Part 2
All these annoyances, however, prickly though they appear, are but trifles in comparison with the extraordinary demands made upon Murray as a publisher. Impecunious playwrights, like poor Charles Maturin, pelt him with unsalable dramas and heartrending appeals for help. Impecunious essayists, like Charles Marsh, send papers to the _Quarterly_, and—before they are read—request fifteen pounds, “as money on manuscript deposited.” Impecunious patriots, like Foscolo—that bright particular star of sentimental Liberals—demand loans of a thousand pounds, to be repaid with literary work. Impecunious poets, like James Hogg, borrow fifty pounds with the lofty patronage of sovereigns. It is very amusing to note the tone assumed by the Ettrick Shepherd in his intercourse with a man of Murray’s influence and position. When he is in a good humor, that is, when he has negotiated a successful loan, he writes in this generous fashion: “Though I have heard some bitter things against you, I never met with any man whatever who, on so slight an acquaintance, has behaved to me so much like a gentleman.” Or again, “You may be misled, and you may be mistaken, my dear Murray, but as long as you tell me the simple truth as plainly, you and I will be friends.” If things go haltingly, however, and there is a delay in forwarding cheques, this magnificent condescension sharpens into angry protest. “What the deuce,” he writes vehemently, “have you made of my excellent poem,[1] that you are never publishing it, while I am starving for money, and cannot even afford a Christmas goose to my friends?” When a new edition of _The Queen’s Wake_ was printed in Edinburgh, a very handsome quarto selling for a guinea—which seems a heart-breaking price—Murray with his usual generosity subscribed for twenty-five copies; whereupon we find Hogg promptly acknowledging this munificence by begging him to persuade others to do likewise. “You must make a long pull and a strong pull in London for subscriptions,” he writes, with enviable composure, “as you and Mr. Rogers are the principal men I have to rely on.” There is something very tranquillizing in the gentle art of shifting one’s burdens to other shoulders. Genius flourishes like the mountain oak when it can strike root in the money-boxes of less gifted friends.
If tact and patience were both required in soothing Hogg’s petulant vanity and in providing for his extravagant habits, the task became harder and more thankless when Leigh Hunt presented himself in the field. I can imagine few things more delightful than to have had money transactions with a person of Leigh Hunt’s peculiar and highly original methods. He was a kind of literary Oliver, crying perpetually for more. When the _Story of Rimini_ was still uncompleted, it was offered by the poet to Murray with this diverting assurance:
“Booksellers tell me I ought not to ask less than four hundred and fifty pounds (which is a sum I happen to want just now), and my friends, not in the trade, say I ought not to ask less than five hundred, with such a trifling acknowledgment upon the various editions, after the second and third, as shall enable me to say that I am still profiting by it.”
Murray, evidently disconcerted by the coolness of this proposal, writes back with veiled and courteous sarcasm, suggesting that the manuscript be offered upon these terms to other publishers. Should they refuse to accept it, he is willing to print a small edition at his own expense, and divide the profits with the author, to whom the copyright shall be restored. Rather to our amazement, and perhaps to Murray’s, Leigh Hunt closes immediately with this very moderate offer; and as soon as the book appears he writes again, begging to have part of the money advanced to him. Murray’s reply is eminently characteristic of the man. The poem, he says, is selling well. Should the entire edition be exhausted, which he doubts not will be the case, the poet’s share of the profits would amount to exactly forty-eight pounds and ten shillings. He takes pleasure in enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds, and only asks that a receipt may be sent him for the same. The receipt is not sent until ten days are past, when it arrives accompanied by a long letter in which Leigh Hunt enlarges upon his pecuniary troubles—concerning these he is as explicit as Micawber—and proposes that Murray should now purchase the copyright of _Rimini_ for four hundred and fifty pounds, and let him have the money at once. Unhappily, the answer to this admirable piece of negotiation has been lost, but it was evidently too patronizing to please the poet, who was as sensitive as he was insatiable. The next letter we have from him sharply reminds Murray that he is not seeking for assistance, but merely endeavoring to transact a piece of business which would involve no possible risk for any one. Finally the poor harassed publisher persuades him with soft words to sell the copyright of _Rimini_ to another firm, and there must have been a deep breath of relief drawn in Albemarle Street when the matter was at last adjusted, and the troublesome correspondence ceased. In fact, there is a letter from Blackwood frankly congratulating Murray on his escape. “I dare say you are well rid of Leigh Hunt,” writes this experienced ally to his fellow-sufferer; “and I really pity you when I think of the difficulty you must often have in managing with authors, and particularly with the friends of authors whom you wish to oblige.”
