Valuable information Mr. Allibone’s Dictionary certainly does impart; but we feel compelled to express regret that its author should have made a serious mistake as to the importance of much of the matter inserted. Into this error he appears to have been led in seeking to increase the number of authors by the insertion of names which never possessed the slightest literary value or significance.
The title-page announcement that the work contains “over forty-six thousand articles (authors)” awakens within us no special throbs of pleasurable anticipation, for we know how dictionaries are made. And the delight with which one might contemplate its array of one hundred and forty-eight Robinsons, its one hundred and eighty Browns, its one hundred and eighty-nine Joneses, and its solid phalanx of eight hundred and ten Smiths, exclusive of a formidable list of Smyths and Smythes, undergoes serious diminution, for the reason that one cannot help reflecting how much valuable space might have been far more advantageously occupied.
In works of this description, mere book-making manifests itself in its most flagrant aspect. In each successive publication in the dictionary (alphabetical) form, upon any given subject, the effort is made to surpass all its predecessors in the quantity of matter and in the number of articles or names. Now, in a literary sense, names die, as in actual life people die; and names which might have some possible interest for the readers of Blount’s work, published in 1690, have still less for people of the following century, and positively none at all for our readers of 1870. It most resembles a vain attempt to keep alive the memory of people not worth remembering by constant transcription and repetition of what is written on their tomb-stones. We are, therefore, unable to discover any merit in the uniform numerals 46,000. It is more a matter of mere assertion than of intelligent investigation and selection, and the figure may be reached merely by the simple addition of the contents of a few well-known bibliographical works. One of them alone, the Bibliotheca Britannica, of Watts, furnishes 22,700 names of British and American authors, and more than half as many more may be found in the copious indexes of English magazines and quarterlies, not to speak of Griswold and other American works.
We by no means wish to be understood as desiring that the reduction should be restricted to the elimination of the familiar household names we have mentioned. We would have it ruthlessly extended to the nullities in literature, whose sole contributions consist of such productions (single specimens) as “Sermon,” “Almanac,” “Funeral Sermon,” “Instruction in Water Drawing,” “Report of ‘Smithers vs. Tompkins,’” “Copy-Book,” “Edition of Laws of Texas,” “Sermon on Popery,” “Pyrotechnics”—being careful to pair off these two last named, for the “Popery” man clearly means “pyrotechnics,” if he could have his way. What cares any one nowadays for such a piece of information as this: “Darch, John, ‘Sermon,’ 1766. 4to”? Why, for instance, should the names of a thousand such nobodies as R. P. Blakely go down to posterity as authors, this R. P. B., as we learn from the Dictionary, having merely translated some passages from Liguori and called them “Awful Disclosures”? Had we been spared profuse mention of most of these sermon, almanac, and copy-book makers, space might have been found to inform seekers for knowledge that William Cobbett wrote a work on the History of the Reformation in England, a book which, in admirably pure English, does some justice to the infamy of Henry VIII. and his colleagues, lay and spiritual, who aided and abetted his wholesale robberies and murders, and made of “Merrie Old England” a land of desolation, want, and beggary. It is precisely by this book that the name of Cobbett is most widely known, but Mr. Allibone does not appear to have heard of it, otherwise his knowledge of its existence might account to a great extent for the tone of depreciation in which he speaks of Cobbett.
Quite as remarkable is the author’s suppression, in his biographical notice of George Buchanan, of the fact of Buchanan’s dependence for some years upon Mary Stuart, and of her kindness and generosity to him. It was this fact that made Buchanan’s Detection “unrivalled in baseness, peerless in falsehood, supreme in ingratitude.”
In sharp contrast with extended mention of the Detection and its object is Mr. Allibone’s languid notice of Miss Agnes Strickland’s historical works, and of the brilliant Donald MacLeod’s writings in general, and more especially his Life of Mary, Queen of Scots. We are perfectly well aware that Mr. A., in season and out of season, with and without pretext, takes every opportunity of protesting to his reader that “we express no opinion on the question involved in the Mary Stuart controversy.” Mr. Allibone protests too much, and most so when seeking to convey the worst impression against her. Thus, in the article on Buchanan, he says: “If Buchanan is to be believed, there can be but little doubt of the guilt of the fair Queen of Scots; but upon this point we express no opinion.” Mr. Allibone here builds up his little argument on the authority of this convicted liar, Buchanan, and adds, “We express no opinion”—oh! certainly not—by no means! Protests and pretended apologies like this abound in the Dictionary, and, so far from concealing, only make more visible the marked bias of the author in religious questions. Naturally enough, Buchanan and John Foxe are both his favorites.
The author of the Dictionary does not appear to be aware that Henry Kenelm Digby has written and published anything since his great work Mores Catholici—Ages of Faith, nor does he seem to know that this distinguished author is a convert from Protestantism to Catholicity. The notice of Aubrey de Vere is defective in many points, and totally omits mention of the fact that the brilliant poet is also a convert to Catholicity.
The article on Dr. Brownson is far from doing that distinguished philosophical writer justice. This was not to be looked for, but it is incorrect in several points. Dr. Brownson never was a Presbyterian minister, nor was he a Deist. Charles Elwood is not “an account of his religious experience,” but The Convert is such an account. The statement that “Dr. Brownson is a great admirer of the philosophy of M. Comté (sic) as developed in the Cours de Philosophie” is without foundation. Dr. Brownson never admired it, never accepted its philosophic position, and never read anything of Comte’s except the Introduction to his voluminous Course of Positive Philosophy. This error probably originated with Mr. Griswold, who confounded the doctrines of Pierre Le Roux and the St. Simoniens with the system of Auguste Comte.
We presume that the omission of the names of Archbishop Kenrick (Peter, of St. Louis), Prince Gallitzin, Frederick Lucas, a distinguished English convert, formerly a Quaker, and of many others we might point out, is the result of accident.
We have mentioned John Foxe, the great “unreliable.” Mr. Allibone’s apology—evidently a labor of love—for this unsavory personage is not only elaborate, it is labored. We have referred to Mr. Allibone’s evident bias. Foxe is a test subject, and we shall therefore say a few words concerning it. If a scholar as enlightened as our author should be can uphold Foxe as he does, then we can readily gauge the measure of his Protestant credulity and his anti-Catholic animus. Mr. Allibone spares us the necessity of any effort to demonstrate his bias, for he goes to the trouble of pointing out to us as one of the high merits of Foxe’s Martyrs that “its influence in keeping alive the Protestant feeling in Great Britain and North America is too well known to be disputed.” Historical truth is one thing, “Protestant feeling” another. Far from us to dispute the merit claimed by Mr. Allibone for his beloved Foxe, but we beg leave to suggest to him that the proper place for such praise would be the columns of a Know-Nothing paper, not the pages of a dignified work on literature.