1896.] National Biography. 27 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, January 31, 1896. 



Sir Benjamin Baker, K.C.M.G. LL.D. F.E.S. Ma 

 in the Chair. 



Sidney Lee, Esq. the Editor of the ' Dictionary of National 

 Biography.' 



National Biograjphj. 

 (Abstract.) 



Mr. Sidney Lee pointed out that pride in the achievement of one's 

 ancestors is almost as widely distributed a characteristic of mankind 

 as the power of speech. In China, the national religion centres round 

 a worship of progenitors to very remote degrees, and Western nations 

 exhibit the same instinctive desire to do honour to the memories of 

 those who, by character and exploits, have distinguished themselves 

 from the mass of their countrymen. But no memorial can be national 

 and efficient, unless it be at once permanent, public and perspicuous. 

 It should take such a shape as to leave no doubt in the mind of 

 posterity what was the nature of the achievement or characteristics 

 that generated in the nation the desire of commemoration. Monu- 

 ments in stone or brass preserve bare names, and are not lasting. 

 " The safest way," wrote Thomas Fuller, " to secure a memory from 

 oblivion is by committing the same to writing.'' The rarity of poetic 

 memorials like Shelley's ' Adonais ' or ' The Burial of Sir John 

 Moore,' which are at once permanent, public and perspicuous, compels 

 recourse to the more adaptable machinery of biograjjhy. But 

 biography, as it is ordinarily practised, works fitfully and capriciously. 

 If biography is to respond to a whole nation's commemorative aspira- 

 tions, its bounds must be enlarged and defined, so as to admit with 

 unerring precision every one who has excited the nation's commemora- 

 tive instinct, while the mode of treatment must be so contrived, so 

 contracted, that the collected results may not overwhelm us by their 

 bulk. Biography working with these aims and on these lines may 

 justly be called national biography. Carlyle's definition of the 

 function of history — " to find out great men, clean the dirt from them 

 and place them on their proper pedestals " — more properly defines 

 the function of national biography. The aims of the historian and 

 biographer are quite distinct. The historian deals with aggregate 

 movements of men, with political events and institutions, with the 

 evolution of society ; he looks at mankind through a field-glass ; his 



