I certainly think that the best book in the world would owe the most to good index, and the worst book, if it had but a single good thought in it, might be kept alive by it.
So essential did I consider an index to be to every book, that I proposed to bring a bill into Parliament to deprive an author who publishes a book without an index of the privilege of copyright, and, moreover, to subject him for his offence to a pecuniary penalty.
