ABSTRACT
Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers contains an anecdote about a man who gathered material for a work on Chinese metaphysics from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was no obstacle that, as Mr. Pickwick reasonably points out, the Encyclopaedia Britannica had no article on the subject. “ ‘He read, sir,’ rejoined Pott, laying his hand on Mr. Pickwick's knee, and looking round with a smile of intellectual superiority, ‘he read for metaphysics under the letter M, and for China under the letter C, and combined his information, sir.’ ”
