he said that his own profit was L600.  Hence L600 is the half of L5592 14s. 2d.  I have no doubt that there exists some quite simple explanation of this new arithmetic; only it has not occurred to me, my name not being Colenso.  The whole enterprise was regal, as befitted.  Proof-corrections cost twice as much as the original setting up!  A mere man of letters would be inclined to suspect that the printing was begun too soon; it is usual to postpone setting-up a book until the book is written.  Balzac partially beggared himself by ignoring this rule.  Balzac, however, was not published by Mr. Murray.  L950 was paid to the amanuensis!  Oh, amanuensis, how I wonder who you are, up above the world so high, like a fashionable novelist in the sky!  And so on.

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The attitude of Tunbridge Wells (the most plutocratic town in England, by the way) towards the book was adorable.  “Mr. Daniel Williams, a bookseller and librarian, of Tunbridge Wells, said that after the review by ‘Artifex’ people complained that the price of the book was too high.  No complaints were made before that.”  They read their Times Literary Supplement at the Wells, and they still wait for it to thunder, and when it has thundered—­and not before—­they rattle their tea-trays, and the sequel is red ruin!  Again, Mr. Justice Darling, in his ineptly decorated summing-up, observed that it was hardly too much to say that “the plaintiff’s house—­the house of Murray,” was a national institution.  It would be hardly too much to say that also the house of Crosse and Blackwell is a national institution, and that Mr. Justice Darling is a national institution.  By all means let us count the brothers Murray as a national institution, even as an Imperial institution.  But let us guard against the notion, everywhere cropping up, that such “houses” as the dignified and wealthy house of Murray are in some mysterious way responsible for English literature, part-authors of English literature, to whom half of the glory of English literature is due.  It is well to remember now and then that publishers who have quite squarely made vast sums out of selling the work of creative artists are not thereby creative artists themselves.  A publisher is a tradesman; infinitely less an artist than a tailor is an artist.  Often a publisher knows what the public will buy in literature.  Very rarely he knows what is good literature.  Scarcely ever will he issue a distinguished book exclusively because it is a distinguished book.  And he is right, for he is only a tradesman.  But to judge from the otiose majesty of some publishers, one would imagine that they had written at least “Childe Harold.”  There is the case of a living publisher (not either of the brothers Murray) whose presence at his country chateau is indicated to the surrounding nobility, gentry, and peasantry by the unfurling of the Royal standard over a turret.

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