ENCYCLOPEDIA BItITANNICA.*
Tan publication of the general Index to a new Encyclopedia, or what is virtually a new Encyclopedia, a completely remodelled edition of the largest national Encyclopedia, is an event somewhat akin to the opening of a new railway. What railways are to locomo- tion, Encyclopedias are in a sense to thought. As in the one beauties of landscape and route are sacrificed to efficiency and use, so in the other, literary and artistic qualities give way to knowledge considered in itself. Not that the highest literary merits may not find place in an Encyclopedia, any more than railways are debarred frompassing through a beautiful country. But in both cases utility, not effect, is, or should be, the main scope and aim in view. Should be, we say, for amid the vast improvement discernible in modern Encyclopedias, especially the one before us, conspicuous perhaps in no feature more than the eminence in almost every department of the contributors concerned, the wide application of the division of labour to their efforts, and the maturity thus attained in the results, we doubt whether in every instance those who are called upon to co-operate in the production of a'universal dictionary have very clearly kept before them what the true end of an encyclopedia really is. In some cases the contributor has not -sufficiently considered the problem before him. In others he knows clearly what he ought to do, but the materials do not exist, or they are not at hand. The topic deserves attention, since few books have a more truly scientific and ,general bearing than an encyclopaedia. We may lay it down absolutely, that knowledge, and knowledge only, is the whole end of, a dictionary. Ideas, reflections, speculations, refinements, ornaments, are wholly out of place, and except as they spring organically out of the very subjects themselves have no place there, except by the mistaken grace and courtesy of the editor. But we wish not to be nusunderstood. If a particular article happens to be upon " ideas" as a branch of knowledge, the detail of that class of ideas cannot be too minute. Take the word "stoicism." A good encyclopedic article on the subject of stoicism, if complete, will give the scientific parentage of the creed, its development, the total list of the pure and mixed maxims due to it, their evolution and incorporation into other creeds—the whole treated in the perfection of order, perspicuity, aud. accuracy. No idea appertaining to the pedigree or filiation up or down the chain should be omitted. On the other hand, the writer's own comments, his likes or dislikes of the scheme and its principles,' however just, however striking, original, or beautiful, are impertinent to the matter in hand. Their place would be in the psychological, • The Rneget9pextia Britannica; or, Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, sad General
Literature. Eighth edition. Index. Edinburgh: .Adam and Charles Black. .
life of the writer himself, when his turn came to be embalmed. Ina word, the end of a dictionary is didactic, not disoiplinal or persuasive. Simple as this principle may appear, and affording as it does the very touchstone of the worth of a book of reference, we have scarcely an idea of the extent to which it is practically disregarded. It is a common complaint that a student. scarcely ever turns to a dictionary for exact information on a precise point without being in some measure disappointed. A thousand things he finds about and about and about what he wants, but the very thing is not there. Now a perfect dictionary ought to give in lucid language the catalogue of all the Facts belonging to every subject it professes to touch, and not an iota more, so that, on having run his eye down the list, the reader might close the book with the assurance that if not there, what he wants is in fact not known. The Germans have given a name to encyclopedias which most happily embodies both what they are, and what they ought not to be. They call them Conversations- Lexicons, books to which you may turn for something to say about. any given subject. The reverse should be the rule. A good dictionary upon any subject should be one from which a reader, could not by possibility derive any reflection but what his own mind supplied on the perusal of naked facts. We have thus dwelt upon this subjectbecause we believe itto be of fundamental importance in one of the most useful branches of intellectual labour of the day. We hasten to say that we are indulging in no sidelong reflection upon the spirited undertaking now brought to a successful close by the publishers of the eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. To criticize it in two columns is out of the question. General reflec- tions alone can be of any use. Of the great weight of the work little more need be said than to quote some of the names from the great list of first-rate men whose labours enrich this maximum opus. Ira Natural Philosophy the Herschels, Brewsters, and Thomsons, in Natural History the Owens and Balfours, in Biography Lord Ma- caulay, and a host of writers versed in their special subjects, these instances give only a faint idea of the number of distinguished men whose names appear in the Encyclopedia Britannica. On the whole, perhaps, and on a first acquaintance, we are least satisfied with the articles on Law, and most so with those upon Geography. It will not, of course, be expected for a moment that the true defini- tion of an encyclopedia, as we have endeavoured to lay it down, has been adhered to. We must not forget the commercial difficulties under which publishers labour. Their first object is to give their edition the sanction of the greatest possible names in the intellec- tual world. But it does not always follow that every man who has a great name will write a good article for an encyclopedia. Emi- nence and encyclopedic knowledge seldom go together. Eminence re- sults far more from the wise rejection and throwing overboard of much knowledge, than from the storing up of useless baggage to hamper the activity of the mind. Moreover, great contemporary eminence is largely due to moral qualities, fine tact, and a variety of things distinct from absolute intellectual pre-eminence. As a rule, the fifth wrangler will rise higher in life than the first. The use of the first consists, in sporting phrase, in having made the running. But in a good ency- clopaedia, all facts are equally valuable, if true ; and the omnivorous maw, the last condition of contemporary success among meu, is the first among encyclopedias. Therefore, although great names ensure dignity to a cyclopedia, they do not warrant its highest perfection, but rather the reverse. Moreover, publishers in their pursuit of great names are necessarily compelled to postpone the consideration of the relative importance of subjects in themselves. If Sir John Bluebottle is great on the bluebottle, the bluebottle will fill ten columns, while barely a couple wilt be allotted to the elephants, because there happens to be no Sir Hargrim Elephant who is great on the elephant. All these are matters which deserve to be con- sidered, if we are ever to look forward to the possession of a trea- sure which to our longing eyes seems to be as far off as the Mil- lennium—a perfect Encyclopedia.
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