AUTHORS' WAYS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 622, 27 September 1909, Page 9

AUTHORS' WAYS.

. -—♦—- — THEIR SENSITIVENESS. A writer in the "Sphero" has started the topic' of tho annoyance of authors at alterations in their work and tho inability of the .public to understand it. "It is a point on which authors are very sensitive," said Jtr. Murray in court, and a parenthetic "laughter" indicated the public comment on their sensitiveness. Xct it is not always unreasonable (comments ah English journal). If a publisher in order to give a new popularity to a book in, his possession abridges or rearranges it, an author may well wince. AFhether the possession of tho copyright entitles him to do so is. a legal question with which two have nothing to do, but to winco under such circumstances is merely human. To tho argument that it is to tho publisher's interest not to damage tho book while altering it thcro is tho obvious answer that what ho wishes is an increased popularity; for it, and he is accordingly _as likely as not to eliminate those artistic effects which keep an author in good conceit of his bantling. Even if tho book were, to, begin with, anonymous, and thus, complete or abridged, was never' to ba associated -with tho'author's name, tho difficulty is not removed. Anonymity is tho condition of. most press work, and although a journalist comes, in course of time, to be indifferent to alterations made on his manuscript, yet oven an eld moustacho has been known to conceive an angry thought of tho male Juno'who .has sat cros3-legged over tho nativity, of his copy if tha latter - has innovated on his vocabulary, played the cat-and-banjo with his syntax, or mutilated his' paragraphs unnecessarily. Moreover, the scrupulosity of a writer is not unjustifiable even when it eitends' to matters, very, minute. ' Even spelling counts, for words have a physiognomy. If a word has two spellings, each spelling comes in. the mind of one who handles words reverently to have associations of its own. "Thus there, are writers who nro: vexed : if .where they WTote "gray" the printer puts "grey" . To Pater "ouire" meant something which "choir" did not, while the recently-published Hugo correspondence shows l the poet displeased if the printer put 'lis" for his "lys" (tho middle letter, says 31. Mourice, being itself "so! like a lily"). Here, perhaps, we iire on the borders of iaddism, but such preferences may vbe defended on'the,'ground that they aro an clement in that general fastidiousness which : is • a condition of all fine style, and.a writer who is vexed where they are denied him: is argued if : not a prince at any' rate of the blood royal to feel snch crumpled rose-loaves.'