After some steady reading of the great Dictionary we wonder if printed forms had been sent to the contributors, upon which they composed, in answer to the questions there, their articles: the order of progress of all the memoirs is, in effect, so uniform. Each says at (it appeared) about the same point: His appearance was this. Each seems to conclude with a list of the portraits. And this idea recalled to us a story. A foreigner entering our country's gates, upon being asked to fill out papers setting forth his nationality, age, color, and so on, wrote beside the query, "Business?"--"Rotten." In this intelligent interpretation of the question, the "business" of many whose lives are recorded in honor here was "rotten" for many a long year. The story of literature has not ceased to be a sorry story; still, as was said on a time, comparable to the annals of Newgate. A tale it continues, in a large measure, of outcast experience, of destitution, "seeking a few pence by selling matches or newspapers," or development through suffering, of hospital sojourns, of contemplated suicide, of unfortunate "amorous propensities," of "ill-considered" marriage, of that immemorial "besetting weakness," of "a curious inability to do the sane, secure thing in the ordinary affairs of life," of "ordering his life with extreme carelessness in financial matters," of the weariness of reward for work of high character long deferred, of charitable legacies "from a great-aunt." Mr. Wells speaks somewhere of the amazing persistency of the instinct for self-expression. Where it exists, one reflects in musing on these biographies, you can't kill it with a club. Very imposing we felt the literary style of this Dictionary to be. It treats of a man much as if he were a word, say, in the Century Dictionary. This is the sort of biographical writing, we said, that a man with whiskers can read. It does sound something like a court calendar. Its tone is omniscient, indeed. But the Recording Angel here does not drop a tear upon the oath of any Uncle Toby and blot it out forever. No. He says, of one we tremble to name, "his language was often beyond the reach of apology." Fine is the dignity with which sordid things are related. "The return journey he was under the necessity of performing on foot." Almost grotesque is the neglect of the caressing touch of sentiment. "His own wish was to be a jockey." The treatment of the theme of love is entertaining. "At the age of nineteen he married." August is the passivity in the presence of the Reaper who mows the golden grain. Without poetry, oh, Death, where is thy sting! In these volumes, of none is it sighed: At twilight his spirit fled. Had he but lived ...! It is: He died December 14, 1908. He left no issue. A fair portrait of him by Charles Ricketts is in the possession of Mr. Edmund Gosse.