has written the most insignificant pamphlet deserves some notice, if the Dictionary is to be of real use to the literary or historical student. If nothing more can be discovered of a John Smith who lived in the reign of Henry VII. than the fact that he wrote a pamphlet, his name and the title of his pamphlet, and the fact that nothing more can be discovered, ought to be recorded. But there may be many writers of substantial volumes in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, who do not deserve this or rather who, as Mr. Stephen suggests, must be relegated to books like Lowndes, Watt, or Allibone. To include them, however briefly, would be to extend the book beyond practicable limits. The date before which every writer is entitled to notice, is not easy to fix; we should ourselves place it towards the end of the seventeenth century. The Revolution synchronizes with the commencement of an enormous increase in the publication of pamphlets and other ephemeral literature. From this time, and for a century onwards, Mr. Stephen's rule not to insert names that are only names, may be fairly applied. But from somewhere about the latter part of the eighteenth century, a different rule from that of nothing more being known about an author than the fact of publishing a book must be adopted, unless the length of the Dictionary is to be enormously extended. For this period no rule can be laid down. The editor himself must wade through the titles of innumerable worthless books and tracts, and weigh the claims of their authors to a niche in his Dictionary.

The question as to the length of the respective articles, and the maintenance of a due proportion, is one of no less difficulty. No fixed rule can be laid down, but the inconsistencies of the great French collections in this respect will at least afford suggestions of what is to be avoided. At the same time it must be borne in mind, that the length of the article ought not in every case to be proportionate to the importance or interest of the person treated of. It is not the most important persons to whom the longest and most elaborate articles should be devoted. For an account of our great writers and chief historical characters we naturally go to special biographies or literary and ciyil histories. Few readers turn to an article on Shakespeare or Milton in a biographical dictionary for any other purpose than that of being reminded of names and dates. Marvell and Prynne demand fuller and more elaborate treatment; while the articles on Dr. Dee and Hugh Speke should be still more nearly exhaustive.

A word of caution may be added as to modern and contemporary lives, which there is always a tendency in biographical

dictionaries to treat at too great length, so difficult is it to have a due regard to historical perspective in painting those who are close to us—especially those to whom accidental circumstances have given a temporary and wholly factitious notoriety. Above all things, the editor must impress upon his contributors, in reference to the lives of royal, political, or military persons, that they are to write biography, and not history. What is wanted

are commonplace biographical details illustrating personal character, concisely stated, duly marshalled in order, and accompanied by dates and authorities. The presentment of the person, and not military or political disquisition, is what we seek in the case of a general or statesman. We do not go to a biographical dictionary for a narrative of the campaigns of Marlborough or Wellington, or for the political history of the reign of George III., but to have the men and their lives and characters brought before us. So much history as is necessary for a connected view of their lives, in the briefest possible form, must indeed be stated. The reign of George III. is one of the most important in our annals, but the King's biography is comparatively uninteresting and unimportant, and requires no extended treatment. Political affairs must indeed be touched upon so far as they were affected by, or had an influence upon, his personal character, and so far as is necessary for a connected narrative of his life, but the political history of his reign would be quite out of place.

In the lives of literary men, while the account of their writings and the bibliographical information must be full and accurate, anything like elaborate and detailed criticism must be avoided, nor should any place be found for critical theories and general views such as are now so much in fashion.

Turning to the specimen of the Dictionary which has been printed, we have nothing but praise to give to the life of Addison by the editor, which occupies nine out of the fourteen pages. It is a model of what an article on a writer like Addison ought to be; it is full of details, yet clear and concise. The criticisms, though brief, are sufficient and satisfactory, and to nearly every statement is appended its authority, and a reference to the page whence it is taken. If Mr. Stephen will induce his contributors to follow this model strictly, we shall have no fear for the result so far as the lives of the more important characters are concerned. But when we come to the bibliography, and the statement of the authorities at the end of the article, we are unable to give the same measure of praise. Six collected editions of the works of Addison are enumerated, without a word to suggest which is the best, the

most critical, or the most nearly complete. One of the principal editions is omitted, and, strangest of all, Bohn's is simply described as a reprint of Bishop Hurd's edition, without any reference to the fact that it contains a great number of elucidatory notes, many letters never before printed, and upwards of one-fifth more matter than is in Hurd's edition. In fact, whatever shortcomings there may be in the editing, it is the most nearly complete, the most useful, and the most accurate, of any English edition of the works of Addison.* Moreover, in the list of authorities, the letters in Bohn's edition, and the life of Addison in the General Dictionary, Historical and Critical, ought to have found a place. It is of primary importance,' as Mr. Stephen has himself remarked in the Athenæum,' 'to give in all cases, and upon a uniform plan, a clear reference to the primary authorities, and in the case of literary biographies it is important to give a bibliographical notice.' But a bibliographical notice is worse than useless, unless it is the result of the writer's personal examination of the books referred to, or states where the information it purports to give is derived. Judging, however, from internal evidence, we should say that the writers of several of the articles in the specimen have not personally examined nearly all the books to which they refer, while in more than one article important primary authorities are omitted, and modern compilations alone cited.

