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Robert Dunlop, Dr. Richard Garnett, Mr. J. G. Fitch, LL.D., Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse, Mr. Walter Armstrong, Mr. F. T. Marzials, Mr. H. Yates Thompson, Mr. James Gairdner, Professor T. F. Tout, Mr. Francis Storr, Mr. Sidney Low, Mr. Reginald J. Smith, Mr. Gerald Duckworth, Mr. Harry J. C. Cust, M.P., Mr. Charles Kent, Dr.Hack Tuke, Mr. G. F. Warner, Mr. Henry Bradley, Mr. G. S. Boulger, Mr. D'Arcy Power, F.R.C.J.S., Mr. J. Bass Mullinger, Mr. Edward J. L. Scott, Mr. Norman MacColl, Mr. Charles Welch, F.S.A., Mr. G. A. Aitken, Mr. Walter Rye, Mr. F. M. O'Donoghue, Colonel Lluellyn, Mr. R. B. Prosser, the Rer. A. B. Buckland, Mr. A. Vian, Mr. William Carr, the Rev. J. H. Lupton, B.D., Mr. J. P. Anderson, Mr. A. E. J. Legge, Mr. E. Heron Allen, Mr. G. Thorn Drury, the Rev. Ronald Bayne, Mr. J. M. Rigg, Mr. Russell Spokes, Mr. C. T. Hagberg Wright, Colonel Vetch, R.E., the Rev. Prebendary Stephens, Colonel E. M. Loyd, R.E., Mr. R. C. Browne, Rev. C. H. Evelyn White, Mr. H. Frank Heath, Mr. James Tait, Mr. Alfred Cock, Q.C., Mr. A. H. Huth, Mr. John Macdonell, LL.D., Mr. C. G. Montefiore, the Rev. H. C. Beeching, Major Broadfoot, Mr. R. F. Scott, and Mr. Henry R. Tedder and Mr. Thomas Seccombe (Hon. Secretaries to the Organising Committee).
Among those contributors who sent letters of regret were Mr. James Bryce, M.P., the Bishop of Peterborough, Professor R. C. Jebb, M.P., Principal Ward (Owens College, Manchester), Canon Ainger, Mr. C. H. Firth, Mr. Henry Craik, C.B., Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, Mr. S. Rawson Gardiner, the Rev. Alexander Gordon, the Rev. W. H. Hutton, B.D., Mr. C. W. Sutton, Mr. Thomas Bayne, Mr. Richard Bagwell, Professor J. W. Hales, and Mr. Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. The Bishop of Peterborough wrote to the Chairman: "I need hardly say to you that I think Mr. Smith has been the greatest benefactor to English literature in our generation, and the future will increasingly reap the harvest of his enterprise."
After the health of the Queen had been duly honoured, Mr. Sidney Lee said: I have now to propose to you the toast of the evening. I need not tell you what you know already, that there are many better qualified for this honourable task than I. But however great may be my misgivings respecting my oratorical capacity, I can have none respecting the reception with which the toast of Mr. George Smith's health will meet in such an assembly as this. (Cheers.) At any rate I have had the advantage of reading the correspondence that has passed between yourselves and our secretaries; I know the sentiments that have drawn you hither, and I can speak of them with confidence. In my ordinary way of life I am no lover of heroics, as some of you may say you know to your cost—(laughter)—and it has occurred to me that I should be meting out to Mr. Smith the strictest justice were I to clothe my remarks in the Spartan simplicity of a dictionary article.
