INDEXES
I certainly think that the best book in the world would owe the most to a good index, and the worst book, if it had but a single good thought in it, might be kept alive by it.
So essential did I consider an index to be to every book, that I proposed to bring a bill into Parliament to deprive an author who publishes a book without an index of the privilege of copyright, and, moreover, to subject him for his offense to a pecuniary penalty.
An index is a necessary implement. * * * Without this, a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the readers within.
The index tells us the contents of stories and directs to the particular chapters.
How index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of science by the tail.
That roars so loud and thunders in the index.
And in such indexes, although small pricks
To their subsequent volumes, there is seen
The baby figure of the giant mass
Of things to come at large.
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