The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-02 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Men of the Time. Seventh Edition. Edited by
G. H. Townsend. George Routledge and Sons.

London and New York.

It would be unnecessary to say simply that this
new edition of " Men of the Time" is by far the
best that has yet been published. That—as a mat-
ter of course. A compilation of this well-sustained
and laborious kind must needs evidence improve-
ment upon every occasion of its reappearance.
Experientia docet. Omissions are made good. Slips
of the pen or of the press are rectified. Errors
of fact are cleared up. Interpolations, additions,
transpositions, aro as carefully as possible attended
to. And, all this—while Death necessitates the
weeding out of biographies previously introduced,
and recognised Success, on the other hand, leads to
the introduction of biographies hitherto either never
dreamt of or accidentally overlooked. By reason
of the shifting nature of the materials herein
brought together—perfection, or rather an approxi-
mation to perfection, in a book of this particular
description is simply an impossibility. Scrupulous
accuracy, even, is a thing unattainable. All that can
reasonably be hoped for or aimed at is a near ap-
proach to it. Otherwise to express the difficulty
of the task undertaken by the compiler—it is com-
parable to an attempt to take a comprehensive
photograph of a great multitude of people in con-
stant movement. A multitude—each member of which
is moving I As if one tried to photograph at noon-,
day the throng of men and women going to and fro
in our greatest thoroughfares—in the Strand, let us
say, or in Piccadilly. A multitude, moreover, from
which familiar forms and faces are perpetually dis.-
appearing, and into the midst of which new and
strange faces and forms are as perpetually be-
ing introduced. Remembering as we do very
well indeed the earliest issue from the press
of this " Dictionary of Contemporaries" called
." Men of the Time"— we, are peculiarly well
able to appreciate the contrasting excellence id every
way of this its seventh and latest republiCation.
Instead of being a tiny little volume very superfi-
cial, and., very restricted, indeed, in its wey—the
work is now, everything considered, wonderfully
comprehensive. According to the title-page, the
book consists of " Biographical Notices of Eminent
Characters of both Sexes." Statesmen, Warriors,
Poets, Sculptors, Painters, Authors, Patriots, Phil-
anthropists, Novelists, Journalists, Travellers, In-
ventors, Navigators, Musicians, Actors, Orators
(whether from the Pulpit, the Tribune, the Platform,
or the Stump), Dancers and Divines, Cooks and
Mathematicians—here they all throng upon the
scene together in motley confusion, the order of.
array amongst them being simply alphabetical.
Signor Mazzini and Pope Pius the Ninth, Victor
Hugo ar.d the Emperor of the French, M. Rouber
and S. Rattazzi, coming alternately to view in the
wildest contrast, as though, in turning the leaves,
the book were a shaken kaleidoscope. Considering
the work simply as a Book, it is certainly remark-
able. Handsomely, simply, strongly bound—it
comprises within it some 866 printed pages, the
double-columned typography of which is at once
clear and beautiful. Without numbering them one
by one, we should say that there are here,
at a moderate computation, from 2,000 to 2,500
biographical notices. Among so many—errors,
of course, there are—errors of omission and of
commission. Biographies, for example, as of people
still living, are here given of people who have died
while the present edition has been passing through
the press. Eighteen of these are, in point of fact,
enumerated by the Editor himself in his Preface.
Yet, even since the Preface has been printed, in
which those eighteen names are mentioned by Mr.
Townsend, others have died also—such as the Duo
de Luynes and the Countess of Harrington. Errors
of this kind, however, in a work of this precise cha-
racter, are simply unavoidable. Errors of a kind
that may easily enough be avoided are those we
would here specify—few and far between, and some
among them comparatively insignificant. Yet, for
all that, worth specifying thus, if only with a view
to their avoidance. While other Academicians, and
other Members of Parliament, have their names