One of those whom Murray wished eagerly to oblige, until he found the task too costly for his purse, was Madame de Staël. For the English and French editions of her work on Germany he paid no less than fifteen hundred pounds, and speedily found himself a loser by the transaction. Gifford, who had scant liking for the celebrated “hurricane in petticoats,” writes to him on the occasion with gentle malice, and a too evident amusement at his discomfiture: “I can venture to assure you that the hope of keeping her from the press is quite vain. The family of Œdipus were not more haunted and goaded by the Furies than the Neckers, father, mother, and daughter, have always been by the demon of publication. Madame de Staël will therefore write and print without intermission.” Not without being well paid, however; for three years later we find the Baron de Staël writing to Murray in his mother’s name, and demanding four thousand pounds for her three-volume work, _Des Causes et des Effets de la Révolution Française_. “My mother _insists_ upon four thousand pounds, besides a credit in books for every new edition,” says this imperative gentleman, somewhat in the manner of a footpad; to whom Murray responds with much tranquillity, thanking him for his “obliging letter,” and intimating that he and Longman together are willing to pay one thousand pounds for the first French and English editions, and three hundred and fifty pounds for the second. Madame de Staël indignantly repudiates this offer, declaring that twenty-five hundred pounds is the least she can think of taking, and that the book will be a bargain at such a price. Murray, who knows something about bargains, and who has been rendered more cautious than usual by his experience with _L’Allemagne_, declines such palpable risks, and excuses himself from further negotiations. _La Révolution Française_ did not appear until after Madame de Staël’s death, when it was published by Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock, and proved a lamentable failure, people having begun by that time to grow a trifle weary of such a thrice-told tale.
The most amusing and at the same time most pathetic bit of correspondence in these two big volumes relates to a translation of _Faust_, which Coleridge, so eminently qualified for the task, offers to write for Murray. He unfolds his views in a letter as long as an average essay—or what we call an essay in these degenerate days—evincing on every page a superb contempt for the reading public, which was expected to buy the book, a painful reluctance to “attempt anything of a literary nature with any motive of pecuniary advantage”—which does not prevent him from doing some elaborate bargaining later on—and a tendency to plunge into intellectual abstractions, calculated to chill the heart of the stoutest publisher in Christendom. There is one incomparable paragraph which Coleridge alone could have written, and a portion of which—only a portion—I cannot refrain from quoting:
“Any work in Poetry strikes me with more than common awe, as proposed for realization by myself, because from long habits of meditation on language, as the symbolic medium of the connection of Thought with Thought as affected and modified by Passion and Emotion, I should spend days in avoiding what I deemed faults, though with the full foreknowledge that their admission would not have offended three of all my readers, and might perhaps be deemed beauties by three hundred—if so many there were; and this not out of any respect for the public (_i.e._, the persons who might happen to purchase and look over the book) but from a hobby-horsical, superstitious regard to my own feelings and sense of Duty. Language is the sacred Fire in this Temple of Humanity, and the Muses are its especial and vestal priestesses. Though I cannot prevent the vile drugs and counterfeit Frankincense which render its flames at once pitchy, glowing, and unsteady, I would yet be no voluntary accomplice in the Sacrilege. With the commencement of a Public, commences the degradation of the Good and the Beautiful—both fade and retire before the accidentally Agreeable. _Othello_ becomes a hollow lip-worship; and the _Castle Spectre_, or any more peccant thing of Froth, Noise, and Impermanence, that may have over-billowed it on the restless sea of curiosity, is the true Prayer of the Praise and Admiration.”
Fancy the feelings of a poor publisher assailed with this raging torrent of words! Murray, stemming the tide as best he can, replies in a short, businesslike note, proposing terms—not very liberal ones—for the desired translation. Whereupon Coleridge writes a second letter, actually longer than the first, intimating that a hundred pounds is but scant remuneration for such a piece of work, “executed as alone I can or dare do it—that is, to the utmost of my power; for which the intolerable Pain, nay the far greater Toil and Effort of doing otherwise, is a far safer Pledge than any solicitude on my part concerning the approbation of the Public.”
Finally, the undertaking was abandoned, and the English-speaking world lost its single chance of having _Faust_ adequately translated; lost it, I truly believe, through the reluctance of even a patient man to stomach any further correspondence.
Trials of a very different order poured in on Murray through his connection with Lord Byron, an honor which was not altogether without thorns. People who thought Byron’s poetry immoral wrote frankly to Murray to say so. People who did not think Byron’s poetry immoral wrote quite as frankly to complain of those who did. His noble lordship himself was at times both petulant and exacting, and there is a ring of true dignity in the following remonstrance offered by the publisher to the peer, by “Mr. Bookseller Murray,” as Napier contemptuously calls him, to the poet whose good qualities he was so quick to understand:
“I assure you,” he writes, “that I take no umbrage at irritability which will occasionally burst from a mind like yours; but I sometimes feel a deep regret that in our pretty long intercourse I appear to have failed to show that a man in my situation may possess the feelings and principles of a gentleman. Most certainly do I think that, from personal attachment, I could venture as much in any shape for your service as any of those who have the good fortune to be ranked amongst your friends.”
