then the substantive and adjective grave, arranged according to the alphabet of the words that follow,

and last,

We now come to the consideration of a matter of some perplexity. It is more of a difficulty for the Cataloguer than for the Indexer, still it is one with which the latter must grapple. There cannot be two opinions about the simple rule that a man should be set down under his surname, but our trouble commences when we ask the question—What is a surname? The answer to it must necessarily be complicated on account of the varieties of form which proper names take in different languages. The greatest difficulty arises from the prefixes, some of which can easily be dispensed with, while others are integral portions of the name.[43] If the prefix be a preposition, it must be rejected, and the name arranged in alphabet under the following letter; thus, D’, De, in French, Da in Italian,[44] Von in German, and Van in Dutch, are no real portion of foreign names, which can stand very well without them. If, however, the prefix be an article, such as the French La, it must be retained; for instance, the full name of the great astronomer La Place is De La Place, but it is under L that it could alone be placed with propriety. If no other reason could be given, a very sufficient one might be found in the fact that were not De and Von rejected, a large proportion of French and German names would appear respectively under those prefixes. Although this rule is generally accepted as the only true one, it is seldom carried out consistently; thus in the South Kensington Universal Catalogue of Books on Art, we find D’Ayzac under Ayzac, D’Azara under D, D’Azeglio under A, De La Blanchère under D, De La Borde under L, De La Fons under both D and L, with a cross reference from Fons. A logical difficulty arises when the preposition is joined to the article, as in Du and Des, and here, in order to retain the article, we are forced to retain the preposition as well. These rules only apply to Foreign names, and such English names as De Quincey, Delabeche, Van Mildert, must be arranged under D and V respectively, because the prefixes are here meaningless.

The rule for the arrangement of compound names differs accordingly as these names are either English or Foreign.[45] The frequent practice in England of using surnames as baptismal names gives the united names the appearance of compound names, which they really are not. The first name in a foreign compound is almost invariably the true name, and frequently the second name is that of the owner’s wife or mother. The French cannot understand our sur-christian-names, and with few exceptions treat them as true surnames. There is a most amusing blunder consequent on this misapprehension in the well-known Biographie Moderne, edited by the late Dr. Hoefer, and published by Firmin Didot. In this valuable Biographical Dictionary there is a long account of Brigham Young, extending over many columns, but, instead of appearing under Y, it has a place found for it in letter B, and the heading runs as follows: “Brigham le jeune ou Brigham Young”! Although such an instance as this could not well be paralleled in any English book of the same high character, we are not as a nation incapable of making blunders of a like kind. De Morgan remarks, in his Arithmetical Books, “I have had in one or two instances to throw away German Authors for a very obvious reason. The reader will not find the works of Anleitung or Grundriss or Rechenbuch in my list, which is more than can be said of every one that has preceded it.” Derselbe might have been added, as it sometimes has a very surname-like look. Blunders are of no particular nationality, and it is needful to use special vigilance in transferring proper names from the books of one language to those of another. The most trustful, however, would be on his guard when dealing with a writer who introduced the Duke of Newcastle to his readers as “Gul. de Cavendy dux de Xeucathle.”

Sometimes we have to deal with the latinised names of celebrated men, and it is a very frequent practice to turn these back into the vernacular, but it may be questioned whether it is right to do so. De Morgan writes, “I have not attempted to translate the names of those who wrote in Latin at a time when that language was the universal medium of communication.... It is well to know that Copernicus, Dasypodius, Xylander, Regiomontanus, and Clavius were Zepernik, Rauchfuss, Holtzmann, Müller and Schlüssel. But as the butcher’s bills of these eminent men are lost, and their writings only remain, it is best to designate them by the name which they bear on the latter rather than on the former.”

The question however has pertinently been asked, how are we to act if the butchers’ bills were by chance to be forthcoming and required registration in a Catalogue of Manuscripts. Probably in this case also it would be well to arrange the names under their best known forms. The Hungarians, and sometimes the Italians, place the surname before the Christian name, which is very confusing to those unacquainted with the practice. Sometimes the same difficulty occurs in English from the manner in which the names are printed; thus we learn from the Gentleman’s Magazine that

