The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica : A handbook containing…

FOR JOURNALISTS AND AUTHORS [Sidenote: The Development of Style] No writer can consider the use he will make of the tools of his trade—and the Britannica is certainly the chief among them—unless he has very definite views as to the particular kind of work he is trying to do. Where writing is regarded as a business, the art of writing is the art of being read, and the art of being read lies, nowadays, in convincing the reader that you have something fresh to say, rather than in arousing his admiration of your way of saying it. Writing is none the less one of the fine arts: the modern writer must form his style with the utmost care, and always guard himself against the temptation to relax his standards. But the juggling with words, the “rhythmical sequences of recurring consonants,” the musical prose in which sounds are adjusted as artfully as in verse, presuppose readers to whom these elaborations are delightful. Such readers are rare, to-day. Thirty or forty years ago it was a matter of course, in thousands of homes, for some one member of the household to read aloud to the others. The custom has almost disappeared, and there has been a change in public taste, due, perhaps, in great measure to a change in the _pace_ at which people read. A book does not “last” as it did. Newspaper reading has trained the eye and the mind to swifter consumption. The modern professional writer adapts himself to the existing conditions. He knows that those who ride in automobiles do not peer under tufts of leaves to look for roadside violets. But he also knows that they want a straight, smooth road. He endeavors to write as concisely as possible, yet to write so clearly that every point he makes is made once for all; and he can work fully as hard, and apply talents fully as great, in forming a style that pleases by its simple directness—or, better, that pleases because the reader does not think of it as “style,”—as if he were aiming at the most elaborate ornament. [Sidenote: “Vitalized Observation”] In developing the power of clear and concise statement, the first essential is to form the habit of getting your “something to say” absolutely plain to your own mind before you attempt to say it. A writer deliberately strives to be wordy and vague when he is trying to misrepresent facts, and it is impossible, when he is groping for his facts, that he should avoid wordiness and vagueness. The Britannica article on Rudyard Kipling speaks of his “powers of observation vitalized by imagination.” It would be difficult to find a phrase more tersely describing the ideal equipment of a writer, and Kipling’s observation is rapid observation _amplified by deliberate investigation_. He gets a swift impression of the complex framework of a ship or of the intricate machinery of a locomotive, and then, before he writes “The Ship that Found Herself” or “.007,” he makes as elaborate a technical study as if he were writing an engineering article instead of a story. His imagination so vitalizes the result that when you read the story, although it describes beams and valves you never saw, you recognize the accuracy of his technical description as you recognize, in an art gallery, the fidelity of a portrait, although you never saw the person portrayed. In using the Britannica, the investigation by which you amplify your personal observation helps you in four ways. _First_, you correct your facts if they need correction. Whatever your subject may be, you find information so authoritative that you cannot question it. _Second_, you amplify your own observations; you discover the underlying causes and relations of the events or opinions you are about to discuss. _Third_, the reading by which you have, consciously or unconsciously, been influenced in forming your style, is rendered more profitable and stimulating by your study of the Britannica articles in which the work of all the world’s great writers, past and present, is analyzed by the most brilliant critics. [Sidenote: Models of Style] _Fourth_, you have in the Britannica itself such examples of scholarly, forcible, compacted English as cannot often be found in contemporary books. It is not within the province of this Guide to institute detailed comparisons between these articles by the leading literary men of the day and other writings from the same pens. But the reader will discover for himself that the editorial policy which demanded rigorous concision has stimulated, not hampered, the distinguished writers whose Britannica articles are, in case after case, the best of their productions. [Sidenote: Practical Tests] The foregoing summary of the uses of the Britannica to writers is based upon reviews of the work which have appeared in the daily and weekly press; and it may be supplemented by brief extracts from one or two letters to the publishers, written by men whose reputations give their opinions great weight. In one of these Horace White, formerly editor of the _Evening Post_ of New York, spoke highly of the practical utility of the Britannica. Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York _World_, shortly before his death wrote: “I want to thank you for the intellectual pleasure I enjoyed this winter in examining this extraordinary production. I have already distributed a dozen sets in America as presents among _editors_ and my children. [He afterwards ordered six more sets.] The work is a liberal education.” John Habberton wrote: “The new edition of the Britannica has already cost me hundreds of hours that I should have given to my work, but I do not regret the outlay, for I have been richly repaid. There never was a handier book for a desk or a more readable one.” It is not only true that no ordinary library would supply the information to be found in the Britannica, but it is as true, and as relevant, that no ordinary library presents information in a form as stimulating to the writer who uses books as the tools of his trade. The editor-in-chief of the Britannica had all the world’s greatest experts in all fields of human knowledge and endeavour to choose from. He chose in each instance the expert whose knowledge was so thorough, and whose correlation of his special knowledge with related branches was so complete, that his articles are not merely “last word” information but interesting and alive. You may remember the new interest you felt in natural science when you first read an essay by Huxley, because he had the power of creating enthusiasm. It is a justifiable figure of speech to say that, in this sense, the Britannica has been written by Huxleys. Perhaps you have ransacked a public library for some out-of-the-way fact and finally found it, in skeleton form, and in crabbed German, in _Meyer_ or _Brockhaus_ or some other German encyclopaedia. Or did your search end by finding the fact in _Larousse_ or _La Grande Encyclopédie_, in some clever phrase, so brilliantly written, so strikingly put, that it was the phrase and not the fact that you had got—and you felt that the Frenchman had hidden the fact, if he ever had had it, in his epigram? You may have wished, then, for a third type of encyclopaedia which should be “German-thorough” and “French-interesting.” Such a combination is the Britannica,—more authoritative, more up-to-date, more interesting, than any other book. [Sidenote: The Journalist’s Needs] A newspaper man, reporter or editor, must be informed at a moment’s notice on any one of so large a number and so wide a range of topics that the best library of reference obtainable can be none too good for him. This is especially true of the man on the smaller newspaper which does not have the luxury of specialists on its editorial staff, or of many reporters dividing among them the work of gathering news on such lines that each may work in a field with which he is intimately acquainted and in which he is particularly versed. And the rural newspaper is, besides, further from good public libraries and financially less able to have a large office library. The authority, the scope, the interest and the convenience of the Britannica make it just the book to fill these varied needs of the newspaper man. If he has to write a “murder story” in which some unusual poison has been used, he can find a full description of the origin, the use, the action and the tests of the drug by turning to the Britannica—instead of hunting for (and then through) a text book on medicine. And if, on the same day, or the next, he must write an editorial on the tariff, he will find in the article TARIFF, in the articles FREE TRADE and PROTECTION, and in that part of the article UNITED STATES which deals with the country’s economic history, the information that he wants; and he can get it quickly, and can be sure of its being authoritative. If the Britannica is evidently _the_ work of reference for the writer, how is he to use it? It has already been suggested that he will find authoritative and recent information on any topic connected with the subject on which he is writing. It