NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 88, 13 April 1912, Page 13

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA AND HISTORY. FIFTH "ARTICLE. Daily the endless roll of the world's history unwinds from the cylinders of the newspaper press; daily the chroniclers, annalists, and commentators abstract, collate, condense, compress, and strive to gather the general significance of the result. With the records of the remote past, the annals of centuries of civilisation, and the accumulating memoranda of later days, it is an enormous mas 6 of matter with - which the editors of the Encyclopedia have had to deal, and even, with the aid of the most distinguished specialists, and full access to 'the Tesources of one of the world's great universities, the task of preparing for the general -reader, the student, author, or journalist a digest in moderate compass and accessible form which should at the same time be reasonably adequate — was a. task upon, which no single mind could venture. It is a task which no company of collaborators could bring to v successful issue without unusual abilities and quite exceptional experience. In the case of the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica all these conditions ha>ve been brought together, while modern systematisation of studies in all departments, conjoined with unprecedented advancement in the industrial arts associated with literature, have mado possible the result; and every volume in this as in other departments is a standing tribute to the unity of purpose and the superb order and method observed by those responsible for its execution. The field of history is, required to extend over many departments. Each of the great civilisations demands a special article, besides numerous separate subjects associated with each. It must separately embrace important "ountriee, kingdoms, and territories, past and present, with the thousand subjects sug gested thereby, and the innumerable individual biographies inseparably associated therewith. To these have still to be added critical records of conspicuous religious and social phenomena such as "Crusades", and ',' Reformation," or significant marks oi phases in current thought, a* '* Renaissa-nce " and '"Arbitration." History^ touches in some point nearly overy section of the book; the arts and industries are interwoven in a thousand ways with the development of nations and peoples, ,and with human progress in general. Under the head of "Numismatics," for example (illustrated, by_ the way, with' a splendid typical series of coins and medals, represented by exquisite photo-etchings direct from originals), as in the broader fields — also illustrated — of painting and sculpture, innumerable sidelights are thrown on the arts and religious beliefs? of peoples famous in history: the effigies of their monarchs adorn their coins, and iheir gode are imaged in marble and on uniaded frescoes. The world has begun to realise some of its debt in modern days to such inventions as that of printing, to the 'harnessing of steam, and later of electricity; the Encyclopedia treats history from the scientific and science from the historic standpoint. The present is not to be understood save as the heritage of the past, and in the present attitude of human thought, whether the subject be philosophic biologic, or psychologic, to be satisfactorily placed before the student, it requires to be treated on the comparative system. Take, almost at random, the article "Pianoforte," occupying sixteen pages, or thirty-two columns. Here the whole group of keyed stringed instruments set' before us, from the first combination, in the fifteenth century, of the keyboard of the " organistrum " with the " clayichordium." The article is as much historic as it is musical or mechanical. The whole evolution of the instrument is traced, with the aid of between thirty and forty diagrams, beginning with the earliest known illu stratum of the modern keyboard — an image in St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, of an angel striking "a. chord on. an organ of a single octave— -and showing the successive advances in ''action" and frame, in most ?aees- with inventor's name ana date of patent, till we come to a " barless grand " of to-day, and — quite a supplementary evolution — the modern automatic player of the "pianola" type. The world of science being treated as a unity and as a whole, as in process of continual evolution, the comparative and historic methods are inevitable, and the oJd views of history have altered. The editors} do weU to call attention to the disappearance of vast and unreadable maeses of statistics, carried down, to the latest possible dates, which may be found in earlier editions. Such matter, recording at most temporary phenomena, or series of events at a passing phase, through quite in place in blue books or year books, form no part of the present book, and the relief is great. Such matter is not history j it may occasionally, foi* certain purposes, supply useful material, but it is not science, ancb as little resembles literature. It i» at best dead matter—its place is now taken by information very much alive, and not liab'e to be superseded. History and Geography, however subdivided in details, are as inseparable a* man from the world on which no dwells. Within living memory Africa has yielded its age-long mysteries to the explorer, and the Darkest Continent has become a highway "from Cape to Cairo." Greenland has twice been crossed by an American, and the same intrepid explorer, if h© did not actually carry off the blue ribbon of the frozen* seas, at least in his last dash came very iie<ii the Pole. Much more is now known of the world than wheiistbe Tenth Edition was completed, and very much more than when the first volume' of the Ninth (containing the 'article "Africa") appeared. Researches in these fascinating regions ma\ almost be said to be brought up to date" in the Eleventh Edition. As regards the Antarctic, it brings the story up to Shackleton's discoveries and the despatching of Scott' 6 expedition. And in geography, as in other sciences, the reader has the advantage in the biographical articles of that personal note, which adds its interest to every branch of study. In the special department of biography the Encyclopedia is unsurpassed. In no sense of limitation (as in the monumental "Dictionary of National Biography") can the* qualifying "Britannica" of the title be understood. Not only do the distinguished men of Great Britain, but of all the British Dominions, including living celebrities, take a place. Looking near home, wo find, among other familiar names, Sir George Grey, Sir William Fox, Sir H. A. Atkinson, R. J. Seddon (we may pause to note the completeness, conciseness, and admirable taste of this notice, without any suggestion that it is exceptional in these respects), and F. E. Maning, of "Old New Zealand." American celebrities — Randolph of Roanoke, for exainple — receive almost as liberal a share of attention as if the book had been an "Americana," and we have already adduced the article "Goetho" as instancing the absence of anything like "insularity" in the plan of the work, either in its construction or method of execution. Length, though not to bo taken as a.ay gauge of the interest ot the respective articles, in in *some measure necessarily pvopoi tioned to the imjxwta.Mce 0/ tbfi eubjeci., -"Aifwd, the Gr*&". gt}-.

cupies between two and three pages — a considerable space when the remote era and scarcity of authentic material are considered. To "Shakespeare" twenty -six pages are assigned, besides two plates, in which are reproduced all the known portraits. This is a composite article, initials of several leading authorities being appended to respective sections. "Milton" occupies twelve pages; "Queen Victoria" nine. Into the limited compass of the Royal biography a wonderful amount of information is compressed — even the picturesque episode of " The Boy Jones "is recorded. This question of valueto must have been perpetually in the foreground, and that it is not bo simple as at first sight might appear was illustrated lately when Mr. Andrew Carnegie published his list of the " twenty greatest men," twelve of whom were in ventors, principally in the iron trade. Inventors have their due proportion of recognition in tho Encyclopedia, but a man is none the greater that great results have flowed from his happy invention or discovery- In the case, however, of one Englishman, who, apart from hi 6 renowned invention, was a man as many-sided as lie was single-minded, and was certainly " great " — Sir Isaac Pitman — the brief thirty-five lines of the Encyclopedia is scarcely balanced (in the personal aspect) by the long article on " Shorthand." There is a casual reference to Sir Isaac's work in phonography in association with Dr. Alexander Ellis, but for this " EIHb " has to be sought, and there is no crossreference. Usually biographic notices are supplemented by a bibliography— in this case it is strange that no reference i 6 made to the " Biography " by his lifelong friend and fellow-worker, T. A. Reed, and " Sir Isaac Pitman," written, illustrated, and decorated by his artistic brother Benn, of Cincinnati. These booke are indispensable to anyone interested in Isaac Pitman's- life — that is, anyone who has not access to the reformer's constant writings of nearly fifty years, and time to read them. Space fails, but we will mention the brief note of another inventor and many-sided man, an artist and latest of all a deservedly successful novelist — William Frend De Morgan — whose "work the Encyclopedia records as far as "It Never Can Happen Again" (1909).