Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

That this question of digesting the law is to be considered as one that should interest all classes of Englishmen, and not the lawyer only, may be seen from an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ (September, 1877), on the “Improvement of the Law by private enterprise,” by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, who has done so much towards a complete digest of the law. He writes: “I have long believed that the law might by proper means be relieved of this extreme obscurity and intricacy, and might be displayed in its true light as a subject of study of the deepest possible interest, not only to every one who takes an interest in politics or ethics, or in the application of logic and metaphysics to those subjects. In short, I think that nothing but the rearrangement and condensation of the vast masses of matter contained in our law libraries is required, in order to add to human knowledge what would be practically a new department of the highest and most permanent interest. Law holds in suspension both the logic and the ethics, which are, in fact, recognized by men of business and men of the world as the standards by which the practice of common life ought to be regulated, and by which men ought to form their opinions in all their most important temporal affairs. It would be a far greater service to mankind than many people would suppose to have these standards clearly defined and brought within the reach of every one who cared to study them.” The following remarks will apply with equal force to a more general and universal index than that of the law: “The preparation of a digest either of the whole or of any branch of the law is work of a very peculiar kind. It is one of the very few literary undertakings in which a number of persons can really and effectively work together. Any given subject may, it is true, be dealt with in a variety of different ways; but when the general scheme, according to which it is to be treated, has been determined on, when the skeleton of the book has been drawn out, plenty of persons might be found to do the work of filling up the details, _though that work is very far from being easy or a matter of routine_.”

The value of analytical or index work is set in a very strong light by an observation of Sir James Stephen, respecting the early digesters of the law. The origin of English law is to be found in the Year Books and other series of old Reports, which, from the language used in them, and the black-letter printing, with its contractions, etc., are practically inaccessible. Coke and others who reduced these books into form are, in consequence, treated as ultimate authorities, although the almost worshipped Coke is said by Sir James to be “one of the most confused, pedantic and inaccurate of men.”

Parliament has long recognized the fact that the preparation of indexes to their journals is a department of work upon which large sums of money may be advantageously spent. In 1778 a total of £12,900 was voted for Indexes to the Journals of the House of Commons. The items were as follows: To Mr. Edward Moore, £6400 as a final compensation for thirteen years’ labour; Rev. Mr. Forster, £3000 for nine years’ labour; Rev. Dr. Roger Flaxman, £3000 for nine years’ labour; and £500 to Mr. Cunningham.

But one of the grandest and most useful applications of index-making is to be found in the series of Calendars of State Papers, issued under the sanction of the Master of the Rolls, which have made available to all a mass of historical material previously hardly appreciated by the few.

Scientific men have found by bitter experience that, unless they have the assistance of indexes, they must spend years in studying the bibliography of their subject, if they would avoid doing again what has already been done. It has so long been the popular belief that the work of indexing may properly be deputed to the harmless drudge, whose industry is his chief merit, that it is no ordinary gratification to be able to point to the great physiologist Haller as one who, knowing that genius must have its toils, and finding that no such works had been produced, stepped aside from his grander labours to compile bibliographies of the science his talents adorned. In the words of Johnson, index-making has been supposed to be “a task that requires neither the light of learning nor the activity of genius, but may be successfully performed without any higher quality than that of bearing burthens with dull patience, and beating the track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution.”[20] That Albert von Haller did not hold this disgraceful doctrine his _Bibliotheca Botanica_ (1771), his _Bibliotheca Anatomica_ (1774-77), his _Bibliotheca Chirurgica_ (1774-75) and his _Bibliotheca Medicinæ practicæ_ (1776-78) amply prove.

We find in these bibliographies a large proportion of University Theses and Inaugural Dissertations, a form of publication which was in considerable favour before the more general issue of journals and transactions of Societies. When these latter became numerous, the need of some key to their hidden contents was greatly felt, and a large unoccupied field for indexing was here discovered. In 1800 Reuss commenced at Göttingen the publication of his _Repertorium Commentationum a Societatibus Literariis editarum_, which was continued for twenty years, and completed in sixteen quarto volumes. The contents are arranged and classified according to the chief divisions of knowledge. The well-known publisher Engelmann, of Leipzig, is deserving of the greatest credit for his extensive series of special Bibliographies. That of Zoology, by Dr. Carus (1861), is one of the most important of these publications, and to a great extent superseded the _Bibliographia Zoologiæ_ of Agassiz, which was published by the Ray Society (1848-54). These works helped to make apparent to all the want which they did not completely supply. In 1857 the Royal Society undertook the preparation of a Catalogue of Scientific Papers in British and Foreign Journals and Transactions, from the commencement of the present century. This was a vast work, and necessarily occupied a considerable time in preparation. When it was thought advisable to commence printing, the limit of date for the papers was fixed at 1863. In 1867 the first volume was published, and each succeeding year a double-columned quarto volume, of about 1000 pages, appeared until 1872, when the Alphabet of Authors was completed in the sixth volume. A supplement for the years 1864-73 is in course of publication. The value of the Catalogue is gratefully acknowledged on all hands, and it has now become so indispensable that every consulter must marvel how scientific men managed to get on without it. Medical men, however, complain that medical and surgical papers have been passed over, and Dr. J. S. Billings, Librarian of the U.S. National Medical Library, is attempting to do for these departments what has already been done for general science. In 1876 was printed a _Specimen Fasciculus of a Catalogue of the National Medical Library under the direction of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army at Washington_, and in the May number (1878) of the _Library Journal_ is an article by Dr. Billings on the _National Catalogue of Medical Literature_ to contain references to papers in all the Medical Journals. It is estimated that the Subject Catalogue would occupy about seven volumes of one thousand pages each, and the Authors’ Catalogue about three volumes extra. The question of printing this great work is now before Congress, and Dr. Billings puts the following query to be answered by Librarians and others: “What is the value of such an index to the people of the United States as compared with an expedition to the North Pole, five miles of subsidized railway, one company of cavalry, or a small post office building?”

