THE “ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA”

Abstract

IN the article ENCYCLOPÆDIA, which finds a place in the second of the volumes now before us Mr. Lyons defines an encyclopædia as a book treating of all the various kinds of knowledge. The definition applies well enough to the older encyclopædias, composed when it was still thought practicable to set forth in a single work, all that was worth knowing in science and art. To define the province of a modern encyclopædia is a more difficult task, which will probably be avoided by every one who is not compelled either to plan and edit a work of the kind, or to review an editor's plan. Smaller cyclopædias, on the type of the “Conversations Lexicon”, naturally limit themselves to such an abstract of miscellaneous information as may be of service to the ordinary reader. No article is admitted which requires for its comprehension either special preparation or special application. The “Encyclopædia Britannica” aims at something more than this; it addresses itself to the general readers, but it also has a real value for students. On this large plan it becomes very difficult to adjust the respective claims of the two classes to whom the work appeals, and the practical solution must probably be to give what is likely to attract purchasers of a special class without repelling the general public in larger numbers. This seems to be what Prof. Baynes has in view when, along with such articles of general interest as Mr. Freeman and Mr. Gardiner's ENGLAND, he gives us on the one hand an abstruse essay on ELASTICITY, bristling with mathematical formulæ, and on the other a selection of hints for success in playing EUCHRE.

The Encyclopædia Britannica.

Ninth Edition. Vols. vii. and viii. (Deacon to Fakir). (Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1877-78.)