CHAPTER II.
Amusing and Satirical Indexes.
"It will thus often happen that the controversialist states his case first in the title-page; he then gives it at greater length in the introduction; again perhaps in a preface; a third time in an analytical form through means of a table of contents; after all this skirmishing he brings up his heavy columns in the body of the book; and if he be very skilfull he may let fly a few Parthian arrows from the index."—J. Hill Burton's Book-Hunter.
NE of the last things the genuine indexer thinks of is to make his work amusing; but some wits have been very successful in producing humorous indexes, and others have seen their way to make an author ridiculous by satirically perverting his meaning in the form of an ordinary index. We can find specimens of each of these classes.
Leigh Hunt has a charming little paper, "A Word upon Indexes," in his Indicator. He writes: "Index-making has been held to be the driest as well as lowest species of writing. We shall not dispute the humbleness of it; but since we have had to make an index ourselves, [6] we have discovered that the task need not be so very dry. Calling to mind indexes in general, we found them presenting us a variety of pleasant memories and contrasts. We thought of those to the Spectator, which we used to look at so often at school, for the sake of choosing a paper to abridge. We thought of the index to the Pantheon of Fabulous Histories of the Heathen Gods, which we used to look at oftener. We remember how we imagined we should feel some day, if ever our name should appear in the list of Hs; as thus, Home, Howard, Hume, Huniades, ——. The poets would have been better, but then the names, though perhaps less unfitting, were not so flattering; as for instance Halifax, Hammond, Harte, Hughes, ——. We did not like to come after Hughes."
[ [6] To the original edition of the Indicator; the reprint (2 vols. 8vo, 1834) has no index.
The indexes to the Tatler and the Spectator are full of piquancy, and possess that admirable quality of making the consulter wish to read the book itself. The entries are so enticing that they lead you on to devour the whole book. Hunt writes of them: "We have just been looking at the indexes to the Tatler and Spectator, and never were more forcibly struck with the feeling we formerly expressed about a man's being better pleased with other writers than with himself. Our index seemed the poorest and most second-hand in the world after theirs: but let any one read theirs, and then call an index a dry thing if he can. As there 'is a soul of goodness in things evil' so there is a soul of humour in things dry, and in things dry by profession. Lawyers know this, as well as index-makers, or they would die of sheer thirst and aridity. But as grapes, ready to burst with wine, issue out of the most stony places, like jolly fellows bringing burgundy out of a cellar; so an Index, like the Tatler's, often gives us a taste of the quintessence of his humour." The very title gives good promise of what is to be found in the book: "A faithful Index of the dull as well as the ingenious passages in the Tatlers."
Here are a few entries chosen at random: