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Being limited to my own library, I shall not quote what is elsewhere. But first, for the verb dementat," which is either transitive or intransitive, and is very rare. It occurs in Lactantius of the early fourth (not tenth) century, and tells how the persecutor Diocletian " semper dementabat," or behaved like a madman; i.e., was demented. I discover only one other example of the verb demento," and that is in the Latin Vulgate of Acts viii., 11, at which place we read that Simon Magus had for a long time stolen the wits of the Samaritans; "dementasset," had demented them. Here the verb is transitive, and certainly not classical, although it accords with the common Latin proverb, the varying forms of which are of equal value. As for the saying itself, its first representative seems to be in the "Legatio" of the learned Athenagoras, who wrote in Greek his plea for Christianity late in the second century. He maintains the goodness of God and His works, and, as I understand him, ascribes other works to Dæmons who, in his opinion, are evil. Here it is that he introduces a Greek quotation, from an author he does not name, in this way: "For God does not incite to what is contrary to nature, But a Dæmon when he devises any harm against a man first injures his mind.'" The Latin of Joshua Barnes may do for this, but my copy of Athenagoras sticks to the word Dæmon," and the annotators uphold it, rightly, as I think. (See the Oxford edition of Athenagoras, 1706). The fine edition of the Benedictines (Paris, 1742) also refers the dementing process to demons. Your wise readers will draw their own inferences.

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(p. 791. London, 1879), where a little critical acumen is needed. So "here I make an ending," and am, &c., B. H. C.

LITERATURE IN THE PERIODICALS.

CHEAP BOOKS-THE Daily Telegraph's BAL OPINION OF CURRENT FICTION-MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING-LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB

-PARASITICAL LITERATURE.

M'

R. BRYCE'S suggestion for cheaper books is discussed in a leading article by the Daily Telegraph (May 11). So far from depreciating the statesman's view of the preponderance of newspaper reading, this great organ goes the length of saying that it is " quite an arguable point whether the newspaper will not end by swallowing up the magazine, as it has already succeeded in establishing its popularity at the expense of books," Were it not for the great circulating libraries, says the writer, the production of books would be more perilous still. And then, in demonstrating why books are dear, he proceeds to support the theory so often advanced, that the successful book is the publisher's contrà for the unsuccessful ones. 'Having paid a good deal more than he ought for one book, the publisher has to pay less than he ought for another; his successes, such as they are, have to make up for his losses; while in such an unhealthy state of things, the young writer of promise has a peculiar difficulty in getting even a hearing," Nor would publishers extend their own sales by lowering their prices. Books have their own clientèle, and it is true of nearly every kind of book, that those who want it will pay the price, and that its issue at a "popular" price will not attract a larger circle. For the rest the Telegraph has a really bad opinion of the origin and nature of novels.

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Our bookstalls are flooded with works of fiction, mostly written by women-often ungrammatical, largely worthless in character, and wholly devoid of any reasonable interest. They are produced because in nine cases out of ten the authoress pays for the production. They are reviewed because critics are more generous to-day to the average novel than they have been in any other period of our literary history. They are sold because the assumption still continues to be held-and is, indeed, to some extent borne out by facts-that fiction written by women is read by women, in country houses, at the seaside, or in foreign places of fashionable resort, where no other form of literary work has a chance of entering.

In the Academy (May 21), J. E. H. W. controverts the above statements almost entirely. True it is, he says, that the great mass of our half-instructed population are quite contented with magazines and newspapers, "but then the

great mass of our half-educated population never did buy books." Publishers do not depend upon the circulating libraries; the latter "do not buy books in large numbers; as a rule they have no need to; naturally they have no wish to." The standard of new fiction is above the "average "an average which is no longer correct." And even supposing that a publisher pays more than he ought for one book, "how does this affect the young author? Where the risk is so great it is almost a wonder that a new writer obtains anything at all for his first work. If he can find a publisher to take the chance he is indeed fortunate. If his book is a great success, he has his reward: he can dictate his own terms in future." The Daily News says that publishers have only themselves to thank if best books are not more in demand; and tells them that, when they have mastered the secret of the cheap newspaper, they "The novel at a will bring out the cheap book. guinea and a half died hard in this country; the novel at five or six shillings still cumbers the earth."

Mrs. Lecky writes on "Modern Language Teaching in Longman's Magazine for June, and recommends all who are interested in the progress and education of our people, to take to heart these words from a recent speech of Sir William Harcourt: "The present defect of English education, from the top of the scale to the bottom, is our neglect of the cultivation of the modern languages of the nations of the world." Our method has been wrong. Mrs. Lecky praises the Gouin method of teaching, which proceeds by gradual development. It is based on the natural process by which every infant begins to speak— that is, by learning the sounds through the ear before it knows how to read and write-and it makes the verb the pivot of the teaching. Regarding the Universities Mrs. Lecky says "it seems an anomaly that honours can be obtained in modern languages at Oxford without a viva roce test, and that for the Cambridge tripos viva roce also is optional, and that the results do not affect the class."