There cannot be two opinions as to the importance of such a publication, not only to the United States but to the world. At present the Indexes to the Catalogues of the Libraries of the College of Surgeons and the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society serve the purpose of a special bibliography of medical literature, but they only refer to books and not to the contents of those books.

Every year new societies and new journals are started in various parts of the world, so that it becomes daily more difficult for workers to keep themselves _au courant_ with the work of others. To obviate this difficulty the Zoologists started in 1864 an annual Record of their science, and the Geologists followed suit in 1874. The Chemists, in 1871, adopted the still more useful plan of a monthly _résumé_ of chemical papers, and with each number of the _Journal of the Chemical Society_ is published a series of abstracts of papers in foreign journals. The year’s numbers, completed with a full index, form an annual Record. Several foreign journals are also published with the main object of giving abstracts of books and papers published on their respective subjects, such for instance as the various German “Centralblatt.” A monthly part of the _Polybiblon: Revue Bibliographique Universelle_, is specially devoted to summaries of the contents of various French and Foreign periodicals. In America the contents of current periodicals are recorded in “The Library Table” and in “The American Bookseller.” A classified Index of the Proceedings of the Learned Societies and the contents of the principal magazines and reviews is announced as a feature of the newly-started English Journal--“The Book-Analyst and Library Guide.” On all sides there is evidence of the rapid growth of a taste for bibliographical research. Scientific journals and transactions now contain papers full of bibliographical details, which a few years ago would not have been considered suitable for publication in immediate proximity to original scientific papers; and this is not to be wondered at, for the many questions of priority that constantly arise can only be settled by the correct statement of the date of publication. The British Association publish reports on the history of science, which are made up of accurate lists of books and papers. The _Philosophical Magazine_[21] contains an account of early Books on Logarithms, by Mr. J. W. L. Glaisher, F.R.S.; the _Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society_[22] has a Chronology of Star Catalogues, by Mr. E. B. Knobel; the _Transactions of the Connecticut Academy_,[23] a list of writings relating to the method of least squares, with historical and critical notes by Mansfield Merriman; and the _Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York_, “Outlines of a Bibliography of the History of Chemistry,”[24] and Index to the Literature of Manganese, 1596-1874,[25] both by H. Carrington Bolton, Ph.D.

Prof. J. Plateau, the distinguished physicist, is publishing by sections, a “Bibliographie Analytique des principaux phénomènes subjectifs de la Vision,” in the Memoirs of the Brussels Academy. Mr. Edward S. Holden, of the Washington Naval Observatory, has prepared a valuable “Index Catalogue of Books and Memoirs relating to Nebulæ and Clusters,” which was published in 1871 by the Smithsonian Institution, to whom we owe so much good work in this direction; and in 1878 the same gentleman’s “Index Catalogue of Books and Memoirs on the Transits of Mercury” was issued as No. 1 of the “Bibliographical Contributions (Library of Harvard University),” edited by Justin Winsor. Monographs are now seldom published without some index of the bibliography of the subject. Dr. Copland was one of the first to make the notice of the literature of all topics treated a special feature in his _Dictionary of Practical Medicine_. Many scientific books on special subjects are in fact indexes; thus Morris’s _Catalogue of British Fossils_ (2nd ed. 1854); Bigsby’s _Thesaurus Siluricus_ (1868); and the same veteran geologist’s _Thesaurus Devonico-Carboniferus_ (1878), are tables of fossils with references to places where descriptions will be found. This is the index work which is acknowledged on all hands to be of the greatest value in the saving of the student’s time.