If we have noticed what seems to us faulty, either in Mr. Stephen's design or, so far as the specimen goes, in its execution, it is with the view, before it is too late, of indicating some points which may deserve reconsideration by the editor, and of making suggestions which we believe, if adopted, would tend to enhance the value and promote the success of the book. We cannot doubt either the ability or the special qualifications of Mr. Stephen; and while we are sure that in each department of English literature and English history he will receive the assistance of those who are most competent to afford it, it will principally depend upon the editor himself whether a national biography is produced, to which Englishmen may point with pride as a monument no less worthy of the men whom it commemorates than of those by whom it was written; or whether a mere commonplace book is produced, a little better than Chalmers and Rose, and a little, or even more than a little, worse than the 'Biographie Universelle.'

*We say English edition, because Mr. Stephen cites an edition edited by G. W. Green, of New York, which we have not seen.

ART. IX.-1. Scientific Socialism.

Letters to the 'St. James's Gazette.' By H. M. Hyndman. January and February, 1883.

2. Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom. 1883.

3. Supplement to the Thirty-fifth Annual Report of the RegistrarGeneral.

1875.

4. Census of England and Wales. Vol. iii.

IN

1883.

N our last number we set before our readers, in all its main points, that general theory as to the production of wealth, on which all forms of Socialism, which pretend to appeal to the reason, avowedly and ostentatiously rest. We approached the subject in a candid spirit; we did it full justice in stating it; we admitted it to be in some points so ingenious and plausible, that its inventors might well be the dupes of their own ingenuity, and numbers of honest men might well be the dupes of its inventors. We did more than this. We urged on our readers to reflect how highly dangerous these characteristics made it; and we earnestly entreated all true Conservatives. not to allow themselves to despise it, until they were in a position to see and to show to the people exactly why it is despicable.

We did not offer this advice as a precept merely. We promised ourselves to put that precept in practice. Fully aware, for our own part, how mad and how monstrous the theory is to which we were then calling attention, and how easy to sneer, and to cause others to sneer at it, provided only those others have an interest in deriding its tendencies, we handled it with as much deference as though it really were what it claimed to be-a complete and coherent body of scientific doctrines; and not till we had set its arguments one by one in order, till we had localized exactly the points where the reasoning broke short or halted, till we could say with distinctness on every such occasion, here the logician ends, and here the dolt begins, did we invite the reader to unite his judgment with ours, and pronounce what presents itself to us as the new Economic Gospel, to be at once the most specious, and yet the crudest tissue of fallacies that ever threatened society, or disgraced any

modern thinker.

In doing thus much, however, we have only half completed the task which, in our last article, we marked out for ourselves. We there treated Socialism as though its doctrines were purely speculative but, as we reminded the reader at the time, this is far from being the case. Not only has the Socialist a

4

distinctive theory of political economy, but he has a distinctive view of social history also, and more especially of recent and contemporary history. Not only does he say that, as property is at present distributed, most property is theoretically robbery, but he declares that, as a fact, under the present system, society every year is becoming practically more intolerable. The rich he says, are getting constantly richer, and the poor poorer, and hence we are fast hastening on to the inevitable social catastrophe. He expresses this statement; he reiterates it; he rings the changes on it; he illustrates it with long strings of figures; he emphasizes his figures with long strings of exclamations. Indeed, in addressing the populace, and in exciting the passions which he trades upon, he trusts more, at least in this country, to this method of representing concrete facts, than to his exposition of abstract theories. We purpose in the present article to approach him, in his capacity of historian and politician, in the same spirit in which we approached him in his capacity of political economist; and we engage to demonstrate, by the most ample and unimpeachable evidence, that his history and his statistics are even more false than his economy; that whereas his economy failed because, taken as a whole, it had no relations at all to reality, his history and statistics fail because, taken as a whole, they are in direct contradiction to it.

It is our present intention, however, to do something more than this; and what we have to say of the professing Socialists will form the text rather than the body of our argument. The main point we shall seek to impress upon our readers is, that the ignorance, the perversion of facts, which we shall bring home to the Socialists, is by no means confined to them; but that in a less grotesque, and for that very reason in a more dangerous form, it is infecting at this moment almost every popular movement that is started or countenanced by the socalled Party of Progress; and is so far from being confined to the manifestos of Socialistic Federations, that it is reproduced in all its essential features by that bourgeois member of the present Ministry, whom the Socialistic Federations most detest and despise.

After thus much of preface,let us proceed to our work. We take up the thread of our criticism where we dropped it in our last article; and we again make use of Mr. Hyndman as the representative and spokesman of the Socialism which is now trying to make itself a power in England. Indeed he is, we believe, as a matter of fact, the source from which his followers and associates take most of their detailed statements and figures. Let us see then how Mr. Hyndman fares when, after we have