would be interesting to see—or at least to imagine—how largely the Britannica might be used as a source for fiction. A novelist with an appetite for human documents like Balzac’s or like that of Charles Reade—with his many albums full of newspaper clippings,—could satisfy himself with the Britannica, taking his characters “from life” in its biographical and historical articles and his setting from its geographical articles. [Sidenote: Literary Criticism] It has already been suggested that the writer will find in the Britannica the clearness and conciseness of style which he cannot but wish to attain in his own work. Here he has the writings of great masters of English. He may remember Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of how he played “the sedulous ape” to the great stylists; and in the Britannica he can read not only an excellent sketch of Stevenson by Edmund Gosse, his friend and a well-known essayist, but Stevenson’s own article on Béranger. He may read Matthew Arnold on Sainte-Beuve; Walter Besant on Froissart and on Richard Jefferies; John Burroughs on Walt Whitman; G. W. Cable on William Cullen Bryant; Edmund Kerchever Chambers on Shakespeare: Ernest Hartley Coleridge on Byron; Sidney Colvin on Giotto, Leonardo, etc.; Austin Dobson on Fielding, Hogarth, Richardson, etc.; Henry van Dyke on Emerson; John Fiske on Francis Parkman; Richard Garnett on T. L. Peacock and on Satire; Israel Gollancz on “The Pearl”; Edmund Gosse on many literary _genres_, on Ibsen, etc.; Edward Everett Hale on James Freeman Clarke and on Edward Everett; Frederic Harrison on Ruskin; W. E. Henley on James Fenimore Cooper; William Price James on Barrie, Henley and Kipling; Prince Karageorgevitch on Marie Bashkirtseff; Stanley Lane-Poole on Richard Burton; Andrew Lang on Ballads, Molière, etc.; Henry Cabot Lodge on Albert Gallatin; E. V. Lucas on Jane Austen and Charles Lamb; Lord Macaulay on Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson and Pitt; David Masson on Milton; Brander Matthews on Mark Twain; Alice Meynell on Mrs. Browning; William Minto on Dryden, Pope, Spenser and Wordsworth; John Nichol on Robert Burns; Charles Eliot Norton on George William Curtis; Mark Pattison on Casaubon, Erasmus, Macaulay and Thomas More; W. H. Pollock on Thackeray and de Musset; Quiller-Couch on Thomas Edward Brown; Whitelaw Reid on Greeley; C. F. Richardson on Bronson Alcott and John Fiske; W. M. Rossetti on Shelley; Viscount St. Cyres on Fénelon and Madame Guyon; Saintsbury on French literature, Balzac, Montaigne, Rabelais, etc.; Carl Schurz on Henry Clay; H. E. Scudder on Lowell and Harriet Beecher Stowe; Thomas Seccombe on Boswell, Dickens, Charles Lever, etc.; William Sharp (“Fiona McLeod”) on Thoreau; Clement Shorter on the Brontës, Crabbe, Cowper and Mrs. Gaskell; W. W. Skeat on Layamon; E. C. Stedman on Whittier; Sir Leslie Stephen on Browning and Carlyle; Richard Henry Stoddard on Hawthorne; Swinburne on Beaumont and Fletcher, Congreve, Hugo, Landor, Marlowe, Mary, Queen of Scots; John Addington Symonds on the Renaissance, Machiavelli, Tasso, etc.; Arthur Symons on Hardy, Mallarmé, Verlaine; W. P. Trent on Sidney Lanier; A. W. Ward on Drama; Mrs. Humphry Ward on Lyly; Theodore Watts-Dunton on Poetry, Sonnet, Borrow, Wycherley, Matthew Arnold; Arthur Waugh on William Morris, Walter Pater; and G. E. Woodberry on American Literature. The more you know of the subjects or authors in this list the more likely you will be to say what a Western professor of theology said, in reviewing the articles in the Britannica dealing with the Bible: “They are the very authorities that I would have chosen to write these articles!” But the Britannica will serve the professional author in other ways than by giving him information in special fields and by keeping before him admirable models of style. He might well follow any of the courses suggested in the chapter on _Literature_ in this Guide; and if he will read the articles on great authors written by great authors, already mentioned, he will have a doubly valuable course in biographical criticism by the ablest of literary critics. Any newspaper writer or contributor to the periodical press should read such articles as: [Sidenote: Newspapers and Magazines] NEWSPAPERS (Vol. 19, p. 544; equivalent to 125 pages of this Guide), by Hugh Chisholm, editor-in-chief of the Britannica, with sections on the price of newspapers by Lord Northcliffe, on illustrated papers by Clement Shorter, general information on American newspapers, and an elaborate historical account of