BOOKS WHICH WERE NOT THOUGHT WORTH THE PRINTING.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 581, 18 November 1880, Page 1 (Supplement)

BOOKS WHICH WERE NOT THOUGHT WORTH THE PRINTING.

■ All the world knows the history.of 'Jane Eyre ;' how it was written', in tlie grey old parsonage under the Yorkshire hills ; how the rough notes, sketched : hastily in pencil, were transcribed in a neat hand as-legible as print, and-how the manuscript, in its brownpaper wrapper, was sent off from the small station-house iit Keigliley to publisher after publisher, only to find its way back again, returned with thanks,' till'the packet, scored all over with publisher's names, aud, ■well-nigh worn out by its travels, found its way into the hands of Messrs. Smith & Elder with a stamped envelope inside for a' reply. Tins story of 'Jane Eyre' is, with authors who cannot fin-5 a publisher, one of the standing .sources of consolation, and it is a.very striking instance of the loose way in which publishers' readers'now and then iook through manuscripts thai find their -way into their hands, even if it does not prove that publishers,- dike "womeu, though-they caufc about.geinaSj-'-cannofc divine its existence till .all .the .world point with , th.e,.hand ; for Mossrs. Smith & Elder's reader was so struck with the tale that, Scot as lie.was, lie sat up half'.tlie night to finish it. But some allowance ought to be made even for the readers, for it must be dull, tedious work to spell out the'plot'of 'a story, or to find the probfs 'of genius in a loose pile of manuscript which you hardly perhaps de-. cipher except with a glass, and perhaps not always with that. Francis Jeffrey knew so wi;lfcthe-. diffi.cul:ty of. farming an opinion up-' 6ii aia:artick : vfrpm-.reading,it in manuscript, tlfat in sending his first, article to. the ' Edm-'. biangK after Jxe liacti-eliuquishecCthe editorship,- he stipulated that : Mr. Napier should not attempt to read it until he could read it in'type; and the editor of the Saturday Review,' a few years ago, useel to 'have e very article that seemed worth publishing set up in type before he made up his mind whether to accept or reject it. Everything, as Charles Lamb used to say, is apt to read so raw in manuscript. ' It is the most difficult .thing in the world to know how an article will read from looking at it in manuscript, so difficult that even "authors themselves., men of long and \aried experience, men like Moore and Macaulay, could seldom form an opinion upon their own writings until they saw how they looked in print.: 'And-when that is the case with the author, how must it be with theppurb r lislier or liis reader, and with the editor of a publication, who has to malie up his mind about the merits of half-a-dozen manuscripts ■in the course of a morning ! Yet, after all, 1 suspect that very few articles and very few books that are worth printing a,re lost to the world, for the competition among publishers for manuscripts is only one degree less keen than' the competition among authors for publishers, and an author, who has ..anything/worth printing is seldom long without •a ; publisher. I happen to know the sficret : : history of a book whichhasiongsince taken itsrar kamong' the classics of English literature—l mean ' Eothen.' It was written years and years before it was published ; -written with care and thought; revised in the keenest spirit of criticism, and kept under look and key for a long time. It is a book which, as far as workmanship goes, exemplifies, in a very striking form Slienstone's rule for good writing—'Spontaneous thought, laboured expression,' and there are few books of travel which equally abound in adventure, incident, sketches of character, and personal romance. It • is, as Loekhart well said, an English classic. But when Alexander Kinglake offered it to the publishers, they refused ifc one and all, refused it upon any terms, and the author at last, out of conceit with his manuscript and perhaps with himself, walked into a bookseller's shop in Pall Mall, explained the adventures of the manuscript, and made it a present to the publisher if he thought it worth printing. The first edition lingered a little on his hands, till a notice in the ' Quarterly lleview,' from the pen. of Lockhart, called attention to it, and the printer's difficulty after that was to keep pace with the demand. I hope lam not violating any confidence by adding that the; publisher, year by year, for many years, sent Mr. Kinglake a check for £IOO every Christmas Day.— 'Belgravia.'