STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS, PRINTERS, HERTFORD.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Rosamond’s Epistle, lines 103-4.
[2] “Etiam vellem mihi mittas de tuis librariolis duos aliquos, quibus Tyrannio utatur glutinatoribus, ad cetera administres: iisque imperes ut sumant membranulam, ex qua indices fiant, quos vos Græci (ut opinor) συλλάβους appellatis.”—Ad. Atticum lib. iv. ep. 4.
[3] Discoveries, ed. 1640, p. 93.
[4] I would here, under cover of our great poet’s name, protest against the use of the plural indices. As long as a word continues to take the plural form of the language from which it is borrowed, we cannot look upon it as thoroughly naturalized. Surely Index may be considered an English word when it was treated as such by Shakespeare.
[5] My friend Mr. Furnivall draws my attention to the fact that Fleming was the index-maker of Shakespeare’s day as Philemon Holland was the translator.
[6] Some in the present day seem to be of the same opinion as Baret, for we occasionally hear of an Index Rerum instead of an Index of Subjects.
[7] Another word occasionally used in the sense of an Index is Pye, which has been supposed to be derived from the Greek Πίναξ. The late Sir T. Duffus Hardy, in some observations on the derivation of the word “Pye-Book,” remarks that the earliest use he had noted of pye in this sense is dated 1547—“A Pye of all the names of such Balives as been to accompte pro anno regni regis Edwardi Sexti primo.”—Appendix to the 35th Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, p. 195.
[8] Noy calls it an Index, but Prynne, in conformity with the usual practice, writes Table.
[9] The book was published six weeks before Henrietta Maria acted in a pastoral at Somerset House, so that the passage “women actors notorious whores” could not have been intended to allude to the Queen. See Cobbett’s “State Trials,” vol. 3, coll. 561-586.
[10] This is the last entry but one in the index, and I cannot resist the pleasure of adding in a note the passage here indexed:—
[11] “Idcirco celebris quidam scriptor nostræ gentis, quò significaret eam curam ejus esse debere, cujus cura opus ipsum constitit, urbane, salseque ajebat, Indicem libri ab authore, librum ipsum à quovis alio conficiendum esse.”—Nicolaus Antonius, Bibliotheca Hispana, 1672, tom. 2, p. 371.
[12] “M. Bochart ... me prioit surtout d’y faire [i.e. his Diogenes Laertius] un Index, étant, disoit-il, l’âme des gros livres.”—Menagiana, Paris, 1729, tome i. p. 75.
[13] Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 46.
[14] Notes and Queries, 2nd series, vol. vii. p. 469.
[15] Notes and Queries, 5th series, vol. viii. p. 87.
[16] See Transactions of the Conference, p. 88.
[18] I searched in vain for the date of the first edition of the Gradus, until I was so fortunate as to find it in the valuable article on “Dictionaries” in the new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Little information was to be obtained from the British Museum Catalogue, owing to the complicated arrangement of the anonymous books. I looked into the new General Catalogue under the heading Parnassus, where the book should have been entered according to the rules, and there was only one edition of the present century. I then turned to Gradus, and there was a reference to an edition by Valpy. I knew that there must be some earlier edition, so I went to the old General Catalogue and there I at once found among others an “editio novissima” (Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1687). When the book was in my hands I noticed that it was marked to be catalogued under the heading of “Dictionaries,” where I venture to think few would look for it. This experience is related here as a good illustration of the inconvenience of classification in an Alphabetical Catalogue.
[19] These instructions, with specimens of the proposed Index, are printed in the Law Magazine for August, 1877, 4th series, vol. 8, p. 491.
[20] Plan of an English Dictionary.
[21] Fourth series, vol. 44.
[22] Vol. 43, p. 1.
[23] Vol. 4, p. 151.
[24] Vol. 10.
[25] Vol. 11.
[26] Vol. x. p. 356.
[27] “The Rushworths, Whitlockes, Nalsons, Thurloes; enormous folios, these and many others have been printed, and some of them again printed, but never yet edited,—edited as you edit wagon-loads of broken bricks and dry mortar simply by tumbling up the wagon! Not one of those monstrous old volumes has so much as an available Index. It is the general rule of editing on this matter. If your editor correct the press, it is an honourable distinction.”—Carlyle’s Introduction to Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches.
[28] Law Magazine, August, 1877.
[31] This evil is enlarged upon in a paper “On an ‘Evitandum’ in Index-making, principally met with in French and German Periodical Scientific Literature, by B. R. Wheatley.”—Transactions and Proceedings of the Conference of Librarians, 1877, pp. 88-92.
[32] A Martyr to Bibliography: a Notice of the Life and Works of Joseph-Marie Quérard, Bibliographer ... By Olphar Hamst, Esq. London (J. Russell Smith), 1867.
[33] De Quincey’s Works, ed. 1862, vol. 8, p. 180.
[34] Notice of Quérard, by Olphar Hamst, 1867.
[35] A friend asks me to give chapter and verse for this blunder, but it will be seen that nothing is more difficult than to find an authority for misprints which are corrected as soon as they are found out, perhaps even in the proof. A curious misprint occurred in The Times in a letter from Lord Shaftesbury (August, 1878), who wrote of the Bulgarians that “they panted for liberty,” but was made by the printer to say “they prated of liberty.”
[37] Library Journal.
[38] My brother (Mr. B. R. Wheatley) writes as follows of Allibone’s forty Indexes: “What however shall we say of the sub-indexes which really have no existence whatever, except in the list of their titles at the commencement? Take, for instance, the first—Alchemy—which refers you to Class or Index 8, which is Chemistry. How much nearer are you to Alchemy?—it is a more secret science in the Index than it was in the middle ages—you have 500 names under Chemistry, and you must look out the whole of them before you find the philosopher’s stone which lies hid in this five-century crucible of mixed ingredients.”—Trans. Conference of Librarians, 1877.
[40] “On the best method of constructing an Index, by F. A. Curtis, of the Eagle Insurance Office,” in the Assurance Magazine, vol. 8 (1858), pp. 54-57. See also Notes and Queries, 2nd S. vi. 496, 3rd S. iv. 371.
[44] Da in Portuguese is a compound of preposition and article.
“When I asked his name, said, in a thick, gobbling kind of voice:
‘Sawedwadgeorgeearllittnbulwig.’
‘Sir what?’ says I quite agast at the same.
‘Sawedwad—no, I mean Mistawedwad Lyttn Bulwig.’”
—Thackeray’s Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush.
[48] Library Journal, vol. iii. No. 1.
[49] American Library Association Report (Library Journal, vol. iii. No. 1, March, 1878, p. 15, col. 1).
[50] Lindenau, Zeitschrift für Astronomie, 1816.
[51] In the case of little known men, whose Christian names are not given, it may sometimes be necessary to use the Mr.; for instance, in Pepys’s Diary, if this word were not added to certain of the persons mentioned, there would often be confusion between the names of persons and of places.
[53] 2nd Series, vol. i. p. 481.