In passing from the consideration of Indexes of science to those of general literature, the place of honour must be given to Mr. Poole’s _Index of Periodical Literature_. The author gave an interesting account of the origin of his work at the Conference of Librarians held in London (October, 1877). When Librarian at Yale College, Mr. Poole made a list of the articles in the journals in the Library for his own private use. The assistance he was thus able to give to readers was highly appreciated, and he was asked to allow the list to be printed for the benefit of others. This first edition appeared in 1848, and a greatly enlarged edition followed in 1853. The second edition is out of print, and a new one is in preparation, under the superintendence of the compiler, but with the co-operation of librarians both in America and Great Britain. Mr. Poole said that he had not seen a copy of his first edition for twenty years until he saw it on the shelves of the Reading Room of the British Museum. The nearest approach to a general Index in existence is the useful Catalogue of Subjects which forms the third and fourth volumes of Watt’s _Bibliotheca Britannica_. The Index attached to Darling’s _Cyclopædia_ has several useful features, but the work was never finished. One of the completest Catalogues ever published is that of the Library of the London Institution. It is classified and has an Index of Authors. It was not usual to attach an Index of Subjects to a Catalogue of Authors until late years, and that to the Athenæum Library (1852) is an early specimen. The New York State Library Catalogue, 1856, has an Index, as have those of the Medical and Chirurgical Library (1860) and the London Library (1865 and 1875). That appended to the Catalogue of the Manchester Free Library (1864) is more a short list of titles than an Index. In any notice of this kind the valuable Indexes to the various collections of MSS. in the British Museum must not be omitted, nor Mr. Sampson Low’s Index to the British Catalogue of Books (1858), which was compiled by Dr. Crestadoro, Librarian of the Manchester Free Library. Indexes to series of Journals have naturally been frequent, but it was a novelty when the Parker Society published a general Index to their separate publications--a work of the greatest utility which the Camden Society propose to emulate.

That the interest felt in Index work is pretty generally spread abroad, may be guessed by a paragraph that went the round of the papers a few months ago, to the effect that an Index or ‘Repertorium’ of the contents of all the German military magazines and periodicals, which have been published during the last sixteen years, has been lately printed at Berlin, which it is supposed will be of great value to every student of military art, and even to the more general reader.

The various matters treated of in the previous pages, go to prove the existence of a revived interest in the value of Indexes, and seem naturally to lead up to a notice of the formation of the Index Society. The founders lay no claim to originality of conception; but they think that the widespread feeling of the need of some such organization, which has been frequently expressed, will insure the success of the Society.

In 1854 an announcement was made in the “Notes and Queries”[26] of the projected formation of a “Society for the Formation of a General Literary Index.” In the second series (vol. i. p. 486), the late Mr. Thomas Jones, who signed himself Bibliothecar. Chetham., commenced a series of articles, which he continued for several years, as a contribution to this General Index; but nothing more was heard of the Society. Inquiries were made in various numbers of the _Notes and Queries_ respecting its formation, but no response was made. In 1870 a contributor to the same periodical, signing himself A. H., proposed the formation of a staff of Index compilers. In 1874 Prof. Stanley Jevons published his _Principles of Science_. In the chapter on Classification, he enlarges on the value of Indexes, and adds: “The time will perhaps come when our views upon this subject will be extended, and either Government or some public society will undertake the systematic cataloguing and indexing of masses of historical and scientific information, which are now almost closed against inquiry” (1st ed. vol. ii. p. 405; 2nd. ed. p. 718).

In the following year Mr. Edward Solly and the writer of these pages, without having seen this passage, consulted as to the possibility of starting an Index Society, but postponed the actual carrying out of their scheme for a time. In July, 1875, Mr. J. Ashton Cross argued in a pamphlet, that a Universal Index might be formed by co-operation through a clearing-house, and would pay if published in separate parts. In September, 1877, some letters were printed in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ by one who signed himself ‘A Lover of Indexes,’ in which the foundation of an Index Society was strongly urged. In October, 1877, Mr. Cross read a paper before the Conference of Librarians, which was a revival of the scheme previously suggested. All these movements in different quarters proved that the train was widely spread, and only needed the lighting spark to make itself apparent; or, to use another metaphor, the volunteers were ready for their work, and only waited for the bugle call, and this was given in the _Athenæum_ for October 13, 1877, in a report of the Conference of Librarians written by Mr. Robert Harrison. There we read: “Could not a permanent Index Society be founded with the support of voluntary contributions of money as well as of subject matter? In this way a regular staff could be set to work, under competent direction, and could be kept steadily at work until its performances became so generally known and so useful as to enable it to stand alone and be self-supporting. Many readers would readily jot down the name of any new subject they meet with in the book before them, and the page on which it occurs, and forward their notes to be sorted and arranged by any Society that would undertake the work.”

The following number of the _Athenæum_ contained letters in approval of the suggestion from Mr. G. Laurence Gomme and from Professor Justin Winsor, of Harvard, who wrote: “We have been in America striving for years to get some organized body to undertake this very work.” In the number for October 27, it was announced that steps were being taken for the formation of the Society, and the editor complained that he had been overwhelmed with letters on the subject for which he could not find space.

In closing this general notice of Index work, and before passing on to the consideration of the various modes of indexing, it will perhaps be well to offer some answer to the question--What can such a Society do? We have seen how highly a good Index is appreciated by workers, but it does not need much argument to prove how few such there are, and how many more are wanted. It has been said that a big book is a great evil, and so it is until it receives an Index, and then it becomes a great good. Prof. De Morgan, who treated Bibliography in a more interesting manner than many authors treat lighter subjects, says, when referring to Samuel Jeake’s “Arithmetick surveighed and reviewed,” (1696) in his _Arithmetical Books_--“Those who know the value of a large book with a good index will pick this one up when they can.” Mr. Jeake published his work in a folio volume, the size and weight of which made De Morgan suggest the possibility that the author thought arithmetic was a branch of controversial divinity. In spite of this he singles it out for praise on account of the value of the information it contains and the fullness of the references to this information. I think we see in various directions evidence of an awakening of interest in Index work, but this interest wants fostering, and if book-buyers will agree to give the preference to well-indexed books, the publishers will soon be eager to supply the want so generally recognized. We may then hope to see the time when it will be as rare to find a book without an Index as without a title-page. The Library Association of the United Kingdom have set a good example by issuing the Report of the Conference of Librarians, 1877, with an elaborate Index to its varied contents, which has been much appreciated, and does great credit to Mr. Tedder who compiled it.

