of the sciences was so called by the Greeks, and Vitruvius[[449]] has thence naturalized encyclium in Latin. Nevertheless we admit that the initial en would have euphonized but badly with the word Penny: and the English Cyclopædia is the augmented, revised, and distributed edition of the Penny Cyclopædia. It has indeed been said that Cyclopædia should mean the education of a circle, just as Cyropædia is the education of Cyrus. But this is easily upset by Aristotle's word κυκλοφορία,[[450]] motion in a circle, and by many other cases, for which see the lexicon.
The earliest printed Encyclopædia of this kind was perhaps the famous "myrrour of the worlde," which Caxton[[451]] translated from the French and printed in 1480. The original Latin is of the thirteenth century, or earlier. This is a collection of very short treatises. In or shortly after 1496 appeared the Margarita Philosophica of Gregory Reisch,[[452]] the same we must suppose, who was confessor to the Emperor Maximilian.[[453]] This is again a collection of treatises, of much more pretension: and the estimation formed of it is proved by the number of editions it went through. In 1531 appeared the little collection of works of Ringelberg,[[454]] which is truly called an Encyclopædia by
Morhof, though the thumbs and fingers of the two hands will meet over the length of its one volume. There are more small collections; but we pass on to the first work to which the name of Encyclopædia is given. This is a ponderous Scientiarum Omnium Encyclopædia of Alsted,[[455]] in four folio volumes, commonly bound in two: published in 1629 and again in 1649; the true parent of all the Encyclopædias, or collections of treatises, or works in which that character predominates. The first great dictionary may perhaps be taken to be Hofman's Lexicon Universale[[456]] (1677); but Chambers's[[457]] (so called) Dictionary (1728) has a better claim. And we support our proposed nomenclature by observing that Alsted accidentally called his work Encyclopædia, and Chambers simply Cyclopædia.
We shall make one little extract from the myrrour, and one from Ringelberg. Caxton's author makes a singular remark for his time; and one well worthy of attention. The grammar rules of a language, he says, must have been invented by foreigners: "And whan any suche tonge was perfytely had and usyd amonge any people, than other people not used to the same tonge caused rulys to be made wherby they myght lerne the same tonge ... and suche rulys be called the gramer of that tonge." Ringelberg says that if the right nostril bleed, the little finger of the right hand should be crooked, and squeezed with great force; and the same for the left.
We pass on to the Encyclopédie,[[458]] commenced in 1751; the work which has, in many minds, connected the word encyclopædist with that of infidel. Readers of our day are surprised when they look into this work, and wonder what has become of all the irreligion. The truth is, that the work—though denounced ab ovo[[459]] on account of the character of its supporters—was neither adapted, nor intended, to excite any particular remark on the subject: no work of which D'Alembert[[460]] was co-editor would have been started on any such plan. For, first, he was a real sceptic: that is, doubtful, with a mind not made up. Next, he valued his quiet more than anything; and would as soon have gone to sleep over an hornet's nest as have contemplated a systematic attack upon either religion or government. As to Diderot[[461]]—of whose varied career of thought it is difficult to fix the character of any one moment, but who is very frequently taken among us for a pure atheist—we will quote one sentence from the article "Encyclopédie," which he wrote himself:—"Dans le moral, il n'y a que Dieu qui doit servir de modèle a 1'homme; dans les art, que la nature."[[462]]
A great many readers in our country have but a very hazy idea of the difference between the political Encyclopædia, as we may call it, and the Encyclopédie Méthodique,[[463]] which we always take to be meant—whether rightly or not we cannot tell—when we hear of the "great French Encyclopædia." This work, which takes much from its
predecessor, professing to correct it, was begun in 1792, and finished in 1832. There are 166 volumes of text, and 6439 plates, which are sometimes incorporated with the text, sometimes make about 40 more volumes. This is still the monster production of the kind; though probably the German Cyclopædia of Ersch and Gruber,[[464]] which was begun in 1818, and is still in progress, will beat it in size. The great French work is a collection of dictionaries; it consists of Cyclopædias of all the separate branches of knowledge. It is not a work, but a collection of works, one or another department is to be bought from time to time; but we never heard of a complete set for sale in one lot. As ships grow longer and longer, the question arises what limit there is to the length. One answer is, that it will never do to try such a length that the stern will be rotten before the prow is finished. This wholesome rule has not been attended to in the matter before us; the earlier parts of the great French work were antiquated before the whole were completed: something of the kind will happen to that of Ersch and Gruber.
The production of a great dictionary of either of the kinds is far from an easy task. There is one way of managing the Encyclopædia which has been largely resorted to; indeed, we may say that no such work has been free from it. This plan is to throw all the attention upon the great treatises, and to resort to paste and scissors, or some process of equally easy character, for the smaller articles. However it may be done, it has been the rule that the Encyclopædia of treatises should have its supplemental Dictionary of a very incomplete character. It is true that the treatises are intended to do a good deal; and that the Index, if it be good, knits the treatises and the dictionary into one whole of reference. Still there are two stools, and between them a great deal will fall to the ground. The dictionary portion of the Britannica is not to be compared with its
treatises; the part called Miscellaneous and Lexicographical in the Metropolitana[[465]] is a great failure. The defect is incompleteness. The biographical portion, for example, of the Britannica is very defective: of many names of note in literature and science, which become known to the reader from the treatises, there is no account whatever in the dictionary. So that the reader who has learnt the results of a life in astronomy, for example, must go to some other work to know when that life began and ended. This defect has run through all the editions; it is in the casting of the work. The reader must learn to take the results at their true value, which is not small. He must accustom himself to regard the Britannica as a splendid body of treatises on all that can be called heads of knowledge, both greater and smaller; with help from the accompanying dictionary, but not of the most complete character. Practically, we believe, this defect cannot be avoided: two plans of essentially different structure cannot be associated on the condition of each or either being allowed to abbreviate the other.