IT IS WRITTEN

Evening Star, Issue 22881, 12 February 1938, Page 3

IT IS WRITTEN

[Written by Mabt Scott, for the 1 Evening Star.’] What is the magic of print? Strange how that pathetic belief still persists that a thing is true because we see it in print. One of Shakespeare’s clowns says: “ I Jove a ballad in print o’ life, for then we are sure they are true.” Print o’ life; in short, one of the eternal verities. The belief is older than print itself, for a great Roman poet has said: “ Non credom nisi lego ” —“ I won’t believe it till I read it.” Evidently, then, parchment or papyrus carried with it the same weight, the same conviction of veracity, as print. It is written; therefore it is true. There is something sublime in such a confidence.

To those of us who earn our living by our writings, poor though they may be, there is at times an agonising papg in a printer’s error. I lately found_ a journalist suffering acutely from a mistake that had transformed his enthusiasm for the “ long vistas of Oxford ’’ into a delight in its 1 “ long, long visitors.” How- simple the change; a little more—and what worlds away! For, however we may appreciate visitors, we seldom dote on them for their length—unless, indeed, it refer to the cubits of their stature and not to the longdrawn hours of their visitations. My friend, indeed, seemed to feel m warmth towards Oxford and its visitors at all; but the language ho applied to that erring printer was hot in the extreme. Yet he had taken a chance when on holiday and sent that article on Oxford in his own handwriting—and his script is almost as bad as my'own. I marvelled at his temerity and congratulated him on escaping so lightly at the hands of a harassed compositor. Now, were I to attempt to send these weekly articles in my own handwriting the result would be merely to put the whole burden of composition upon the printer. Of course, he might like that. Should he happen to be one of those mute inglorious Miltons who had long desired to see himself,in print, he would surely realise that his hour had come. If, on the other hand, he chanced to bear me a grudge for sentiments he scorned and yet had been obliged to print for years, he would seize upon his opportunity for revenge. He could publish any drivel he liked to attribute to me; even when the manuscript was closely studied, no one would be in the position to upbraid him. I make this confession reluctantly, for there are few things I admire more than a pretty and clerk-like hand. It often seems to denote a -rare ahd charming mind; we know that an artist seldom writes an ugly script, and we can quote a dozen instances of great literary men whose handwriting must have been a joy not only to themselves, but to their printers. Moreover, ft is an attribute of a generation and a class now passing from us ; when I receive a letter from the friends of my parents I am struck with the elegance and beauty of the writing. “ The handwriting of a lady ”; I remember hearing the phrase in my youth. How sadly,' then, have I fallen from ■ grace when my own writing resembles most closely the track of an inebriated spider that has almost drowned in the ink-bottle and now is tearing madly home across the page. . . . But then the previous generation did not appear to have to struggle against such modern enemies as neuritis and,, writer’s cramp, ':■■■ Some printed errors have become notorious and have cost their makers dear enough. There was that Aiithorised Version of the Bible whose printers were fined £3,000 in Charles I.’s Court of High Commission for a mistake which consisted merely in the omission of the little word “ not.” But in how awkward a context! Surely some evil sprite prompted the printer to make that error in the printing of the seventh Commandment! But at that time anyone could print copies of the English Bible and they swarmed with mistakes that must have delighted the ungodly. For example, that little “not” was-again omitted from that verse in I. Corinthians with dire results. “ Know ye not that the unrighteous ‘ shall ’ inherit the kingdom of God?” It is reported that one such Bible actually contained 6,000 errors. But it was not only the careless commercial printer bent on profit who made mistakes; Pope Sixtus V. issued an'edition of the Bible which simply bristled with errors, although His Holiness had personally scrutinised every page. Of course, the heretics were pleased, and the church filled with consternation. They did what they could; at first calling in copies and pasting slips of paper containing the correct version over the errors; when the patchy appearance of the book made it an object of derision they attempted to suppress the whole edition, with such success that any copies that survived became of great value. Such, then, are the commercial possibilities contained even 1 in printers’ errors.

I have always felt the liveliest sympathy for proof readers; how tired they must become of our weekly meanderings! How they must know our sentiments by heart and yawn at sight of our favourite adjectives! A writer recently said, wittily if exaggeratedly, that “ A proof corrector’s general knowledge cannot be too wide; it should, indeed, embrace everything knowahle, from the price of peanuts in Whitechapel to the exact day and date when Anne Boleyn was beheaded.” How fortunate that they do not expect a similar omniscience from authors!

At the same time, however great one’s confidence in proof readers, an author likes to have a glance at his proofs. I know that 1 experienced some perturbation of heart when my last book went to press—partly through by own dilatoriness in the first place—without allowing me opportunity to read the proofs for myself. One shudders at the idea of a book launched into the cold, hard world of reviewers without the author’s privilege of afterthoughts. Things look so different in print. We feel kindly and sometimes even enthusiastic towards our efforts in manuscript; there is something portentous and irrevocable about the printed word. We gaze at it in dismay ; surely wo did not use that hoary old cliche? Is is possible that that is the conclusion which caused us so much gratification? Yet there is nothing to be done about it; it is written, and there’s an end. I remember feeling a sympathetic pang for an essayist who had once quoted that lovely poem of Marvell’s, ‘ Thoughts on a Garden,’ and lived to see the first word of those two lines Annihilating all that’s made lo a green thought in a green shade transformed into “ Humiliating.” Yet the same writer was once sorely tempted to let another error stand; again ho had quoted a poem—Beaumont’s lines on the Mermaid Tavern, ending with the words • . . And when that was gone We left an air behind us.

But “ air ” had not been strong enough for. the printer, whose supercharged emotions found vent in changing the word to “ ass.” The writer admitted that he would have allowed that inspiration to remain but for the thought of his reviewers—and those letters signed “ Constant Reader ” and “ Literary.”

To return for a moment to that sufferer in silence—the proof corrector. A pamphlet has lately been published setting out his responsibilities. It is enough to make an Admirable Crichton pause and think again before he embraces that profession. “ A reader who merely follows copy and detects the obvious errors is not worthy of the name. He must he certain that the author is stating what he intends; if statements be vague, the reader should draw attention thereto. His duty includes the detection of inconsistencies between type and copy, between copy and illustrations, mis-statements and misrepresentations of facts, figures and dates, inaccuracies in quotations, errors in grammar, rhetorical slips, and many other defects.” Well, if he must do all that, small wonder that the only famous corrector of the Press —that Alexander Cruden of Concordance fame—went out of his mind. Who could blame him? One other question arises: if the corrector knows all this about every subject, why is he content with being a reader? Why is he not an author? The answer, I suppose, is that ho has his pride; he will not fall as low as that.