To both men their eight years’ collaboration had been a great advantage. ‘My greatest piece of good fortune’, said Stephen, ‘was that from the first I had the co-operation of Mr. Sidney Lee as my sub-editor. Always calm and confident when I was tearing my hair over the delay of some article urgently required for the timely production of our next volume, always ready to undertake any amount of thankless drudgery, and most thoroughly conscientious in his work, he was an invaluable helpmate. When he succeeded to my post after a third of the task was done I felt assured that the Dictionary would at least not lose by the exchange. He had moreover more aptitude for many parts of the work than I can boast of, for there were moments at which my gorge rose against the unappetizing, but I sorrowfully admit the desirable, masses of minute information which I had to insert. I improved a little under the antiquarian critics who cried for more concessions to Dryasdust, but Mr. Lee had no such defect of sympathy to overcome.’[1] Lee always expressed his obligations to Stephen with equal emphasis. ‘Leslie Stephen’, he said at Cambridge in 1911, ‘was the master under whom I served my literary apprenticeship, and it was as his pupil that I grew to be his colleague and his friend. He gave me my earliest lessons in the writing of biography, and in speaking of its principles I am guided by his teaching.’ This was not a mere figure of speech: Stephen’s doctrine and Stephen’s practice were continually referred to in Lee’s writings and conversation. Their friendship continued till Stephen’s death in 1904.
At the time when Lee became editor the initial difficulties of the enterprise had been overcome. The arrangements for the production of the Dictionary had been systematized, the machinery worked with less friction, and the output was better and more uniform in quality. A review of the first twenty-two volumes of the Dictionary, published in October 1890, showed that in the opinion of good judges there had been a marked improvement since the start. ‘There is a steady advance in brevity and conciseness.... There is a high average of methodical and scholarly work’, said the reviewer.[2] Some other biographical dictionaries which began well fell off as they approached their conclusion. Editors and proprietors revealed their desire to bring the work to an end as soon as possible, and to omit all the names that could decently be omitted. The Dictionary was saved from this fate by the unwearied industry of Lee, and the resolve of Mr. Smith to spare no expenditure necessary to produce a book of lasting value. The result was that the Dictionary continued to improve, and it is an axiom with those who habitually use it that in accuracy and fullness the lives in the later volumes are superior to those in the early part.
But this improvement was purchased at an increasing cost. Originally it was intended that the Dictionary should be completed in fifty volumes. At first this seemed feasible. In April 1886 Stephen announced that the letters A and B would not exceed their proper proportion by more than 100 pages. In April 1888 he sounded an alarm. The average length of
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