The defect of all others which it is most difficult to avoid is inequality of performance. Take any dictionary you please, of any kind which requires the association of a number of contributors, and this defect must result. We do not merely mean that some will do their work better than others; this of course: we mean that there will be structural differences of execution, affecting the relative extent of the different parts of the whole, as well as every other point by which a work can be judged. A wise editor will not attempt any strong measures of correction: he will remember that if some portions be below the rest, which is a disadvantage, it follows that some portions must be above the rest, which is an advantage. The only practical level, if
level there must be, is that of mediocrity, if not of absolute worthlessness: any attempt to secure equality of strength will result in equality of weakness. Efficient development may be cut down into meager brevity, and in this way only can apparent equality of plan be secured throughout. It is far preferable to count upon differences of execution, and to proceed upon the acknowledged expectation that the prominent merits of the work will be settled by the accidental character of the contributors; it being held impossible that any editorial efforts can secure a uniform standard of goodness. Wherever the greatest power is found, it should be suffered to produce its natural effect. There are, indeed, critics who think that the merit of a book, like the strength of a chain, is that of its weakest part: but there are others who know that the parallel does not hold, and who will remember that the union of many writers must show exaggeration of the inequalities which almost always exist in the production of one person. The true plan is to foster all the good that can be got, and to give development in the directions in which most resources are found: a Cyclopædia, like a plant, should grow towards the light.
The Penny Cyclopædia had its share of this kind of defect or excellence, according to the way in which the measure is taken. The circumstance is not so much noticed as might be expected, and this because many a person is in the habit of using such a dictionary chiefly with relation to one subject, his own; and more still want it for the pure dictionary purpose, which does not go much beyond the meaning of the word. But the person of full and varied reference feels the differences; and criticism makes capital of them. The Useful Knowledge Society was always odious to the organs of religious bigotry; and one of them, adverting to the fact that geography was treated with great ability, and most unusual fullness, in the Penny Cyclopædia, announced it by making it the sole merit of
the work that, with sufficient addition, it would make a tolerably good gazetteer.
Some of our readers may still have hanging about them the feelings derived from this old repugnance of a class to all that did not associate direct doctrinal teaching of religion with every attempt to communicate knowledge. I will take one more instance, by way of pointing out the extent to which stupidity can go. If there be an astronomical fact of the telescopic character which, next after Saturn's ring and Jupiter's satellites, was known to all the world, it was the existence of multitudes of double stars, treble stars, etc. A respectable quarterly of the theological cast, which in mercy we refrain from naming, was ignorant of this common knowledge,—imagined that the mention of such systems was a blunder of one of the writers in the Penny Cyclopædia, and lashed the presumed ignorance of the statement in the following words, delivered in April, 1837:
"We have forgotten the name of that Sidrophel who lately discovered that the fixed stars were not single stars, but appear in the heavens like soles at Billingsgate, in pairs; while a second astronomer, under the influence of that competition in trade which the political economists tell us is so advantageous to the public, professes to show us, through his superior telescope, that the apparently single stars are really three. Before such wondrous mandarins of science, how continually must homunculi like ourselves keep in the background, lest we come between the wind and their nobility."
Certainly these little men ought to have kept in the background; but they did not: and the growing reputation of the work which they assailed has chronicled them in literary history; grubs in amber.
This important matter of inequality, which has led us so far, is one to which the Encyclopædia is as subject as the Cyclopædia; but it is not so easily recognized as a fault.
We receive the first book as mainly a collection of treatises: we know their authors, and we treat them as individuals. We see, for instance, the names of two leading writers on Optics, Brewster[[466]] and Herschel.[[467]] It would not at all surprise us if either of these writers should be found criticising the other by name, even though the very view opposed should be contained in the same Encyclopædia with the criticism. And in like manner, we should hold it no wonder if we found some third writer not comparable to either of those we have named. It is not so in the Cyclopædia: here we do not know the author, except by inference from a list of which we never think while consulting the work. We do not dissent from this or that author: we blame the book.
The Encyclopædia Britannica is an old friend. Though it holds a proud place in our present literature, yet the time was when it stood by itself, more complete and more clear than anything which was to be found elsewhere. There must be studious men alive in plenty who remember when they were studious boys, what a literary luxury it was to pass a few days in the house of a friend who had a copy of this work. The present edition is a worthy successor of those which went before. The last three editions, terminating in 1824, 1842, and 1861, seem to show that a lunar cycle cannot pass without an amended and augmented edition. Detailed criticism is out of the question; but we may notice the effective continuance of the plan of giving general historical dissertations on the progress of knowledge. Of some of these dissertations we have had to take separate notice; and all will be referred to in our ordinary treatment of current literature.[[468]]