several winters they entertained at Toynbee Hall, and through many summers at their house at Weybridge. Many amusing stories used Smith to report of his conversation with his humble guests on these occasions.
VIII
In 1882 Smith resolved to embark on a new and final enterprise, which proved a fitting crown to his spirited career. In that year there first took shape in his mind the scheme of the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' with which his name must in future ages be chiefly identified. By his personal efforts, by his commercial instinct, by his masculine strength of mind and will, by his quickness of perception, and by his industry, he had, before 1882, built up a great fortune. But at no point of his life had it been congenial to his nature to restrict his activities solely to the accumulation of wealth. Now, in 1882, he set his mind upon making a munificent contribution to the literature of his country in the character not so much of a publisher seeking profitable investment for capital as of an enlightened man of wealth who desired at the close of his days to manifest his wish to serve his fellow countrymen and to merit their gratitude. On one or two public occasions he defined the motives that led him to the undertaking. At first he had contemplated producing a cyclopædia of universal biography; but his friend Mr. Leslie Stephen, whom he took into his confidence, deemed the more limited form which the scheme assumed to be alone practicable. Smith was attracted by the notion of producing a book which would supply an acknowledged want in the literature of the country, and would compete with, or even surpass, works of a similar character which were being produced abroad. In foreign countries like encyclopædic work had been executed by means of government subvention or under the auspices of state-aided literary academies. Smith's independence of temper was always strong, and he was inspirited by the knowledge that he was in a position to pursue single-handed an aim in behalf of which government organisation had elsewhere been enlisted. It would be difficult in the history of publishing to match the magnanimity of a publisher who made up his mind to produce that kind of book for which he had a personal liking, to involve himself in vast expense, for the sake of an idea, in what he held to be the public interest, without heeding considerations of profit or loss. It was in the autumn of 1882 that, after long consultation with Mr. Leslie Stephen, its first editor, the 'Dictionary of National Biography' was begun. Mr. Stephen resigned the editorship of the 'Cornhill' in order to devote himself exclusively to the new enterprise. The story of the progress of the publication has already been narrated in the 'Statistical Account,' prefixed to the sixty-third and last volume of the work, which appeared in July 1900. Here it need only be said that the literary result did not disappoint Smith's expectations. As each quarterly volume came with unbroken punctuality from the press he perused it with an ever-growing admiration, and was unsparing in his commendation and encouragement of those who were engaged on the literary side of its production. In every detail of the