Mr. E. V. Lucas has been publishing in the Cornhill Magazine (May and June) correspondence between Charles Lamb and his friend Robert Lloyd, the Quaker, and partner in the bookselling and printing business of Knott and Lloyd at Birmingham.. The letters are full of good things. One of them shows Lamb's fondness for London to have been quite equal to that of Dr. Johnson. "Give me the old bookstalls of London," he exclaims, "a walk in the bright piazzas of Covent Garden. I defy a man to be dull in such places-perfect Mahometan paradises upon earth! I have lent out my heart

with usury to such scenes from my childhood up, and have cried with fullness of joy at the multitudinous scenes of life in the crowded streets of ever dear London." In his last letter, dated January 1, 1810, he gives an affecting picture of his home at 4, Inner Temple-lane. "The feeling of home, which has been slow to come, has come at last. May I never move again, but may my next lodging be my coffin." Among his literary criticisms is that he "seems to miss" in Pope's "Iliad" translation "a certain savage-like plainness of speaking in Achilles-a sort of indelicacy. The heroes in Homer are not half civilised: they utter all the cruel, all the selfish, all the mean thoughts even of their nature, which it is the fashion of our great men to keep in."

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A writer in Blackwood's for May casts the conscientious biographer into a very offensive light. He calls the literature "parasitical," and applies such terms as questionable" and destructive familiarity" to the kind of biography to which nothing is too insignificant to include. "It is good to know how any distinguished man looked and lived, and good to learn the conditions amid which his day's work was done. But it is enough to know him as friend knows friend; it is unnecessary, even undesirable, possibly offensive, to share the relationship and knowledge of his valet or his nurse."

MA

CORRESPONDENCE.

I.-EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS.

I.

AY I make a few remarks on the List of Rules of Editors, published in your issue. of May 2, for the sake of the young beginners in literature whose lot and whose risks are becoming worse as their numbers multiply?

I have myself very little to complain of with regard to editors, who seem far better than their laws. I have been almost invariably kindly and courteously treated. It has however happened once or twice that my MSS. have been lost letters unanswered, payments forgotten, &c.

I notice that it is increasingly common for editors to repudiate all responsibility for MSS. Most of those in your List decline to return MSS. altogether; some, if stamps and envelopes are sent, endeavour to return them. Many insist on type-written copy.

I know the worries of editors, and the rubbish they have to deal with, and the rules are made to save them trouble; all the same the worries to the author are greater and much more serious. Authors have a right to complain of these rules.

MSS. are the author's bread. They are perishable goods; they are submitted on approval, and this seems the only way to bring author and public together. In the editor's office they may be lost, burnt, or, worse, gutted; and there are the risks by post also.

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It may be replied, authors must retain copies of their MSS. But, as many MSS. have to travel a good deal for various reasons (was it not Currer Bell whose first work had to be sent to a dozen successive publishers?), I submit that this is a sweating" system. An author may make a copy, or pay a typist to do it-and type-writing is certainly costly. He sends up his MS.; it is not returned that is the rule-neither is it used. After a time, and after losing the return stamps, he sends off the other. Similar fate. How many copies is the poor young author to keep on the chance of rejection?

Then there is the question of using the MS. elsewhere. How long is the author to wait till the editor or the publisher's reader has made up his mind?

There is yet a worse risk, that, during the interval, the "guts" of the MS. are stolen, the material and the idea used up by the publisher's sister, or cousin, or aunt, and the original author has no redress.

It is manifestly hard and contrary to the rules of business to send goods on approval without a guarantee, or to keep goods without paying for them, or to neglect to inform the owner whether his goods are marketable in that particular place or not. Especially in journalism both are frequently done and suffered; and often when the MS. is returned, the "moment" is past, and the subject has no chance.

Many authors are of opinion that since sending up MSS. on approval is the only way, editors ought to be bound to take responsibility; and compelled, after agreeing to examine a MS., to return it or to pay for it within a certain fixed time. I should say a fortnight ought to suffice for decision in the case of a book, and three days in that of a newspaper article.

I also have to corroborate another correspondent's complaint-that MSS. are returned damaged. I have seen in publishers' rooms a MS. being read in company with a sandwich, for which it served as a plate. I have had MSS. returned to me marked with grease, and unfit to send elsewhere.