The Index-maker indexed these as Gallager and Fleetwood! so that the death of Mr. Gallager may easily be found, but the date of Mr. Hesketh’s death cannot be found at all. The change of family name is a source of confusion to those unacquainted with the niceties of genealogy. Mr. Solly draws my attention to a case of this kind in which the Heskeths changed their name in 1806 to Bamford by Act of Parliament, and then subsequently obtained another Act to change it back to Hesketh. Now the name is Lloyd-Hesketh-Bamford-Hesketh, which is almost as complicated a series as Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer Lytton, Lord Lytton.[46] This leads us to the rule by which peers are to be arranged under their titles instead of their family names.[47] The most usual and certainly most natural practice is so to arrange them, but the British Museum rule is the reverse, and Mr. Cutter followed the Museum rule in his full rules, although he did not approve of it. In the short rules drawn up by Mr. Cutter and a Committee of the American Library Association[48] this is judiciously altered and some sound reasons are given for the later decision. The definition of a name as “that by which a person or thing is known” would naturally lead to the choice of Chesterfield as the name of the author of Chesterfield’s Letters, because Stanhope is the name by which he is not known. It is further added—

In some instances, such as Horace Walpole, the name by which the great letter writer is always known, the rule must be broken, but double references should be adopted in all doubtful cases; thus Bulwer’s novels cannot be ignored, although their author’s name must be treated as Lytton. Apropos of the sound rule that all theories as to the separation of different members of the same family must be disregarded, we may mention the case of a great composer. It would be impossible to arrange the name of Meyerbeer under any other letter than M, although by doing so we place him under his Christian name, and separate him from his scientific brother Beer. There can hardly be a greater absurdity than to ferret out a man’s earliest name, and place him under that. In the British Museum Catalogue the works of Sir Francis Palgrave are entered under Cohen, a name which 999 persons out of every thousand never heard of in connexion with him.

Bishops, deans and others, holding official titles, must always be arranged under their family names. It has been objected that reasons which apply to peers apply also to them; but this is not really the case, for a bishop is frequently referred to by his surname during his lifetime, and always so after his death. He has but a life interest in the name of his see. To illustrate this I would mention two eminent contemporaries—John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. We know the one as Duke of Marlborough and the other as Bishop Burnet, and we should naturally turn to M. and B. respectively for their names.

There are a few minor matters worthy of mention in this department of name headings. The initials which stand for Christian names often give much trouble, particularly among foreigners. Most Frenchmen consider themselves too important and well known to need the use of Christian names, and therefore M. usually stands for Monsieur; this cannot, however, be taken for granted without inquiry, for it sometimes means Michel or other Christian name commencing with M. I have noticed in a German periodical[50] some extreme cases of the careless use of initials; and the three following will afford good specimens of this: 1. H. D. Gerling; 2. H. W. Brandes; 3. D. W. Olbers. Here all three cases look alike, but in the first H. D. represent two titles—Herr Doctor; in the second H. W. represent two Christian names—Heinrich Wilhelm; and in the third, one title and one Christian name are intended—Dr. W. Olbers. To some these points will appear trivial, but they are not so to those who have undergone endless trouble in unravelling the enigmas. The indexer should insert the names of persons in all simplicity, and ruthlessly omit the Mr. so frequently used by his author.[51] It was the neglect of this rule which angered Dr. Johnson. Boswell records how, “happening to mention Mr. Flaxman, a dissenting minister, with some compliment to his exact memory in chronological matters, the Dr. replied, ‘Let me hear no more of him, Sir. That is the fellow who made the Index to my Ramblers, and set down the name of Milton thus: Milton, Mr. John.’”

It is amusing to find that in spite of this ebullition no means were taken to remedy the evil. Johnson died in 1784, and yet in the twelfth edition of the Rambler, dated 1791, which is now before me, I find the same dishonouring title still retained. Besides Mr. Milton, notices of Mr. Richard Baxter, Mr. Abraham Cowley, Mr. John Dryden, Mr. Alexander Pope, and Mr. Edmund Spenser will be found in the Index.

Oddities in names give trouble, and are frequently the cause of blunders; for instance, there are living at the same time grandfather, father and grandson, who all bear the same names. To distinguish himself, the grandson adds the word Tertius to his name, and his card is printed as John Smith Ter. Now ‘Ter’ is so unusual an affix that a hurried cataloguer or indexer might almost be excused for treating it as Mr. Smith’s surname.

