PREFACE. 44 1 A PREFACE to a book whose plan and pretensions may be ascertained by a single glance at its title-page and table of contents, would appear to be almost unnecessary; but as perfection is rarely attained under any circumstances, and can hardly be looked for in a work which embraces so large a body of dates and facts as will be found in the following pages, a few words in explanation of the difficulties which have attended its compilation, and the means which have been adopted to overcome them, may not be considered superfluous. Whilst, however, we desire to extenuate whatever defects the Argus eyes of contemporary criticism may discover in its pages, we are surely justified in directing attention to the vast body of useful, novel, and interesting facts that will be found in them; and the labour and cost at which they have been collected and arranged. Necrologies of eminent persons are doubtless among the most valuable and instructive products of literary industry; but the materials of which they are composed may often be obtained by mere "pains and pulling down of books." Even when derived almost entirely from unpublished documents, the biographer has seldom to go far a-field for his materials; for they are usually furnished to him in bulk; to be analysed, balanced, and appropriated at his leisure. With the biography of living characters, however, the case is widely different. The data are far less accessible, and even those which have found their way into print are often so highly coloured by party or professional prejudice, that it requires no ordinary care and discrimination to separate the grain from the chaff. Official records do not, of course, fall within this category; but such repertories supply little beyond the dry husks of biography; and after all has been gleaned that can be collected from them, much is still indispensable that can only be derived from private records. In many instances, indeed, we have had to rely altogether on such resources; for had it not been for the assistance which has thus been afforded to us in the prosecution of our task by a numerous body of private correspondents, who have either supplied us with facts themselves or have enabled us to verify those which we have obtained elsewhere, these pages could never have approached the form they have here assumed. The present edition of "Men of the Time" will, we trust, be regarded as an earnest of the desire of its publisher to respond adequately to the favour with which its predecessors, in spite of omissions and imperfections inseparable from first appearances of so ambitious a character, were received. It is, in fact, to all intents and purposes, a new book; for not only have many hundred additional memoirs been prepared expressly for its pages, but of those which were included in former editions some have been entirely recast, and the rest more or less revised and augmented. A feature has also been superadded which will, it is hoped, be found to have increased in no slight degree the interest and completeness of the work. We allude to the introduction of a series of biographical sketches of notable "Women of the Time," the materials for which have been derived, for the most part, from private sources. Here as elsewhere some omissions may be discovered, which have arisen, not from any indisposition to recognise the claims of the absentees; but from causes which it has not been in our power to control; whilst in some few cases the difficulty of obtaining reliable information has been the means of restricting the notice to narrower limits than could have been wished: but such exceptions have been few, and comparatively unimportant. The plan and objects of this work are so clearly indicated in its announcement, that it becomes unnecessary to dwell upon it. It is intended to fill a place hitherto unoccupied by any of the multifarious Books of Reference which the industry and enterprise of the age have provided for almost every class of the community. We have numerous records of the aristocracy of birth, and even of wealth; we have Peerages, and Histories of the Landed and Commercial Gentry of the United Kingdom; we have Red Books, Court and Imperial Calendars, Parliamentary Guides, and PostOffice Directories, which leave no official diguity, no civil service, unchronicled; we have lists also of military and naval officers, and of the clergy, which set forth with laudable exactness the heroic deeds, rank, or emoluments of the members of these most important professions; lawyers and politicians have also their respective muster-rolls; but the aristocracy of genius has been left, hitherto, without any special record of its deserts. The aim of the present volume is to furnish, in as compact a form as possible, a series of biographical sketches of eminent living persons in all parts of the civilised world; one which, limited to no particular class, addresses itself to all: thus presenting the largest body of contemporary biography which has hitherto appeared in this or any other country. Among the difficulties of such an undertaking, which it has not been possible to obviate altogether, has been that of establishing such a standard of selection as would have enabled us to allocate the amount of space allotted to the respective names in more strict accordance with their relative claims. In some instances, in which more minute details would have been desirable, the means of obtaining them were not within our reach. In others the value of the materials may have tempted the respective writers to exceed their prescribed limits, whilst on more than one occasion the discrepancy has been caused by circumstances purely accidental. In the memoirs which have been introduced of crowned heads and their ministers, an attempt has been made to |