here followed by the enviable initials, we see no
reason whatever why Baron Marochetti should not
be styled R.A., or why John Francis Maguire
should not be dubbed M.P. Any more than why
Mr. Gladstone being designated as Right Honour-
able, Mr. Goschen should not have the same right
honourable prefix, he being also a privy councillor.
By an odd lapsus enough, in the enumeration of the
works of M. de Lamartine, La Genie de Chris-
tianisme, is mentioned—that being on the con-
trary, as all the world ought to know by this
time, the glorious literary masterpiece of the
Vicomte de Chateaubriand. Again in the number-
ing up of the pictures of Daniel Maclise-- the very first
one on the list is oddly put thus, " Mokanna un-
veiling her features to Zelica !" When Lever's Novels
again are being specified one by one, " Our Mess"
is spoken of side by side with "Jack Hinton"—as
if " Barnaby Rudge" and "Master Humphrey's
"
Clock" were jotted down together—" Jack Hinton"
being in point of fact a constituent portion of int
Ouron'
Mess, just as " Barnaby Rudge" was a constituent
portion of Master Humphrey's Clock. Speaking of
Dickens, too, it is curious to find so famous a work
as "Pickwick" erroneously mentioned as the Posthu-
mous Memoirs (whereas it should be Posthumous
Papers) of the Pickwick Club. To Wilkie Collins,
moreover, it may here be added, is awarded the credit
due to his brother Charles Alston Collins (of whom
no notice whatever is taken) the credit of the
authorship of "A Cruise upon Wheels." Why
again should there be no mention here at all of the
first farce writer surely who ever lived—meaning,
of course, Maddison Morton, the delightful author
of the immortal Box and Cox? Vainly, too, do
we • look for any biographical notice whatever
of a young novelist and man of letters
as vivacious and prolific as Percy Fitzgerald, and
even more strangely yet for any reference to a lady
novelist as gifted and voluminous as Mrs. Oliphant.
Omissions such as these must be looked to in the
next imprint of this valuable compilation--the
seventh edition of which is considerably enhanced
in value by the prefix to it, of a Key to Assumed
-Names, as well as by the appending to it of a Biogra-
phical Index of Names dropped out of the present
imprint, but included iu previous editions of the
works As a token of how errors will creep in even
in the drawing up of an initial list of names, it is
curious to remark that, here, even in the Key to the
Pseudonyins--.Delta is referred to as the nom de plume
of Aird, wh,3reas as the very biographical notice here
given by Mr. Townsend he distinctly enough inti-
mates thataslta was the familiarly known pseudonym
of his friend and some time contemporary, David
Moir, the author, among other charming poems, of
" Casa Wapp y." Slips of the pen or of the press,
such as those we have just now been particularising,
have been hero indicated with an eye rather to the
future than to the past—in aid or encouragement,
rather than in dispraise or depreciation. The work is
so valuable of its kind intrinsically, that it should
be the aim. of every one who treats upon it to assist
as far as possible in the publishers' and editor's evi-
dently conscientious and laborious efforts towards
the perfec;in gof it. This we have done very cordially
out of the feillnese of our appreciation of the excel-
lence of Men of the Time as a Dictionary of Emi-
nent Contest iporaries.

ONCE A_ WEEK—has inaugurated the New Year
with the commencement of a New Series. its
price has fallen to Twopence—but situultaueously
its, repute .tion has been raised a thousandfold.
Mr. Dalla a, the author of the Gay Science, anti
the husba ad of Miss Glynn that was, has assumed
the Editcutaihip at the same time that a serial
story, full of promise, and already of breathless
interest, 'aas been commenced by masters of nar-
rative and. dramatic effect as highly distinguished
as •Charl es Reade and Dion Boucicault. A more
admirable commencement to a fiction we never
read. Al id the letterpress is accompanied by an
illustration quite as admirable in its way—a
sketch from the• pencil of George Duinouier.
Besides these noticeable attractions to Once a Week,
the present number contains within it some fine
original verses by Tennyson, and some very read-
pble gossippipg paragraphs,