To direct public attention to a neglected subject is one of the main objects of the Index Society; but although Indexes to new books may be demanded from publishers, it is hardly to be expected that these merchants in literature will index books of the past. There are a large number of standard works to which students must frequently refer, which are a source of constant irritation from the difficulty of finding what is required in their voluminous pages. The county and local histories, in the possession of which England is so rich, rank high in the list of these--a list which would also contain the Standard Historical Collections, such as those of Rushworth, and Nalson, the Harleian Miscellany, Somers’ Tracts, Ellis’s Original Letters, and many other books that it is needless to enumerate here.[27] To this department the Society will devote special attention. In all cases a book that may be considered as _the_ authority upon a given subject will have the preference, so that the Indexes may serve as complete guides to the various topics. In many instances the works of standard authors will be indexed as a whole, and in this way Indexes to particular books or authors will often be Subject Indexes as well. With these and Subject Indexes referring to Books and Papers in British and Foreign Journals and Transactions, it is hoped that in a few years the Society will have accumulated and published a series of books that will be of real service to all classes of readers.

Much that would otherwise be neglected may be done by a public society, but to attack with effect the mass of work waiting to be undertaken, it is necessary that we should receive a hearty support. It is to the interest of subscribers to make the objects of the Society widely known, and otherwise to help it, because the more numerous the subscribers the larger will be the return that each subscriber will get for his subscription, and the larger the plot of the great field that can be put under cultivation. It is expected that the work of the Society will be largely extended when they acquire funds that will enable them to open an office which shall contain a library of indexes, and in which can be placed the General Reference Index.

I have heard two objections brought against the scheme of the Society:

1. That it is needless to urge the compilation of indexes, because every worker worthy of the name makes his own. This, however, is just the loss of power that the Society wish to prevent. Now the same work is often done over and over again, and the MSS. are only saved from the waste-paper basket by the merest chance, to be again lost among a heap of other papers. There are, doubtless, many valuable indexes lying hidden and unknown, and it will be our object to draw them if possible to the light.

2. That the General Index is an impossibility, and that to attempt its preparation is a waste of time. Those who hold this opinion have not sufficient faith in the simplicity and usefulness of the alphabet. Every one has notes and references of some kind, which are useless if kept unarranged, but if sorted into alphabetical order become valuable. The object of the General Index is just this, that anything, however disconnected, can be placed there, and much that would otherwise be lost will there find a resting place. Always growing and never pretending to be complete, the Index will be useful to all, and its consulters will be sure to find something worth their trouble if not all they may require.

The objects of the Society are national in their importance, and as such they have been acknowledged by one who has given one hundred guineas to help in their attainment. With more such gifts how much might be done by the Society.

Having dwelt in the previous pages upon some of the chief points in the history of Indexing, we will now pass on to the consideration of the practical part of the subject. The unwise seem to be of opinion that any fool can index, but we have already seen that the wise think differently. The remarks with which Dr. Johnson opens the preface to his English Dictionary may well be applied to the Indexer: “It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward. Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pioneer of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths through which Learning and Genius press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompence has been yet granted to very few.” This dishonouring estimate has received many rude shocks, and it should be our aim to crush it entirely out of existence.

In order to give some appearance of system to what might otherwise be considered as mere desultory remarks, I propose to arrange the following notes under the three heads of I. Compilation; II. Arrangement; III. Printing.

I.

In the Instructions for an Index to the Statute Law, by Sir Henry Thring,[28] already referred to, we find the following clear definitions which will serve to open this portion of our case:--

“The basis of an index to a book of the ordinary kind is a
series of titles or catchwords arranged in alphabetical order
and indicative of the main topics treated of in the book.”

“The object of an index is to indicate the place in a book or
collection of books in which particular information is to be
found. Such an index is perfect in proportion as it is concise
in expression, whilst exhaustive in its indication of every
important topic of the subject to which it is an index.”

The question naturally arises--how is the work to be set about? In the Special Report on the Public Libraries of the United States of America, Part I, 1876 (pp. 727-732), is an article on “Book Indexes” by F. B. Perkins, which contains some rather elementary instruction as to writing, cutting up, and pasting, but in these matters of detail the best way of proceeding will always be the way that the indexer feels that he can work best. Some choose to write their Index straight on in the order of the book itself, on sheets of paper which are afterwards cut up, sorted, and pasted; others prefer to use slips of paper and to write one entry on each slip; a third class will make their entries at once into an alphabetical book, or better still on loose sheets of paper placed in a portfolio lettered in alphabetical order. By this means the indexer sees his work grow under his hands. Whatever system however is adopted, it is well to bear in mind that the indexer should obtain some knowledge of the book he is about to Index before he commences his work. The following remarks by Sir H. Thring may be applied more generally than to the law--“A complete knowledge of the whole _law_ is required before he begins to make the index, for until he can look down on the entire field of law before him, he cannot possibly judge of the proper arrangement of the headings, or of the relative importance of the various provisions.”