The signatures of Peers and Bishops are a source of trouble to many, thus a certain eminent bookseller is said to have once received a letter signed ‘George Winton,’ proposing the publication of a life of Pitt, but, as he did not know the name, he paid no attention to the letter, and was much astonished when he afterwards learnt that his correspondent was no less a person than Pitt’s friend and former tutor, George Pretyman Tomline Bishop of Winchester. This is akin to the mistake of the Scotch doctor attending on the Princess Charlotte during her illness, who said that ‘ane Jean Saroom’ had been continually making inquiries, but not knowing the fellow he had taken no notice of him. Thus the Bishop of Salisbury was treated with contempt by one totally ignorant of his dignity. There is a reverse case of a catalogue made by a worthy bookseller of the name of William London, which was long supposed to be the work of Dr. William Juxon, the Bishop of London at the time of publication.

A very amusing blunder of this class is said to have occurred lately. A certain person received a document signed “Richmond & Gordon,” and being imperfectly acquainted with the refinements of the peerage, he directed his answer for the Duke to “Messrs. Richmond and Gordon.”

It has been suggested that all lists of errata in books should be indexed, and there is no doubt that the chief items in these lists should be referred to, as they are otherwise likely to be overlooked. It is worse than useless to refer to a mis-statement in the text without reference to the place where it is set right. This hint is the more important, in that these mistakes are frequently repeated without any notice being taken of the overlooked errata. The errata pointed out in Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici (1643) were not corrected in subsequent editions, and many other books have remained in similar case. The first book with a printed errata is the Venice Juvenal of 1478, previously the mistakes had been corrected by the pen. One of the longest lists of errata on record is in the edition of the works of Picus of Mirandula, printed by Knoblauch of Strasburg in 1507, which occupies fifteen folio pages. An English printer, however, has managed to distance the foreigner in the race of carelessness, for a little book of only 172 pages, entitled the “Anatomy of the Mass,” 1561, has also a list of errata of fifteen pages. Dr. Johnson, referring in his Life of Lord Lyttelton to his subject’s History of Henry II. (1773), speaks of the 19 pages of errata as something which “the world had hardly seen before.” Disraeli gives, in his Curiosities of Literature, some amusing instances of misreadings purposely inserted in the text, with the sole object of being corrected in the errata. Wherever the Inquisition had any power, particularly at Rome, the use of the word fatum or fata in any book was strictly prohibited. An author desirous of using the latter word, adroitly invented this scheme: he had printed in his book facta, and in the errata he put, for facta read fata. Scarron did the same thing on another occasion. He had composed some verses, at the head of which he placed this dedication: A Guillemette, chienne de ma Sœur; but, having a quarrel with his sister, he maliciously put in the errata, instead of Chienne de ma Sœur read ma chienne de Sœur.

III.

Some Indexers suppose that their work is complete when they have made their Index, but they need to prepare their copy for the press, and also to see that their instructions are carried out by the printer. Much of the value of an Index depends upon the mode in which it is printed, and every endeavour should be made to set it out with clearness. It was not the practice in old Indexes to bring the Indexed word to the front, but to leave it in its place in the sentence, so that the alphabetical order was not made perceptible to the eye. This is now changed, but the evil still exists in the newspaper lists of Births, Deaths and Marriages, more especially in those of the Times. When the penny papers were started they introduced the improvement of setting the name at the beginning of the entry as a heading. The Times took the hint from its less august contemporaries, but would not condescend to copy them completely, so that the extent of the change was the printing of the names in small capitals. It is to be hoped that at some future day this pride may be overcome and the public be allowed to enjoy the convenience of reading the name first. The inconvenience of the present system is greatest in the marriage advertisements, where the officiating clergy, about whom the reader cares nothing, take precedence, and crowd out of sight the hero and heroine. Punch had a good skit on this nuisance once, and said that when a poor man was thus hidden under a pile of parsons it became impossible to know what really had happened to him; whether he was in fact born, married, dead, or bankrupt!

Where the reduction of space is not an object, the titles of each article should be made to occupy a separate line, by which means the headings are brought more prominently before the eye. There are few points in which the printer is more likely to go wrong (if not watched) than in the use of marks of repetition, and many otherwise good Indexes are full of the most perplexing instances of their misapplication. The dash is a far better mark of repetition than mere indentation, but it must be kept for entries exactly similar.[52] The neglect of this rule leads to the perpetration of the greatest absurdities, thus the oft-quoted instance—

“Mill on Liberty
—— on the Floss.”

is not an invention, but actually occurred in a catalogue. The following are good examples of what to avoid.

