Litchfield enquirer., 1880-02-26

Books WHICH WERE NOT THouGHT WORTH THE PRINTING. All the world knows the his tory of "Jane Eyre :" how it was written Tn the gray old parsonage under the Yorkshire hills: how the rough notes, sketched hastily
 m pencil, were transcribed in d neat hand as legibe as print, and how the manuscript, in it's brown-paper wrapper was sent oil from the small station-hOuse at Beighley tnpuhsh- CT after publisher, only to find It's way lrck agaIn. Returned with thanks, till the pack ct, scored all over with publishers names, and well-nigh worn out by it's travels, found it's way into the hands of Messrs Smith & Elder with stamped envelope inside for reply. This story of 'Jane Eyre" is, with authors who cannot tipd a publisher one of the stand ing sources of consolation, and it is a very striking instance of the loose way in which publishers readers now and then look through manuscripts that find their way into their hands, even if it does not prove that publishers like women though they cant about genus, cannot divine it's existence tll all the world point with the hand for Messrs. Smith & El- ders reader was so struck with the tale that, Scot as he was, he sat up half the night tO tin- ish it. But some allowance ought to be made even for the readers, for it must be dull, tedi- ous work to spell out the plot of a story, or to find the proofs of genius in a loose pile of manuscript which you can hardly perhaps de- cipher except with a glass. and perhaps not always with that Francis Jeffrey knew SO well the difficulty of forming an opinion upon an article from reading it in manuscript, that in sending his first article to the Edinburgh Re view, after he had relinqushed the edtorship, he stipulated that MT. Napier should mol at tempt to read it until ne could read it in type; and the editor of the Saturday Review, few years ago, used to have every article that seem ed at all worth publishing set up in type be- fore he made up his mind whether to accept or reject it. Everything, as Charles Lamb used to say, IS apt to read 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 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 the publisher or his reader, and with the editor of a publication who has to make up his mind about the merits of half dozen manuscripts Tn the course of a morning! Yet, after all, 1 suspect that very few articles and very few books that are worth printing are lost to the world, for the compe- tition among publishers for manuscripts is on Iy one degree less keen than the competition among authors for publishers, and an author who has anything worth pri1ting is seldom long without publisher happen to know the secret history of book which has long since taken it's rank among the classics of Eng fish lterature-I mean ''Eothen." It was written years and years before it was publish ed written wi care and thought; revised in the keenest spirit of criticism, and kept un- der lock and key for long time. It is a book which, as far as workmanship goes. exempii- fled in very striking form ShenstOne's rule for good writing. Spontaneous thought, la- bored expression and there are few books of travel wh ch equally abound in adventure, in cident, sketches of character and personal TO- nance. It is, as Lockhart we'll said, an Eng fish classic. But when Alexander Kinglake offered it to the publishers, they refused il one aud all, refused it upon any terms, and the author at last. out of conceit with his nanu- script and perhaps with himself, walked into a book sellers shop in Pail Mall, explained the adventures of the manuscript, and made il present to the publisher if he thought it worth printing The first edition fingered llttle on his hands, till a notice ill the Quarterly Review from the pen of Lockhart, called attention to it. and the printers difficulty after that was to keep pace with the demand. 1 hope l am not violating any confidence by adding that the publisher year bv year. for many years, sent MT. Kinglake check for fl00 every Christmas day.-BegraUtG.