During his work the Indexer must constantly ask himself what it is for which the consulter is likely to seek. The author frequently uses periphrases to escape from the repetition of the same fact in the same form, but these periphrases will give little information when inserted as headings in an Index, and it is in this point of selecting the best catchword that the good Indexer will show his superiority over the commonplace worker. There are a large number of Indexes in which not only is the _best_ heading _not_ chosen but the very _worst is_. Thus in the Indexes to the _Canadian Journal_, a high-class magazine, we find such entries as the following, arranged under the word here printed in italics:--

_A_ Monograph of the British Spongiadæ.
_On_ the Iodide of Barium.
_Sir_ Charles Barry, a Biography.
_The_ late Professor Boole.
_The_ Mohawk Language.

The same arrangement may be found in the Index to the Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, thus--

_A_ Strange Story.
_Professor_ Wheatstone, original proposals, &c.

The handsome edition of Jewel’s _Apology_ by Isaacson (1825) contains an index which is worthy of special remark. It is divided into four alphabets, referring respectively to 1. Life; 2. Apology; 3. Notes to Life; 4. Notes to Apology; and this complicated machinery is attached to a book of only 286 pages. I think I may say that there is hardly an entry in the Index that would be of any use to the consulter, and to show that this censure is not too sweeping, I will add a few specimens:

_Belief_ of a Resurrection.

_Caution_, Reformers proceeded with caution.

_If_ Protestants are Heretics let the Papists prove them so
from Scripture.

_In_ withdrawing themselves from the Church of Rome,
Protestants have not erred from Christ and his Apostles.

_King_ John.

_The_ Pope assumes Regal power and habit.

Ditto employs spies.

In the “General Index to the Spectators, Tatlers and Guardians,” referred to on a previous page, such words as Difference, Digression, Directions, Discourse, Dissertation and Instance, are specially noticed as bad headings in the original Indexes, which have been changed in the new one; and yet these are the very words that are chosen by rule for headings in the British Museum Catalogue. Could any plan be adopted by which the following books would more thoroughly be hidden out of sight than by the present arrangement:

_Kind._ A Kind of a Dialogue in Hudibrasticks; designed for the
use of the Unthinking and Unlearned (1739).

_Kinds._ How to make several kinds of miniature pumps and a
fire engine; a book for boys (1860).

Some bibliographers always prefer substantives to adjectives as headings, but the whole point of a sentence is often contained in a substantival adjective. When adjective and substantive are joined to represent one idea, as Alimentary Canal, English History, they should be treated as compound nouns, and arranged under the letters _A_ and _E_ respectively.[29] The most marked example of an opposite rule that I have ever seen is to be found in the Index to Hare’s _Walks in London_ (1878). Here all the Alleys, Bridges, Buildings, Churches, Courts, Houses, Streets, etc., are arranged under those headings, and not under the proper name of each. There may be a certain advantage in some of these headings, but few would look for Lisson Grove under Grove, and the climax of absurdity is reached when Chalk Farm is placed under _Farm_. The adopted rule is not rigidly carried out, for Grey Friars will be found under G, and Austin Friars under F. Another peculiarity of this index is that a copy of it is added to each volume.

Books of facts are much easier indexed than books of opinion; but it is most important that the contents of the latter should be properly registered. Some indexers seem to be of opinion that proper names are the most important items in an index, and while carefully including all these, they omit facts and opinions of much greater importance. As a rule it is objectionable when the consulter finds no additional information in the book to what is already given in the index; for instance, should the observation be made respecting a certain state of mind that “the Duke of Wellington probably felt the same at the Battle of Waterloo,” it will be well for the indexer to pass the remark by unnoticed, as should he make the following entries, the consulter is not likely to be in a very genial mood when he looks up the references:

Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington’s supposed feelings at the
battle of.

Wellington (Duke of), his supposed feelings at Waterloo.

The hackneyed quotation of

Best, Mr. Justice, his great mind,

cannot be omitted here, although I am unable to give any satisfactory account of its origin. It forms an excellent example of the useless references to which we have just referred, and contains as well a ludicrous misapprehension of the passage indexed, which is said to have been: “Mr. Justice Best said that he had a great mind to commit the man for trial.” There can be no doubt that the entry, whether it ever occurred in an Index or not, was intended as a personal fling against Sir William Draper Best, puisne judge of the King’s Bench from 1819 to 1824, and Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1824 to 1829, in which latter year he resigned, and was created Lord Wynford. The story was told to Mr. Solly by Sir W. Domville, in 1825, and with reference to the index to one of Chitty’s Law Books. Another friend tells me that he has a faint recollection that Chitty had a grudge against Best, and took an opportunity of expending his bile in this entry; but the late Dr. Doran insisted that the author of the joke was Leigh Hunt, who first published it in the _Examiner_. In this unsettled state we must leave the question, for it is not worth while to search the files of a newspaper in order to find the truth of so insignificant a matter.