British, American and foreign newspapers. PERIODICALS (Vol. 21, p. 151; equivalent to 40 pages in this Guide), by Henry Richard Tedder, librarian of the Athenaeum Club of London, treats the subject under the heads: _British_, _United States_, _Canada_, _South Africa_, _Australia and New Zealand_, _West Indies and British Crown Colonies_, _India and Ceylon_, _France_, _Germany_, _Austria_, _Italy_, _Belgium_, _Holland_, _Denmark_, _Norway_, _Sweden_, _Spain_, _Portugal_, _Greece_, _Russia_, and _other Countries_. SOCIETIES, LEARNED (Vol. 25, p. 309), also by H. R. Tedder, deals with the publications of such societies and classifies them (with geographical sub-classification for each head) under _Science Generally_, _Mathematics_, _Astronomy_, _Physics_, _Chemistry_, _Geology_, _Mineralogy_ and _Palaeontology_, _Meteorology_, _Microscopy_, _Botany and Horticulture_, _Zoology_, _Anthropology_, _Sociology_, _Medicine and Surgery_, _Engineering and Architecture_, _Naval and Military Science_, _Agriculture and Trades_, _Literature_, _History and Archaeology_, and _Geography_. Local information in regard to newspapers and journalism will be found in separate local articles. Thus under Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, New Orleans, San Francisco, etc., there is valuable information in regard to these cities as literary centers and about their principal periodical publications, including newspapers; and in the articles on smaller cities, such as Albany and Springfield, Mass., there are valuable historical sketches of the local press of each. [Sidenote: Literary Biographies] The newspaper man should read the biographies of great American printers and editors: WILLIAM BRADFORD (Vol. 4, p. 370); BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (Vol. 11, p. 24; equivalent to 20 pages of this Guide); ISAIAH THOMAS (Vol. 26, p. 867); NOAH WEBSTER (Vol. 28, p. 463); WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (Vol. 4, p. 698); JAMES G. BIRNEY (Vol. 3, p. 988); GAMALIEL BAILEY (Vol. 3, p. 217); W. L. GARRISON (Vol. 11, p. 477); JAMES GORDON BENNETT (Vol. 3, p. 740); THURLOW WEED (Vol. 28, p. 466); GIDEON WELLES (Vol. 28, p. 506); JOHN BIGELOW (Vol. 3, p. 922); HORACE GREELEY (Vol. 12, p. 531); HENRY J. RAYMOND (Vol. 22, p. 933); GEORGE RIPLEY (Vol. 23, p. 363); C. A. DANA (Vol. 7, p. 791); GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS (Vol. 7, p. 652); CARL SCHURZ (Vol. 24, p. 386); SAMUEL BOWLES (Vol. 4, p. 344); JOSEPH R. HAWLEY (Vol. 13, p. 101); WHITELAW REID (Vol. 23, p. 52); GEORGE W. CHILDS (Vol. 6, p. 141); E. L. GODKIN (Vol. 12, p. 174); and HENRY WATTERSON (Vol. 28, p. 418). The reading of these biographies will give the student many interesting starting-points for studies in American politics, economics, literature, reform movements as widely separated as abolition and the introduction of the merit system into the civil service. The author should also read the article AMERICAN LITERATURE (Vol. 1, p. 831; equivalent to 35 pages of this Guide), by Professor G. E. Woodberry, and, if his field is that of the publicist, he should read the article on the history of the UNITED STATES (Vol. 27, p. 663), equivalent to 225 pages of this Guide; and the allied articles to which he is referred from that. The advertising writer will find a valuable and stimulating article on ADVERTISEMENT (Vol. 1, p. 235, equivalent to 20 pages in this Guide), which gives a history of the subject, deals with posters and signs, circulars, periodical advertising, and legal regulation and taxation. For a full list of articles of particular usefulness for the author, see the chapter _Literature_ in this Guide. The following brief list may serve as the basis for a preliminary course of reading. Alliteration Ana Anecdote Anthology Anticlimax Antithesis Aphorism Apologue Apophthegm Archaism Assonance Bathos Belles-Lettres Biography Book Book-Collecting Bookselling Burlesque Comedy Criticism Dialogue Drama Elegy Encyclopaedia Epic Poetry Epigram Epilogue Epistle Essay Euphemism Fable Feuilleton Gazette Humour Hyperbole Idyll Impromptu Index Irony Lampoon Laureate Legend Libraries Limerick Litotes Lyrical Poetry Manuscript Melodrama Metaphor Metonymy Metre Monologue National Anthems Newspapers Novel Ode Pamphlets Parable Paradox Paraphrase Parody Pasquinade Periodicals Philippics Plagiarism Pleonasm Poetry Proof-Reading Prose Prosody Proverb Psalm Pseudonym Pun Quatrain Quotation Reporting Rhetoric Rhyme Rhythm Romance Saga Satire Song Sonnet Squib Stanza Style Tale Tract Treatise Verse