HIC IACETS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 769, 15 April 1954, Page 13

HIC IACETS

THE OXFORD JUNIOR ENCYCLOPAEDIA, Vol. V, Great Lives; volume editor Sheila Shannon; Oxtord Press-Geofrey Cumberlege, — price 30/-. "HE inequity of oblivion," wrote old Sir Thomas Browne, "blindly scattereth her poppy, arid deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity." To the inequity of oblivion one might, perhaps, add the partiality of editors. In this most readable volume of the Junior Encyclopaedia, Sir Thomas--who wrote some of the noblest English prose, and who still fills three columns of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations-is not mentioned. Nor, of course, is he alone in his oblivion. "The number of great men and women to be included has had to be confined to about 550," says a prefatory note. "This means that many well-known people do not appear at all. The choice of whom to include is, therefore, bound to be to some extent a personal one." The difficulty of selecting five hundred names from the history of 5000 years, the general good sense of the selection, the succinctness and, above all, the essential readability of the entries all tend to inhibit criticism.. But they can’t quite stifle it, and there is likely to be more argument about the contents of this volume than about any or all of the others in the series. Some of the omissions are, indeed, difficult to understand-especially when considered alongside some of the entries. Three columns for William Morris seems over-enthusiastic when Dostoevski gets less than two, and Oscar Wilde is not mentioned at all. The inclusion of Stubbs and the omission of Landseer is no doubt a matter of taste (perhaps of good~ taste), but is either more important than Zola, or Proust, or (to get back to natural history) than, say, Buffon? Military and naval entries raise similar queries. No admirals since Nelson’s time seem to have been thought worthy of mention, though Farragut, Mahan, Togo, Fisher, Jellicoe, Beatty, and Tirpitz all shaped history. John Paul Jones, too, is out, and CochTane, and even van Tromp (though de Ruyter gets over a column). Kitchener is in, but Foch has been passed over. Montrose (long regarded ‘on the. Continent as Je grand Montrose) is well-served by two’ columns of good writing, ‘but Turenne and Condé, with whom the Marquis has been compared, do not even get a head-word. Among the historians, as_ distinct from the makers of history, Gibbon is, surprisingly, given only a_ head-word,

while Macaulay has more than a column and a half. Renan is not mentioned. Painters and sculptors are, on the whole, well served. Music, too, has been handled skilfully, though it is perhaps a little unusual to encounter such a categorical statement as "Mozart (was) the greatest musical genius the world has ever known." Science and exploration are strongly represented and Rutherford receives due attention, but there seems to be some doubt whether Linnaeus’s Christian name is Karl or Carl. It is interesting to notice that space has been found for Samuel Marsden and Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Great Lives is, in fact, not only a good reference book, but a good book to read-and to argue

about.

J.

M.