"COMPOSITE" BOOKS.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 312, 26 September 1908, Page 14

"COMPOSITE" BOOKS.

No doubt the ideal book is one that has been conceived by a single mind and cast' practically at a single jet. Nevertheless composite'books exist, and it is curious to consider several'.of tho ways in which they come into existence. Ono may apply the designation, for example, to the "abridgments" of the . eighteenth century. In thoso days the "abridgers of books" and the " answerers of books" wero two of tljo chief plagues of letter?. Of the former Goldsmith's readers know from one of his " Chinese letters." It was their office, when a new book was published, to assail and decry _ it, to indicate its faults and show how it might have been improved. They were, worse, however, than mere "slashing critics," for their slashing was often applied to the moral character of the writer, and they, became experts in defamation. On the other hand, the abridgers were simply pirates. They boiled down the same book and put it upon the market in a handier form and at a smaller price. Dunton, who, howover, was, as all men know, "crazod in his intellectuals," passes in ah often quoted passago into his 6avage mood when ho thinks of this trick of those hackney authors "that koep their grinders moving by tho travail of their pens." Thoy aro " goriqandisers," not. literally, but in tho sense that they "'will cat you the very life out of a copy as soon as it appears." Moreover, they aro so numerous and active .that, "as times aro, original and abridgment aro almost reckoned as necessary as man and wife." , Of the same s as tho abridger, but obscure and guiltless, is tho "ghost." It is not to bo wondered at that men who aro great workers in scicnco but no penmen, should havo been known to hand their mattor over to a scribo to bo put into book form, but tlio same thing happens in literature. 'Dumas is, of course, the olassic instance. Tho ablest of Dumas's ghosts was perhaps that Augusta Maquet wlio',l in tho "glorious thirties," callod himself Augustus M'Koat, for tho saiho reason as his friend, Thcophile Domloy, called himself I'hilothco O'Neddy, namely pour donncr un peu de bizaiTcrie et do truculeiicp a un 110111 trop bourgeois. Some rashly talk as if Maquet's part in " Lo Vicomto. do Bragolonno" had been not only to furnish tho bricks, but ajso the material of which tho bricks wore made. At any 'rate, his spectral relation with Dumas was so well known that once when the latter asked a guest how ho liked a sauce ho had invented, tho guest asked, "Did Maquet mako it?" A curiously ghosted book is Daudpt's "Premier Voyage," Those' who read it first in an edition' of Flammarion's took it for a holograph Daudet. The book was autobiographical in form, aiid tho novelist's namo stood alone upon tho title-page. The only suspicious thing was that the style_ was liko a sparkling wine that had lost ita sparkle.

Readers of tho English translation of 1901 learned that an English journalist had had something to do wjth it, but almost entirely as Daudet's amanuensis. Later on, however, it turned out to be a joint production of tho journalist and tho novelist, the former deserving tho lion's share of the credit. Very closo to such a ghost comes the literary fellow-worker, and ono of the interesting things about literary partnerships is the homogeneity of the work they invariably turn put. It is generally impossible to split the double star. No reader would of himself have guessed at the dual authorship of that charming book "The Golden Butterfly." No reader knowing it can assign the various parts to the respective authors, even with the help of books written by Besant alone. Mr. Lang is not so apt to admit readers to his literary workshop as Stevenson was, or he might tell us how the labour of "Parson Kelly " was divided between himself' and Mr. Mason, Perhaps in many cases the authors themselves could'.not claim their own. An idea developed by long discussion becomes so differpnt from its first state as to belojig wholly to neither of its creators. —" Manchester' Guardian."