The form in which the various entries in an index are to be drawn up is worthy of much attention, and particular care should be taken to expunge all redundant words. For instance, it will be better to write

Smith (John), his character; his execution.

than

Smith (John), character of; execution of.

or

Brown (Robert) saves money.

than

Brown (Robert), saving of money by.

Sometimes a characteristic adjective or adverb will help to give life and interest to the Index.

The indexer must aim at conciseness, but he should always specify the cause of reference, more especially in the case of proper names.[30] Few things are more annoying than to find a block list of references after a name, so that the consulter has to search through many pages before he can find what he seeks.[31] Mr. Markland draws particular attention to this point in a communication to the _Notes and Queries_ (2nd series, vol. vii. p. 469) on the subject of Indexes. He complains bitterly of the Indexes to the collected edition of Walpole’s Letters and to Scott’s Swift. In the latter book there are 638 references to Harley, Earl of Oxford, without any indication of the reason why his name is entered in the Index. This case also affords a good instance of careless indexing in another particular, for these references are separated under different headings, instead of being gathered under one, as follows--

Harley (Robert) 227 references.
Oxford (Lord) 111 ”
Treasurer, Lord Oxford 300 ”

Mr. Markland takes the opportunity of pointing out that good specimens of the right way to set out the references to an individual are to be found in Nichols’s _Literary Anecdotes_; Hallam’s _Constitutional History_; and Campbell’s _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_. Probably the most colossal instance of the fault above alluded to is to be found in Ayscough’s elaborate Index to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, where all the references under one surname are placed together without even the distinction of the Christian name. Mr. Solly made a curious calculation as to the time that would be employed in looking up these references. For instance, under the name _Smith_, there are 2411 entries, all “en masse,” and with no initial letters. If there were these divisions, one would find “Zachary Smith” in a few minutes, but now one must look to each reference to find what is wanted. With taking down the volumes, and hunting through long lists of names, Mr. Solly found that each reference cost him two minutes of time, a by no means extravagant estimate; hence it would take the consulter eight days (working steadily ten hours a day) to find out if there be any note about Zachary Smith in the Magazine, a task so awful to think of that it may be presumed that no one will ever attempt it.

In some books a man will merely be referred to as holding an acre of land, or as having been seen by the author on a certain day. In these instances a specific cause of reference can hardly be given, but the difficulty may be got over by setting out the various entries in which some fact or opinion is mentioned, and then gathering together the remainder under the heading of _Alluded to_.

One would imagine that correctness of reference was the _sine qua non_ of an index, and yet careless compilers, to save themselves trouble, have sometimes neglected this great essential. Books have been published with indexes that contained no reference at all, and until late years glossaries have usually been compiled without references to the places where the different words are used.

Mr. Peacock has drawn my attention to the reprint of Whitelock’s _Memorials_, published by the University of Oxford in 1853. The original edition is in one volume folio (1682, reprinted 1732), and the new edition is in four volumes octavo, but, to save expense, the _old_ index was printed to the _new_ book. The difficulty was in part got over by giving the pages of the 1732 edition in the margin; but, as may be imagined, it is a most troublesome business to find anything by it. If the old index were a good one, there might be some excuse for its retention; but it is thoroughly bad, and all the mere misprints are retained in the new one. As a specimen of the extreme inaccuracy of the compilation, it may be mentioned that under one heading of 34 entries Mr. Peacock detected seven blunders, and, moreover, he does not think that this is at all an unfavourable specimen. Although Mr. Peacock has no statistics of the other entries, his experience leads him to believe that if any heading were taken at random, about one in four of the entries would be found to be misprinted.

An extreme case of misleading references is given in the Index of Authors appended to the old Classified Catalogue of the Library of Congress (Washington, 1840). The references here are not to pages but to chapters, and as some of the chapters extend over one hundred pages it may be guessed that a very tedious search has to be made; for instance, to find the reference _Abdy_, it is necessary to look over as many as seventy pages.

It has been said that a bad index is better than no index at all, but this is open to question, as the incomplete index deceives the consulter. We have fair warning of this incompleteness in _The Register of Corpus Christi Guild, York_, published by the Surtees Society in 1872, where we read on p. 321--“This Index contains the names of all persons mentioned in the Appendix and foot-notes, but a selection only is given of those who were admitted into the Guild or enrolled in the Obituary.” The plan here adopted is not to be commended, for it is clear that so important a name-list as this is should be thoroughly indexed. However learned and judicious an editor may be, we do not choose to submit to his judgment in the offhand decision of what is, and what is not--unimportant.

Many of the best indexes are indexes and something more; that is, information is added which may not be in the book itself, such as the date of birth and death of the persons mentioned, in order to distinguish between those bearing the same proper names. Mr. Ralph Thomas has added to his interesting notice of Quérard[32] (a pamphlet of 48 pages), an Index of eight pages. This index contains several such entries as the following:--

“Athenæum, The, no general index to, great literary want (and
the Athenæum reproached the Edinburgh Review for remissness in
not keeping up its indexes!).”

