volume that of John Ruskin stands prominent. In writing the life of Millais the late Cosmo Monk- house does not seem to have had access to all the materials concerning Millais's connexion with the Pre-Raphaelite movement and its influence on his art which are in existence. Mr. Mackail's pleas- ingly written and sympathetic life of William Morris deals, at length scarcely adequate, with the conditions attendant on his first appearance as a poet. Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson was, as is stated, " an ardent and devoted champion of total abstinence," but only in his later life. Until middle life was reached he had, as many pleasantly remem- ber, a convivial turn. Alastair Ruadh Macdonell (1725? -1761), otherwise Pickle the Spy, is one of those omitted from the previous volumes and now given. Mr. T. F. Henderson supplies something like a possible palliation of his infamy. In his life of Thomas Hughes the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies almost invariably calls him Tom Hughes, which is now scarcely expedient, though the author of ' Tom Brown's School Days' was often so styled during his life. In none of these cases are we hinting at censure. Mr. Leslie Stephen supplies the lives of his old friend and coadjutor James Payn and of Henry Sidgwick ; Prof. Weldon that of Huxley ; Mr. Austin Dobson that of Locker- Lampson ; Dr. Garnett treats of the unattractive personality of Coventry Patmore; and Prof. Tylor deals with General Pitt- Rivers.
The Poetry of Robert Burns. Edited by William Ernest Henley and Thomas F. Henderson. 4 vols. (Edinburgh, Jack.)
ON the appearance of the successive volumes of the "Centenary Edition" of the poetry of Robert Burns, edited by Messrs. Henley and Henderson, and pub- lished with great typographical luxury by Messrs. Jack, we drew attention to it as an ideal work, fulfilling every requirement of the scholar, the man of taste, and the general reader (see 8 th S. ix. 258 ; x. 167 ; xi. 179 ; xii. 278). At these references will be found a full account of the merits of \vhat we persist in regarding as the best edition in existence, and of the spirit in which the editors have pro- ceeded. The work was then in library form, and
