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The unwise seem to be of opinion that any fool can
index, but we have already seen that the wise think
differently.—Wheatley’s What is an index? 1879, p. 41.
The beginning of every book should be a table of contents, or an
analytical table, or both, and the end a good index.
I can scarcely over estimate the importance which I attach to the index.
A book may almost as well be unwritten, as be without an index.
The publications by “a lady,” are exceedingly deficient in indexes. It
is amazing that authors who must have felt the want of indexes in the
works of others should publish their own without such helps.
It would occupy too much space to give all the opinions I have collected
of different authors entreating others never to publish a book without
an index. Allibone never loses an opportunity, in his Dictionary of
English Literature, of impressing upon his readers the importance of
indexes. See more particularly an article of absorbing interest under
the name of Samuel Ayscough of the British Museum, celebrated for his
most useful indexes to Shakespeare, to that grand storehouse of
information “The Gentleman’s Magazine” (obit. 1868), to “the Monthly
Review,” and other works. Of such importance indeed does Allibone
consider indexes, that, not content with insisting on them throughout
his three ponderous volumes, he, on the very last page, gives a note
“Concerning Indexes.” Often a good index obtains for a book a prominent
position it might not otherwise obtain; as, for example, Godfrey
Higgins’s “Anacalypsis,” which is said to be in the reading room of the
British Museum, from its containing[29] “thousands of statements cited
from all quarters, and very well indexed.” What would Watt’s Bibliotheca
Britannica be without its two volumes of index to two volumes of
authors. Bibliographical and biographical works beyond everything
require the most minute indexes.
Footnote 29:
Athenæum, 2 Aug. 1856, p. 953, quoted by Allibone in his Dictionary,
p. 843. See also p. 3140, and refer also to Ayscough, Mary Cowden
Clarke, Godfrey Higgins, John Nichols, and other articles in Allibone
and to his Alphabetical Index to the New Testament, Phil. [1868],
published under his initials only.
Formerly I was in love with the scientific look of a number of indexes,
but I am now convinced that two heads are not better than one in this
case and that one index is more useful than two. A person who consults
an index wants to find something as quickly as possible, if there is
only one index he cannot consult the wrong one first.
It has been suggested by Prof. De Morgan that historians by having no
indexes, think to oblige their readers to go through their works from
beginning to end. The contrary being the result.
If book buyers made a rule of not buying a book without an index,
authors and publishers would then supply that want.
Beware, however, of snares, for such there are in this as in all else,
big books with lean, lanky, and starved indexes.
Since the above was written the “Index Society” has come into existence,
and published an indispensable little work, entirely devoted to this
subject entitled: What is an index? a few notes on indexes and indexers
by Henry B. Wheatley ... [motto] London, Longmans 1879. Besides being
useful this is a most amusing book.
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