THE REJECTED.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1396, 23 March 1912, Page 9

THE REJECTED.

Thero were many interesting things said the other day at the Authors' Society dinner, but nothing more suggestive than the remark of Mr. Reginald Smith, the editor of "Cornhill," that of tho mass of manuscripts that came to Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co. "less than 2 per cent." were accepted and published. The skiiic ratio would not, of course, hold throughout all tho publishing houses. The mesh of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. is a wide one, and no doubt many of tho works rejected by them find welcome enough elsewhere, while tho eminence of tho firm must attract many more manuscripts than firms more obscure. Nevertheless, let us say that 20 per cent, of the books written—or let us be generous and say 25—are all that find their way into print, and we are confronted with a remarkable state of things. The books actually published last year, as wo saw the other day. were some 10,900. The natural comment i.s that there are too manv; they cannot possibly all be read, still less bought. Yet for everyone that is published there are three that are rejected, so that iu these fair isles there must be some 40,000 books written annually. Milton in a famous passage rejoiced in the literary activity.of his time and at the "pens aiid heads, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and idea'." Would he have reioicod at the similar literary activity of 10-dav? It is doubtful, for consider what the quality must be. Deduct the few hundreds of books that really serve their generation from the sum total of those aetuollv published, and what is the quality of those that are left? A guest at tho some dinner declared that a nerusal.of catalogues and publishers' lists left him with a feeling of wonder that publishers should have "the moral courage and hard cash" to produce such a mass of. printed matter "which was not, and never could be, described as literature, but was ephemeral, worthless, and, more often than not, trash." That is so; but what of the manuscripts that never become books? Well, among them ncrhaps are the works of the "genius of the future—and that amoiig publishers' readers there are, even in our days, manv miscarriages no 0119 who knows an'vthing about the world, of letters is'unaware-but over all we must accept the judsment nf the publishers as just nad conclude that the)' are of inferior value: That the production of them, therefore, should be so extensive is of the nature of tragedy, and the. misdirected energy, the wasted' time and disappointed hopes involved, make a theme on which "the lightest fool might moralise"—"Manchester Guardian." .