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unnamed. The whole letter is very interesting, and it would
probably reconcile the "authors" of the correspondence of Queen
Victoria to the sweating system by which they received the miserable
sum of £5592 14s. 2d. from Mr. John Murray for their Titanic labours.
October 23, 1857.
"I think, sir, that you are in error as to Messrs. Lévy's method of doing
business. Messrs. Lévy buy for 400 francs [£16] the right to publish a
book during four years. It was on these terms that they bought the

stories of Jules de la Madeleine, Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary,' etc.
These facts are within my knowledge. To take an example among
translations, they bought from Baudelaire, for 400 francs, the right to
publish 6000 copies of his Poé. We do not work in this way. We buy
for 200 francs (£8) the right to publish an edition of 1200 copies.... If
the book succeeds, so much the better for the author, who makes 200
francs out of every edition of 1200 copies. If M. Flaubert, whose book
is in its third edition, had come to us instead of to Messrs. Lévy, his
book would already have brought him in 1000 francs (£40); during the
four years that Messrs. Lévy will have the rights of his book for a total
payment of 400 francs, he might have made two or three thousand
francs with us.... Votre bien dévoué,
"A.P. MALASSIS."
* * * * *
We now know that Flaubert made £16 in four years out of "Madame
Bovary," which went into three editions within considerably less than a
year of publication. And yet the house of Lévy is one of the most
respectable and grandiose in France. Moral: English authors ought to
go down on their knees and thank God that English publishers are not
as other publishers. At least, not always!

WORDSWORTH'S SINGLE LINES
[_30 May '08_]
I have had great joy in Mr. Nowell Charles Smith's new and
comprehensive edition of Wordsworth, published by Methuen in three
volumes as majestic as Wordsworth himself at his most pontifical. The
price is fifteen shillings net, and having regard to the immense labour
involved in such an edition, it is very cheap. I would sooner pay fifteen
shillings for a real book like this than a guinea for the memoirs of any
tin god that ever sat up at nights to keep a diary; yea, even though the
average collection of memoirs will furnish material to light seven
hundred pipes. We have lately been much favoured with first-rate
editions of poets. I mention Mr. de Sélincourt's Keats, and Mr. George
Sampson's amazing and not-to-be-sufficiently-lauded Blake. Mr.
Smith's work is worthy to stand on the same shelf with these. A shining
virtue of Mr. Smith's edition is that it embodies the main results of the
researches and excavations not only of Professor Knight, but, more

important, of the wonderful Mr. Hutchinson, whose contributions to the
Academy, in days of yore, were the delight of Wordsworthians.
* * * * *
Personally, I became a member of the order of Wordsworthians in the
historic year 1891, when Matthew Arnold's "Selections" were issued to
the public at the price of half a crown. I suppose that Matthew Arnold
and Sir Leslie Stephen were the two sanest Wordsworthians of us all.
And Matthew Arnold put Wordsworth above all modern poets except
Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton, and Molière. The test of a
Wordsworthian is the ability to read with pleasure every line that the
poet wrote. I regret to say that, strictly, Matthew Arnold was not a
perfect Wordsworthian; he confessed, with manly sincerity, that he
could not read "Vaudracour and Julia" with pleasure. This was a pity
and Matthew Arnold's loss. For a strict Wordsworthian, while utterly
conserving his reverence for the most poetic of poets, can discover a
keen ecstasy in the perusal of the unconsciously funny lines which
Wordsworth was constantly perpetrating. And I would back myself to
win the first prize in any competition for Wordsworth's funniest line
with a quotation from "Vaudracour and Julia." My prize-line would
assuredly be:
_Yea, his first word of greeting was,--_ _"All right...._
It is true that the passage goes on:
_Is gone from me...._
But that does not impair the magnificent funniness.
* * * * *
From his tenderest years Wordsworth succeeded in combining the
virtues of Milton and of Punch in a manner that no other poet has
approached. Thus, at the age of eighteen, he could write:
_Now while the solemn evening shadows sail,_ _On slowly-waving
pinions, down the vale;_ _And fronting the bright west, yon oak
entwines_ _Its darkening boughs...._
Which really is rather splendid for a boy. And he could immediately
follow that, speaking of a family of swans, with:
While tender cares and