Following my post on The joys of indexing, the erudite Hannibal Taubes has taken time out from his intrepid explorations of Chinese village temples to alert me to the fine subject index of A Stuffed owl: an anthology of bad verse, edited by D.B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee (1930).

It’s a fine collection anyway, from which few major British poets are exempt:

 He suddenly dropt dead of heart-disease—Tennyson

 Forgive my transports on a theme like this
I cannot bear a French metropolis—Johnson

 Salubrious hinds the festive dance explore—John Nichols

This piteous news so much it shocked her
She quite forgot to send the doctor—Wordsworth

If there is no such anthology for Tang poetry, then someone should compile one forthwith.

Indexes for such works, like Lexicon of musical invective or, um, Bazza pulls it off, can take on a life of their own:

Beethoven, light thrown on his ancestry, xv; his shaky octave-playing, 6

Byron, believed to be a poet, 235; his low character, 236; his career sketched in a few bold strokes 236–7

England, small but well-known, 200; emphatically undegenerate, 202

Italy, not recommended to tourists, 125; examples of what goes on there, 204, 219, 221

Liverpool, rapture experienced at, 196

For another unlikely index, see here.