THE " HANDY VOLUME " ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
To praise the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannioa would be superfluous. It is a literary institution of which the English-speaking peoples may be proud. We have used it daily for ten years, and we have never found it inaccurate or inadequate for any matters that were known up to 1910. It is incomparably the best and most complete encyclopaedia ever published in any language, and is a triumph at once of international scholarship and of American and British enter- prise and organizing power. We are glad, therefore, to see a " handy volume " reprint of the familiar work in twenty-nine volumes, including the index, which can be sold at a lower price. The new form is a broad octavo, about three-quarters of the height of the older quarto. American " India paper," commendably tough and opaque, is used. Each volume is reproduced exactly, with one or two exceptions, page for page and line by line, including all the excellent maps and illus- trations. The reprint is, we take it, a photographic facsimile on a reduced scale, and it does credit to the Chicago printers. The one and only criticism that can be made is that the type, as reduced, is very small, resembling that of the miniature Prayer Book, which is a trial to older eyes in the dim religious light of most churches. We are bound to add, however, that the small type is clear and that we ourselves find it more legible than, say, the type used in some of the cheap reprints of classics which used to be published in the good old days, or, to give another instance, than the type of the much over- rated Elzevira which our forefathers used to collect. The reduction in the size of the page and the type of course makes the Encyclopaedia much easier to consult. The twenty-nine compact octavos in their small bookcase take up very little space ; they can be put in a corner of any study or office, and they can be very easily moved about. On the whole, then, we are inclined to think that many people may even prefer the " handy volume " edition to the older issue. It is a wonderful production, and, as a veritable treasury of knowledge, it deserves to have the largest possible circulation.
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