The Index of Authors appended to De Morgan’s Arithmetical Books, 1847, includes a list of reported Authors of works on Arithmetic which are not noticed in the book, but these of course have no mark of reference. By this means the Index shows the deficiencies of the book as well as its riches. It is needful, however, that the information added should be correct. An important example of the effect of wrong indexing is given in Merewether and Stephens’s “History of Boroughs and Municipal Corporations.” The word “Incorporation” is introduced into the index of the Patent Rolls without authority from the text, and long before there were incorporations in this country. The first actual use of the term is in the Charter of Incorporation of Hull (18. Henr. VI.), but upon the error in this index many other blunders have been founded.

The Indexer needs knowledge so as to be able to correct his author when necessary, for the most careful author will make slips occasionally, and it is highly satisfactory when the Indexer can set him right. He needs to be specially upon his guard in the case of misprints. Probably the most fruitful source of blundering is the confusion of the letters _u_ and _n_. These are identical in old MSS., and consequently the copyist sometimes finds it difficult to decide which he shall use. In Capgrave’s Chronicle of England is a reference to the “londe of Iude” [Judæa], but this is mis-spelt _Inde_ in the edition published in the Master of the Rolls’ series in 1858. Here we have a simple misprint which can easily be set right, but the Indexer has enlarged it into a wonderful blunder. Under the letter I is the following curious piece of information:--

“India ... conquered by Judas Maccabeus and his brethren, 56.”!!

Many more instances of this confusion of the letters _u_ and _n_ might be given here, but two will suffice. George Lo_n_don was a very eminent horticulturist in his day, who, at the Revolution, was appointed Superintendent of the Royal Gardens, but he can seldom get his name properly spelt, because a later horticulturist has made the name Lo_u_don more familiar. The reverse mistake was one made by the Duke of Wellington. C. J. Loudon (whose handwriting was not very legible) wrote to the Duke a request that he might see the Waterloo beeches at Stratfieldsaye. The letter puzzled the Duke, who knew nothing of the horticulturist, and read C. J. Lo_u_don as C. J. Lo_n_don and beeches as breeches; so he wrote off to Bishop Blomfield that his Waterloo breeches disappeared long ago.

The worst blunders are not made by the ignorant, but by those who think themselves clever and jump to unwarranted conclusions; for instance, the compiler of a history of Norwich attributed a work on the Differential Calculus by a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, to a medical practitioner of the town; but in order to make the subject more appropriate, he inserted the information in the following form--“to our respected fellow-townsman Mr. Arthur Brown we are indebted for a valuable treatise on _different calculi_”! There are few mistakes easier fallen into by Cataloguers and Indexers than that of rolling two men into one, and few blunders are less easily forgiven by the objects of the confusion; thus Bishop Jebb is said to have been in dismay when he found himself identified in Watt’s _Bibliotheca Britannica_ with his uncle the Unitarian writer. In Dircks’s _Worcesteriana_ (1866) there is a curious muddle of this kind. The first reprint of the Marquis of Worcester’s _Century of Inventions_ was issued by Thomas Payne, the highly respected bookseller of the Mews Gate, in 1746, but Mr. Dircks positively asserts that the “notorious Tom Paine” was the publisher of it, thus ignoring the different spelling of the two names.

A curious instance of uniting two men into one will be found in the _Athenæum_ for May 13, 1871, where we read that “William Haidinger von Franz Ritter v. Hauer, the geologist and mineralogist, has died recently.” What is here supposed to be one name is really the title of a biography of Haidinger by von Hauer.

There are a considerable number of names which have been created through the misreading of difficult words, and names of persons who never existed have by this means found their way into Biographical Dictionaries. In the Zoological Bibliography of Agassiz, there is an imaginary author, by name J. K. Broch, whose work, “Entomologische Briefe,” was published in 1823. This pamphlet is anonymous, and written by one who signed himself J. K. _Broch._ is merely an explanation in the catalogue from which the entry was taken, that it was a brochure. Moreri created an author whom he styled “Dorus Basilicus” out of the title of James the First’s Δωρον βασιλικον, and Bishop Walton supposed the title of the great Arabic Dictionary, the _Kamoos_, or Ocean, to be the name of an author whom he quotes as “Camus.” In the _Biographie Universelle_ there is a life of one “Nicholas Donis” by Baron Walckenaer, that name being a mere blundering alteration of “Dominus Nicholas,” this Benedictine monk’s true appellation. Thevenot, in his Travels, refers to the fables of “Damné et Calilve,” meaning the Hitopadesa or Pilpay’s Fables. His translator calls them the fables of the damned Calilve. This is on a par with De Quincey’s specimen of a French Abbé’s Greek. Having to paraphrase the words “Ἡροδοτος και ιαζων,” (Herodotus even while Ionicizing), the Frenchman rendered them “Herodote et aussi Jazon,” thus creating a new author, one Jazon.[33] In the _Present State of Peru_, a compilation from the _Mercurio Peruano_, P. Geronymo Roman de la Higuera is transformed into “Father Geronymo, a Romance of La Higuera”! Well may we say to the worthy priest what Peter Quince said to Bottom, “Bless thee, bless thee, thou art translated.”

The scissors-and-paste compilers are peculiarly liable to such errors as these, and Wilson Croker proved in the Quarterly Review that the _Mémoires de Louis XVIII._ (published in 1832) was a mendacious compilation from the _Mémoires de Bachaumont_ by giving examples of the compiler’s blundering. One of these muddles is well worth quoting, and it occurs in the following passage: “Seven bishops--of _Puy_, Gallard de Terraube; of _Langres_, La Luzerne; of _Rhodez_, Seignelay-Colbert; of _Gast_, Le Tria; of _Blois_, Laussiere Themines; of _Nancy_, Fontanges; of _Alais_, Beausset; of _Nevers_, Seguiran.” Had the compiler taken the trouble to count his own list, he would have seen that he had given eight names instead of seven, and so have suspected that something was wrong; but he was not paid to think. The fact is that there is no such place as Gast, and was no such person as Le Tria. The Bishop of Rhodez was Seignelay-Colbert de Castle Hill, a descendant of the Scotch family of Cuthbert of Castle Hill, in Inverness-shire, and Bachaumont misled his successor by writing Gast Le Hill for Castle Hill. The introduction of a stop and a little misspelling originated the blunder as we now find it.

An author is sometimes turned into a place, as in the article on _Stenography_ in Rees’s Cyclopædia. John Nicolai published a Treatise on the Signs of the Ancients at the beginning of the last century, and the writer of the article having seen it stated that a certain fact was to be found in Nicolai, jumped to the conclusion that it was the name of a place and wrote: “It was at Nicolai that this method of writing was first introduced to the Greeks by Xenophon himself.”

D’Israeli gives a few curious instances of supposed authors in his _Curiosities of Literature_--“A book was written in praise of Ciampini by Ferdinand Fabiani, who quoting a French narrative of travels in Italy, took for the name of the author the following words, found at the end of the title-page, _Enrichi de deux Listes_; that is, ‘Enriched with two Lists:’ on this he observes ‘that Mr. Enriched with two Lists has not failed to do that justice to Ciampini which he merited.’ The abridgers of Gesner’s Bibliotheca ascribe the romance of _Amadis_ to one _Acuerdo Olvido_: Remembrance, Oblivion. Not knowing that these two words on the title-page of the French version of that book formed the translator’s Spanish motto. D’Aquin, the French King’s physician, in his memoir on the preparation of Bark, takes _Mantissa_, which is the title of the Appendix to the History of Plants by Johnstone, for the name of an author, and who he says is so extremely rare, that he only knows him by name.” To these may be added _S. Viar_, whose existence was supposed to be proved by an inscription until an antiquary showed that the complete reading of the mutilated stone was

[PRÆFECTU]S . VIAR[UM.]

Also the _August Oriuna_, supposed to be the wife of Carausius, of whom Dr. Stukeley wrote some theoretical memoirs. This blunder originated in the credulous Doctor’s misreading of the inscription on a battered coin of Carausius:--

ORIVNA AVG . _for_ FORTVNA AVG.

The French often fall into this class of blunders from their constant practice of translating or explaining whatever it is supposed can be translated or explained, thus G. Brunet of Bordeaux, having occasion in his “La France Littéraire au XVe Siècle,” to mention “White Knights,” the seat of the Duke of Marlborough, translates it “Le Chevalier Blanc.”[34] When Dr. Buckland, the distinguished geologist, died, a certain French paper published a biography of him, in which it was explained that the deceased had been a very versatile writer, for besides his works on Geology, he had produced one, “Sur les ponts et chaussées.” This was a puzzle at first, but it was soon found that the Bridgewater Treatise was here alluded to. The French love of translation and explanation is amusingly illustrated in the _Annuaire des Sociétés Savantes, par le Cte. Achmet d’Hericourt_, 1863, where the author, in his notice of the Geological and Polytechnic Society of the West Riding of Yorkshire, says that as it is known that the English word _Ride_ means a “voyage à cheval ou en voiture,” it might be thought that this was a “Société hippique,” but he obligingly adds that it is not so.

We have already seen in several cases how dangerous it is to jump to conclusions, but we have still to point out the particular danger of filling out contractions without sufficient knowledge. Pope, in a note on _Measure for Measure_, informs us that the story was taken from Giraldi Cinthio’s novel Dec. 8, Nov. 5, thus contracting the words Decade and Novel. Warburton, in his edition of Shakespeare, was misled by these contractions, and filled them out as December 8, and November 5. An error of the same kind is made by Dr. Allibone in his Dictionary of English Literature, under the heading of Isaac Disraeli. He notices new editions of that author’s works revised by the Right Hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer, of course Isaac’s son Benjamin (now Earl of Beaconsfield and Prime Minister); but unfortunately there were two Chancellors in 1858, and Allibone chooses the wrong one, printing as information to the reader that the reviser was Sir George Cornewall Lewis. But still worse was the following emendation of an ‘intelligent’ printer. A writer in one of the reviews sent his copy to press with the contraction “J. C. first invaded Britain,” and the compositor, who made it his business to fill up all such abbreviations, instead of Julius Cæsar, set up _Jesus Christ_.[35]