It appears to me that, if a humble typewriter can afford to protect against loss, damage, or fire (and I hope cribbing), MSS. entrusted to her by a floating policy of insurance, the proprietor of a journal or a respectable publisher can do the

Mr. Herbert W. Smith sends a communication unfortunately too long for publication. He says, in answer to the question: "How would he compel the editor to do this or that?"-that he would compel him by unanimous action on the part of authors. He thinks that the time has arrived for authors to take united action. I have long thought so, but I do not see many signs of such united action. One thing is hopeful, however with men and women of letters action need not be universal. Everything that a tradesunion can effect would be brought about by the union of fifty or sixty writers whose works are commercially valuable.

On the score of unequal remuneration Mr. Smith claims that all trades are equal. But literature is not a trade. All professions are unequal: all works of art are unequal. Is a man who writes a play which runs a month to be paid as much as a man whose play runs three years? Is the youngest artist who exhibits in the Academy to be paid as much for his picture as the most distinguished R.A.?

Dudley Warner once advocated the foundation of a literary union in which all the members should receive the same wages. A minimum scale of pay for magazine work would be a most desirable thing from many points of view, but it is impossible to enforce it except for certain writers whose work is in vogue.

Mr. Smith concludes as follows:

"At the present moment neither law, public opinion, nor etiquette affords relief against the small worries, humiliations, and peculations to which the rank and file of authors are often subjected by unscrupulous, lazy, careless, and grossly ignorant dealers in their goods.

"Were the Society of Authors to determine in consultation with editors of repute upon a definite understanding with regard to delays in considering MSS., delays in payment, and unequal remuneration, they would have achieved an end of very great importance. What respectable editors decreed, the tag-rag and bob-tail would find it expedient to obey. With growth and authority on its side, the Society of Authors might find itself capable of striking offenders off the Rolls' in due time."

III.

My only reason for troubling you again is that several points have occurred to me since I wrote to you, particularly in view of the valuable communications you print from "An Unofficial Receiver-of Editorial Regrets," and Mr. Herbert

W. Smith. The first-named writer refers to a grievance of the highest importance-i.e., the work of native authors being excluded from columns which are used for the reproduction of articles stolen from American periodicals. Besides this the work of native authors is excluded from columns used, inter alia (1) for articles, tales, jokes, and pictures stolen-totally or in part as regards first-mentioned from other English papers, and from all manner of foreign papers, the editor thinking, most erroneously, that if he acknowledges the source of such he is acting in an unexceptionable way; (2) for advertisements, even of the journal itself or of another publication issued from the same office; (3) for the work of persons who are not genuine native authors, but belong to one of the following divisions (a) individuals who have attained celebrity in some other walk, and are therefore exploited as writers by editors; (b) blacklegs, usually poetasters, who work, such as their work is, for nothing; (c) persons, usually poetasters again, who could not possibly have got their lucubra. tions accepted if they had not been relations or friends of the editor, or been able to bring some influence to bear on him-(4) for matter reproduced from some back number of the paper itself or a sister periodical. In no other business in the world could this crambe repetita take place. In regard to what Mr. Smith says as to the payment per column for articles, this should also be pointed out: A paper commences by paying, say, LI 18. a column. This is when its circulation is small, but it makes no addition no matter how large its circulation grows, and this though some of the contributors, whose payments it does not increase, have been the main creators of its prosperity.

Another thing: the most tenth-rate actor can get free passes for himself and a friend to theatres, yet no editor thinks of putting even his best contributor on his free-list.

In conclusion, I may say that before I die I hope to see some at least of the following reforms effected:-(1) Every line contributed to a paper paid for, including correspondence and matter contributed in competition; (2) every journalistic post put in the market, and not handed through backstairs influence to some played-out hack, some mere reporter, 'Varsity man or Scotsman; (3) no one but a qualified and registered journalist allowed to sell MSS. to a paper, just as only admitted solicitors can sell legal skill and knowledge these as a first instalment.

:

EXPERTO CREDE.

P.S.-I should like to add that I think it should be made a penal offence for an editor to appropriate ideas from an article he does not

A correspondent, "J. C. G.," writes in reply to the letter of Mr. Herbert W. Smith, to the following effect:

(1.) Unsolicited contributions are not amongst the requirements of journals.

(2.) All journals have a regular staff engaged to do the work.

(3.) Unsolicited contributions are of "the nature of an aggravation and an impertinence."

(4.) Editors try sometimes out of courtesy to read the MSS. sent in, but have to desist out of regard to the interests of the journal.

(5.) He suggests that it would be well to write and offer the editor first.

[These points are put in the form of questions. Well, a simple reference to the table of contents for the last few months of any magazine would prove that there is no such thing as a regular staff to do the work. Out of every six months following, it would be extremely strange were the same name to occur twice.

