The cyclopedias also present numerous examples of coincidences as well as
variations--some of the incorrect details being repeated almost verbatim,
as though successive compilers had copied over and over the mistakes of
their superficial predecessors. This ought not to go on forever.
The sketches of Tennyson in Lippincott's _Biographical Dictionary_ (1885)
and in the _Americanized Britannica_ (1890) may be taken as samples. In
the following sentence from Lippincott's the writer manages to make five
or six misstatements:
"In 1851 he succeeded Wordsworth as poet-laureate, and about the same time
he married, and retired to Faringford, in the Isle of Wight, where he
resided until 1869, when he removed to Petersfield, Hampshire."
In the biographical supplement of the _Americanized Britannica_, this
becomes two or three sentences, viz.:
"He was made poet-laureate in 1851. It was about this time, too, that
Tennyson married, returning to Faringford, in the Isle of Wight, where he
lived until 1869.... It was in this year the poet moved from the Isle of
Wight and took up his residence in Petersfield, Hampshire."
There are similar passages in Appleton's and Johnson's cyclopedias. It is
perfectly plain that there was not much independent investigation in these
unscholarly performances.