REJECTED MSS.

Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 11 June 1880, Page 2

REJECTED MSS.

-9 ♦ i It is the most difficult thing in tl c world to know how an article will read from looking at ij; m MS , so difficult that authors themselves, men of long and varied experience, men like Moor and Macaniey, could seldom form an opinion upon their own writings till they s*y how they lojfe'ed in print. An 3 when that is the csse witb the author, how must it be wi!h '.he publisher or his reader, and tb/eclitor of a publication who has to make up hia miaJ as to the merits of a holf-dozen MSS. in the course of a morning! Yet, after all, I suipect that very few articles an 3 very few books that are worth printing are lost to the world, for the competition among publishers for MSS. is the only degree less keen than the competition amongst authors forpu^n Ushers, and an author who 3;as anything worth printing is seldom long without a publisher. If men would only act upon Dr Johnston's advice and strike out cf their articles everything that they think particu'arly fine, we should hear a good deal less than we do at present of * re* jected MSS.' Anyone can scribble— if he only knows how to sp*»ll ; but writing is an art, ona of the fine ar's— and the men who have had fewest MSS. rejected are the men who have taken the greatest pains with their work j Macau^ey, for instance, who wrote and re«wrote many of %is essiys, long as they are, three times over j Albany Fonblanque. the most brilliant and successful of English journslists who wrote and re-wrote many of his articles in the Examiner newspaper sis or seven times, till, like Boileau, he had sifted his' article of eyerything^ but the choicest thoughts and expressions. Per* haps if all writers did ibis we should have shorter articles and fewer books ; bnt mere articles <hat now perish with a single reading might be worth reprinting, md more books might stand a chance of descending to posterity.