Contributions, as may be seen from the list published in our last number, are expected from writers uninvited.

Editors practically undertake to read them all. To ask an editor if he will look at a MS., would be to give him double trouble, because he professes to read everything sent.-ED.].

II.-MR. Punch AND HIS CONTRIBUTORS.

I consider that the writer of the article in your last issue, treating of the ways in which various journals undertake to deal with the MSS. of their contributors should have taken the trouble to verify his statements.

I invite him to refer to the cover of Punch, where he will find this notice :—

"Communications or contributions, whether MS., printed matter, drawings, or pictures of any description, will not be returned unless accompanied by a stamped and addressed envelope, cover, or wrapper.'

The writer of your article stated that they would not be returned under any conditions. I will ask you to be good enough to correct his inaccuracy by publishing this letter.

A MEMBER OF THE STAFF OF Punch.

III.—THE ROXBURGHE PRESS, LIMITED. In this month's issue of The Author a correspondent asks for advice as to how to proceed

IV.—“THE AUTHOR" IN THE LIBRARIES. I think you would receive many more complaints from struggling free lances as to the way they are treated if The Author was only read more extensively among them. As a matter of fact it ought to be in every public library in the Kingdom, whereas even in London, as far as my experience of a year back goes, it is only to be found in the Clerkenwell Free Library. In this town it is not taken by the authorities of the library but is presented to them, and naturally the donor pleases himself about when he brings it. E. C.

Cheltenham.

V.--UNMARKETABLENESS OF VERSE.

The statement of Mr. Henley with regard to the sale of poetry urges me to air a long-felt grievance. Poetry does not sell for the simple reason that its price is prohibitive. Circulating libraries will not provide modern poetry, free libraries have very little, and the consequence is that, as wealth and a love of literature unfortunately seldom go together, modern poetry remains unread. I deeply deplore my own ignorance of our present poets, but I see no way of remedying it, as I cannot afford to buy their works at 5s. a volume. If they would but produce their poems at popular instead of prohibitive prices I am sure that they would find a public eager and willing to buy. One would have thought that the lesson had been learnt by now that a large circulation of cheap books pays better than the sale of a few expensive volumes, but the poets do not seem to realise it.

VI. THE FIRST BOOK.

F. M. K.

Although a loyal member of the Authors' Society I sometimes wonder whether a young and unknown writer is wise in abiding by the principles advocated by that society too rigidly.

In the May number of The Author appears a short story telling how a young writer is offered £15 158. for the copyright of his first book.

Twelve years ago, before I left Cambridge, and before I was out of my teens, I wrote a story for a boys' paper. I was paid 30s. a number, but

was careful to retain copyright. When the story was completed I sent it to a big publishing house. The reader's report was most eulogistic, but the house did not care for reprints, and I was requested to write a new story on the same lines. The pressure of journalistic work prevented this, but shortly afterwards another publisher offered me £25 for the story. He wanted all rights. I believed in the story-I still believe in it. I rejected the offer. I have since sent my story to several publishers, but have not been able to get it read.

The result is that it will probably never be published in book form. Now, had I accepted that offer of £25, and the book had succeeded, would not my position be better than it is to-day? I should probably now be living in Paris, writing fiction-the work I love-instead of toiling at mere journalistic hack work for £4 or £5 a week. H. J. A.

VII.-PROPOSED JOURNAL FOR YOUNG AUTHORS. I have forwarded you some circulars re the Pioneer paper, to which, I understand, you will refer elsewhere. May I be allowed to say, by way of comment, that a large number of young "literary aspirants" are certain to eagerly accept the offer of "Mr. Leigh, M.P.A.B.A."? For there is no doubt that a paper run" on somewhat similar lines would be of immense benefit to the 66 ambitious unknown."

It should be remembered that a young and able, but inexperienced, writer has at present no means of obtaining that skilled revision and alteration of his work which would not only make it acceptable to the editors, but would show him his faults, and how they might be avoided or corrected. These faults he has to find out for himself if he can-often after years of failure, poverty, and bitterness of spirit.

What hundreds of struggling writers will look, probably in vain, for "Mr. Leigh, M.P.A.P.A.,” to accomplish, the Society of Authors could and should do, for those young authors whom it desires to help; that is, establish a journal in which their writings may appear, a journal, let us say, supplementary to The Author, to be called "The Young Author." A fee, to be made as low as possible, would be paid by the writer for the correction of his MS. and the cost of its insertion. The articles must, of course, be short, and the editor would have the option of returning such as were hopeless, or required too much alteration. The paper should be edited by a capable and sympathetic senior, and be regularly forwarded to the magazine editors, &c. The reading matter should be copyrighted, and the articles be eligible for republication by payment.