In fact, the friends of authors were too often, as Blackwood hinted, the sources of Murray’s severest trials. Friends are obliging creatures in their way, and always ready to give with lavish hearts their wealth of criticism and opinion. There is a delightful letter from the Rev. H. H. Milman, Dean of St. Paul’s, offering to Murray his sadly unreadable poem _Belshazzar_, with this timely intimation: “I give you fair warning that all the friends who have hitherto seen it assure me that I shall not do myself justice unless I demand a very high price for it.” Murray, in reply, hints as urbanely as he can that, as it is he and not Mr. Milman’s friends who is to pay the price, he cannot accept their judgment in the matter as final; he is compelled to take into consideration his own chances of profit. Throughout all his correspondence we note this tone of careful self-repression, of patient and courteous kindness. Now and then only, particularly trying letters appear to have been left unanswered, as though the limits of even his endurance had been reached. When we remember that the _Quarterly_ was the cherished idol of his life, and that his pride and delight in it knew no bounds, we can dimly appreciate his feelings on receiving the following lines from Southey, whose principal income for years had been derived from the magazine’s most liberal and open-handed payments. “It is a great price,” writes the author of _Thalaba_, who has just pocketed a comfortable sum, “and it is very convenient for me to receive it. But I will tell you, with that frankness which you have always found in my correspondence and conversation, that I must suspect my time might be more profitably employed (as I am sure it might be more worthily) than in writing for your journal, even at that price.”
I am not wont to peer too closely into the secrets of the human heart, but I would like to know exactly how Murray felt when he read that letter. “Let me at least be eaten by a lion!” says Epictetus. “Let me at least be insulted by a genius!” might well have been the publisher’s lament.
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES
That innocent nondescript, the average reader, is suffering very sorely at the present day from what might be justly called the oppression or tyranny of notes. I hear, indeed, from time to time, bitter complaints of editorial inaccuracy, of the unscholarly treatment of quite forgotten masterpieces by the industrious gentlemen who seek to reintroduce them to the public; but such inaccuracy can wound only the limited number who know more than the editor, and who in their secret souls are not sorry to prove him wrong. The average reader, even though he hold himself to be of moderate intelligence, is happily ignorant of such fine shadings, and only asks that he may enjoy his books in a moderately intelligent manner; that he may be helped over hedges and ditches, and allowed to ramble unmolested where the ground seems tolerably smooth. This is precisely the privilege, however, which a too liberal editor is disinclined to allow. He will build you a bridge over a raindrop, put ladders up a pebble, and encompass you on every side with ingenious alpenstocks and climbing-irons; yet when, perchance, you stumble and hold out a hand for help, behold, he is never there to grasp it. He merely refers you, with some coldness, to a remote authority who will give you the assistance you require when you have reached the end of your journey. Mr. Ritchie, for example, who has recently edited a volume of Mrs. Carlyle’s early letters, expects you patiently to search for the information you want in Mr. Froude’s pages, which is always a disheartening thing to be asked to do. Yet when Jeanie Welsh, writing cheerfully of an inconstant lover, says, “_Mais n’importe!_ It is only one more Spanish castle demolished; another may start up like a mushroom in its place;” an explanatory note carefully reveals to you that “Spanish castle” really means “château en Espagne”—a circumstance which even Macaulay’s schoolboy would probably have deciphered for himself.
If it be hard on the average reader to be referred chillingly to modern writers who are at least within approachable distance, it is harder still to be requested to look up classical authorities. If it be hard to be told occasionally by that prince of good editors, Mr. Alfred Ainger, to please turn elsewhere for the little bits of information which we think he might give us about Charles Lamb, it is harder still to have Mr. Wright refuse to translate for us Edward Fitzgerald’s infrequent lapses into Greek. What is the use of saying in a note “v. 9” when Fitzgerald quotes Herodotus? If I can read the quotation for myself, I have no need to hunt up v. 9; and if I can’t, v. 9 is of no use to me when found. Even “Hor. Od. I. 4, 14, 15,” is not altogether satisfactory to the indifferent scholar, for whom Fitzgerald himself had such generous sympathy, and for whom his translations were avowedly undertaken.