From the Index of the Companion to the Almanac (Lond. 1843)

New Albion
—— Annuities
—— Bread
—— Brentford
Bartholomew Massacre
—— Lane
Brimstone, duty on
—— butterfly
Cotton, Sir Willoughby
——, price of,
Old Stratford Bridge
—— Style
—— Swinford

From the Index of Pepys’s Diary (various editions)

Child, Mr.
—— of Hales, the, a giant
Court ladies, masculine attire of the
—— of Arches
Fish, method of preserving
——, Mrs.
Ireland, state of affairs in, &c.
——, a cooper
Katherine Hall, Cambridge
—— Pear
—— of Valois
—— the Man of War
—— Yacht
Kentish Knock, the, a Shoal
—— Town
Lamb’s Conduit
—— Wool
Old age
—— Artillery Yard
—— Bailey
Orange Moll
——, old Prince of
Scotland, state of
—— Yard

The opposite evil of repeating the heading, even when identical, is rarer, but almost as confusing.

It is so easy to confuse two men of the same name together that every help towards keeping them distinct which the printer can give should be adopted. We have already drawn attention to this point, but it is so important a matter that the reader will perhaps excuse the insertion here of two more anecdotes to close the subject with. An Englishman on a visit to the United States carried with him a letter of introduction to Dr. Channing, but through inadvertence he called upon the great man’s brother, who was a physician. The doctor soon found out that the visit was not intended for him, so he said to the Englishman: “You have made a mistake, it is the Dr. Channing who preaches that you want, I am the Dr. Channing who practises.”

Very sore feelings are apt to be engendered between men who are constantly being confused together, and in the following case one of the parties did not adopt the means best suited to heal differences, but laid himself open to a well-merited rebuke. Two men bearing the same names lived in the same country town. One was a clergyman of the Church of England, and the other was a Dissenting minister. On a certain occasion the clergyman received a letter intended for the minister, which he forwarded with a note to this effect—“Had you not taken a title (Rev.) to which you have no claim, this mistake would not have occurred.” Shortly afterwards a parcel containing some lithographed sermons intended for the clergyman were delivered by mistake to the minister, who sent them on with this note—“Had you not undertaken an office for which you appear to be unfitted, this mistake would not have occurred.”

In the previous pages a few of the chief difficulties of the Index-maker have been commented upon: stumbling-blocks with which he is too well acquainted, but which are very generally ignored by others. He must endeavour to attain perfection, but he will always have the unpleasant feeling that something may have been missed, and so strong was this feeling with a contributor to the Notes and Queries that he sent the following acrostic as a motto for an Index:—[53]

I   I
N  never
D  did
E  ensure
X  exactness

The Index-maker of modern days must needs depend upon himself, for he has not the help that the young man mentioned by Giraldus had when he could discern the false passages in a book by the crowd of devils which they attracted. Such devils as these would be invaluable in a printing office!

If, however, the Indexer, in common with the Bibliographer, has his troubles, he has his reward, for we have already seen that the claims of a big book to notice have been grounded upon its possession of a good index, and De Morgan, when entering his own Elements of Arithmetic in the account of Arithmetical Books, writes:—“Books of Bibliography last longer than elementary works, so that I have a chance of standing in a list to be made two centuries hence, which the book itself would certainly not procure me.”

There is, therefore, hope for us that when our other works are forgotten, we may still live as the compilers of an index.

[Since the previous pages have been printed off, I have been told by Dr. Greenhill of Hastings that our late learned friend Thomas Watts of the British Museum spoke to him about the formation of an Index Society as early as the year 1842.

I am also able, through the kindness of Mr. Macray, to illustrate the printer’s blunder on page 53 from a work by one of the most careful and trustworthy of editors, viz., “Historie of ... Edward IV. 1471,” edited by John Bruce 1838 (Camden Society). At p. 7 we read: “Wherefore the Kynge may say as Julius Cæsar sayde, he that is nat agaynst me is with me.”]

The following rules have been drawn up by the Committee, in order to obtain uniformity in the compilation of their Indexes. They are not considered as final, and can be added to as occasion may require.

In some few points the respective rules for Cataloguing and for Indexing are identical, but in the majority of instances the rules made for the former will not apply to the latter.

Those who require rules for Cataloguing should obtain the British Museum Rules, Mr. Cutter’s full Rules, forming the second part of the Special Report on American Libraries, and the short Rules drawn up by a Committee of the American Library Association, and printed in the Library Journal.