CHAPTER V.
Different Classes of Indexes.
"Of all your talents you are a most amazing man at Indexes. What a flag too, do you hang out at the stern! You must certainly persuade people that the book overflows with matter, which (to speak the truth) is but thinly spread. But I know all this is fair in trade, and you have a right to expect that the publick should purchase freely when you reduce the whole book into an epitome for their benefit; I shall read the index with pleasure."—William Clarke to William Bowyer, Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. 3, p. 46.
N dealing with the art of the indexer it is most important to consider the different classes of indexes. There are simple indexes, such as those of names and places, which only require care and proper alphabetical arrangement. The makers of these often plume themselves upon their work; but they must remember that the making of these indexes can only be ranked as belonging to the lowest rung of the index ladder.
The easiest books to index are those coming within the classes of History, Travel, Topography, and generally those that deal almost entirely with facts. The indexing of these is largely a mechanical operation, and only requires care and judgment. Verbal indexes and concordances are fairly easy when the plan is settled; but they are often works of great labour, and the compilers deserve great credit for their perseverance. John Marbeck stands at the head of this body of indefatigable workers who have placed the world under the greatest obligations. He was the first to publish a concordance of the Bible, [17] to be followed nearly two centuries later by the work of Alexander Cruden, whose name has almost become a synonym for a concordance. After the Bible come the works of Shakespeare, indexed by Samuel Ayscough (1790), Francis Twiss (1805), Mrs. Cowden Clarke (1845), and Mr. John Bartlett, who published in 1894 a still fuller concordance than that of Mrs. Clarke. It is a vast quarto volume of 1,910 pages in double columns, and represents an enormous amount of self-denying labour. Dr. Alexander Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon (1874) is something more than a concordance, for it is a dictionary as well.
[ [17] "A Concordance, that is to saie, a worke wherein by the ordre of the letters of the ABC ye maie redely finde any worde conteigned in the whole Bible, so often as it is there expressed or mencioned ... anno 1550."—Folio.
A dictionary is an index of words. We do not mention dictionaries in this connection to insist on the fact that they are indexes of words, but rather to point out that a dictionary such as those of Liddell and Scott, Littré, Murray, and Bradley, reaches the high watermark of index work, and so the ordinary indexer is able to claim that he belongs to the same class as the producers of such masterpieces as these.
Scientific books are the most difficult to index; but here there is a difference between the science of fact and the science of thought, the latter being the most difficult to deal with. The indexing of books of logic and ethics will call forth all the powers of the indexer and show his capabilities; but what we call the science of fact contains opinions as well as facts, and some branches of political economy are subjects by no means easy to index.