whose attitude to life he whole-heartedly admired. He realised the sensitiveness of men and women of genius, and there were occasions on which he found himself unequal to the strain it imposed on him in his business dealings; but it was his ambition, as far as was practicable, to conciliate it, and it was rarely that he failed. He was never really dependent on the profits of publishing, and, although he naturally engaged in it on strict business principles, he knew how to harmonise such principles with a liberal indulgence of the generous impulses which wholly governed his private and domestic life. His latest enterprise of the 'Dictionary of National Biography' was a fitting embodiment of that native magnanimity which was the mainstay of his character, and gave its varied manifestations substantial unity.
[This memoir is partly based on the memoranda, recorded by Dr. Fitchett in 1899, to which reference has already been made (p. xlvii), and on the four articles respecting his early life which Smith contributed to the 'Cornhill Magazine,' November 1900 to February 1901. Valuable information has also been placed at the writer's disposal by Mrs. George M. Smith and Mrs. Yates Thompson, who have made many important suggestions. Numerous dates have been ascertained or confirmed by an examination of the account-books of Smith, Elder, & Co. Mention has already been made of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, Anthony Trollope's Autobiography, Mr. Leslie Stephen's Life of his brother Fitzjames, Matthew Arnold's 'Letters' (ed. G. W. E. Russell), and other memoirs of authors in which reference is made to Smith. Mr. Leslie Stephen contributed an appreciative sketch 'In Memoriam' to the 'Cornhill Magazine' for May 1901, and a memoir appeared in the 'Times' of 8 April 1901. Thanks are due to Mr. C. R. Rivington, clerk of the Stationers' Company, for extracts from the Stationers' Company's Registers bearing on the firm's early history.]S. L.
