Cross referencing has its curiosities as well as other branches of our subject. Perhaps the most odd collection of cross references is to be found in Serjeant William Hawkins's _Pleas of the Crown_ (1716; 5th ed., 1771; 7th ed., 4 vols., 1795), of which it was said in the _Monthly Magazine_ for June, 1801 (p. 419): "A plain, unlettered man is led to suspect that the writer of the volume and the writer of the index are playing at cross purposes."
The following are some of the most amusing entries:
"Westminster Hall _see_ Contempt and Lie."
This arrangement of some of the cross references is perhaps scarcely fair. They are spread over several elaborate indexes in the original, and in their proper places do not strike one in the same way as when they are set out by themselves. One of the instances given by the critic in the _Monthly Magazine_ is unfairly cited. It is there given as "Assault _see_ Son." The cross reference really is, "Assault _see_ Son Assault."
Hawkins's work is divided into two parts, and the folio editions have two indexes, one to each part; the octavo edition has four indexes, one to each volume.
The index to Ford's _Handbook of Spain_ contains an amusing reference:
Besides these four divisions of the chief faults in indexing, there are many other pitfalls gaping wide to receive the careless indexer.
Names are a great difficulty, but it is not necessary to refer to these more generally here, as they are fully dealt with in the rules (_see_ Chapter VI.)
It is not often that an English indexer has to index a French book, but should he do so he would often need to be careful. The Frenchman does not care to leave that which he does not understand unexplained. The translation of _Love's Last Shift_ as _La Dernière Chemise de l'Amour_, attributed by Horace Walpole to the Dowager Duchess of Bolton in George I.'s reign, is probably an invention, but some translations quite as amusing are genuine. G. Brunet of Bordeaux, having occasion in his _La France Littéraire au XV^e siècle_ to mention "White Knights," at one time the seat of the Duke of Marlborough, translates it into _Le Chevalier Blanc_. When Dr. Buckland, the geologist, died, a certain French paper published a biography of him in which it was explained that the deceased had been a very versatile writer, for besides his work on geology he had produced one _Sur les Ponts et Chaussées_. This was a puzzling statement, but it turned out to be a translation of _Bridgewater Treatises_, in which series his _Geology and Mineralogy_ was published in 1837.