How to make an index / by Henry B. Wheatley.

  • Henry B. Wheatley
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: How to make an index / by Henry B. Wheatley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is this understanding that has made many writers jeer at so-called index-learning. Thus, in the seventeenth century, Joseph Glanville, writing in his Vanity of Dogma- tizing, says : “ Methinks ’tis a pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learnt from an index, and a poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another’s treasure.” Dr. Watts alluded to those whose “learn¬ ing reaches no farther than the tables of contents ”; but then he added a sentence which quite takes the sting from what he had said before, and shows how absolutely needful an index is. He says : “ If a book has no index or table of contents, ’tis very useful to make one as you are reading it.” Swift had his say on index-learning, too. In the Tale of a Tub (Section VII.) he wrote : “ The most accomplisht way of using books at present is twofold : Either serve them as some men do Lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance. Or secondly, which in¬ deed is the choicer, the profounder and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the Index, by which the whole book
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