THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1024, 13 January 1911, Page 10

THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA.

AMUSING STORIES ABOUT MAC- . AUL'AY AND SWINBURNE. At.the Savoy Hotel recently the editor of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (Mr. Hugh Chishblm) gave the third of his series 'of dinners to contributors, tho guests being representative of literature, art,'and music'.

Replying to the toast of the contributors, Mr. Edmund Gosse said in' tho bygone .days 'tho ,wonder and terror of contributors. was Ma'caulay, whose shadow hung over the columns! (Laughter!) : Far bo it'from him to express the smallest disrespect for that man 'of colossal genius, but ho would venture to say that ho was not

a born encyclopaedist. (Laughter.) He thought tho contributors of' to-day wore not a very ornamental body—useful, be, trusted—useful,, ho hoped—but ornamental, certainly no. (Laughter.) Contributors to the. encyclopaedia today were most kind, and most friendly in sacrificing their natural claim to space—to offulgcncies, in fact. (Laughter.) They were different from Swinburne, who was a littlo exuberant in his ideas. On one • occasion ho ashed Swinburno how much space he would require for a certain article. He wrote: "Heaven having forbidden tome any sense of enumeration, it is impossible for mo to conjecture how many words ho would need, a number of words would bo laid down, which the contributor could neither exceed nor lessen. (Laughter.) Swinburne shrieked with a sound that might have been heard over Putney Heath, but ho agreed in carry out the instructions,, but so exactly that the conductors had to enlarge upon what he had written." (Laughter.) I