These are merely cases, however, in which notes refuse to be helpful; they are apt to become absolutely oppressive when accompanying older writers. A few years ago I bought a little English edition of the _Religio Medici_, to which are added the _Letter to a Friend_ and _Christian Morals_. The book is one of Macmillan’s Golden Treasury Series, and is edited by Mr. W. A. Greenhill, who opens with an “Editor’s Preface,” eighteen pages long, and fairly bristling with knowledge points. After this come a “Chronological Table of Dates, Connected with Sir Thomas Browne,” two pages long; “Note on the Discovery of the Remains of Sir Thomas Browne in 1840,” two pages; “Brief Notices of Former Editors of the _Religio Medici_,” four pages; “List of Editions of _Religio Medici_,” thirteen pages; “Collations of Some Old Editions of _Religio Medici_,” three pages; “List of Editions of _Letter to a Friend_ and _Christian Morals_,” five pages; “_Addenda et Corrigenda_,” one page. Having thus laboriously cleared the way, we are at last gladdened by a sight of the _Religio Medici_ itself, which, together with the _Letter_ and _Christian Morals_, occupies two hundred and thirty pages. Then, following close, like the mighty luggage of a Persian army, come an array of “Notes Critical and Explanatory,” eighty-eight pages; and an Index just sixty-nine pages long. Thus it will be seen that two hundred and five pages of editorial work are deemed necessary to elucidate two hundred and thirty pages of Sir Thomas Browne, which seems like an intolerable deal of sack for such a quantity of bread. To compress all this into a small volume requires close printing and flimsy paper, and the ungrateful reader thinks in his hardened heart that he would rather a little more space had been given to the author, and a little less to the editor, who is for most of us, after all, a secondary consideration. It is also manifestly impossible, with such a number of notes, even to refer to them at the bottom of the page; yet without this guiding finger they are often practically useless. We are not as a rule aware, when we read, what information we lack, and it becomes a grievous duty to examine every few minutes and see if we ought not to be finding something out.
A glance at the notes themselves is very discouraging:
“P. 10, l. 14, directed, A to E, G; direct, F, H to L.
“P. 10, l. 16, rectified, A to I; rectified, J, K, L.
“P. 10, l. 28, consist, A to J; resist, K, L.”
Reading with such helps as these becomes a literary nightmare:
“P. 8, l. 8, distinguished] Chapman (R) and Gardiner (W) read ‘being distinguished.’
“P. 8, l. 8, distinguished not only] Wilkin (T) read ‘not only distinguished.’”
And this is weirder still:
“P. 59, l. 4, antimetathesis, C to M; antanaclasis, A, B; transposition of words, N, O.”
It may easily be surmised that eighty-eight pages of such concentrated and deadly erudition weigh very heavily on the unscholarly soul. We are reminded forcibly of the impatience manifested by Mr. E. S. Dallas, in _The Gay Science_, over Person’s notes on Euripides, from which he had hoped so much and gleaned so little; which were all about words and less than words—syllables, letters, accents, punctuation.
“Codex A and Codex B, Codex Cantabrigiensis and Codex Cottonianus, were ransacked in turn to show how this noun should be in the dative, not in the accusative; how that verb should have the accent paroxytone, not perispomenon; and how, by all the rules of prosody, there should be an iambus, not a spondee, in this place or that.” The lad who has heard all his college life about the wonderful supplement to the _Hecuba_ turns to it with wistful eyes, expecting to find some subtle key to Greek tragedy. “Behold, it is a treatise on certain Greek metres. Its talk is of cæsural pauses, penthemimeral and hephthemimeral, of isochronous feet, of enclitics and cretic terminations; and the grand doctrine it promulgates is expressed in the canon regarding the pause which, from the discoverer, has been named the Porsonian—that when the iambic trimeter after a word of more than one syllable has the cretic termination included either in one word or in two, then the fifth foot must be an iambus. The young student throws down the book thus prefaced and supplemented, and wonders if this be all that giants of Porsonian height can see or care to speak about in Greek literature.”
But then be it remembered that Euripides, as edited by Porson, was intended for the use of scholars, and there exists an impression—perhaps erroneous—that this is the sort of food for which scholars hunger and thirst. Sir Thomas Browne has, happily, not yet passed out of the hands of the general reader, whose appetite for intellectual abstraction and the rigors of precision is distinctly moderate, and in whose behalf I urge my plea to-day.
After the oppressively erudite notes come those which interpret trifles with painstaking fidelity, and which reveal to us the meaning of quite familiar words. In Ferrier’s admirable edition of the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, for example, we are told with naïve gravity that “wiselike” means “judicious,” that “glowering” means “staring,” that “parritch” is “porridge,” that “guffaw” is a “loud laugh,” that “douce” is “sedate,” that “gane” is “gone,” and that “in a jiffy” means “immediately.” But surely the readers of Christopher North do not require information like this. “Douce” and “parritch” and “guffaw” are not difficult words to understand, and “in a jiffy” would seem to come within the intellectual grasp of many who have not yet made the acquaintance of the alphabet.