PRESENTATION INSCRIPTION TO ELIZABETH BOYLE
IN “THE FAERIE QUEENE” IN THE AUTOGRAPH OF
EDMUND SPENSER
One week later my friend the American bookseller called upon me at the Carlton Hotel in London.
“Hello,” I began. “You’re just the man I want to see. I’ve found a presentation copy of The Faerie Queene.”
“You unholy liar,” he said, not knowing whether to believe me or not.
“Yes,” I replied; “it is at your hand.” His hands trembled as he lifted the book from the table, and I could see his face change color as he read the magic lines in Spenser’s autograph.
An author’s manuscript will reveal just how his work was planned and built, as well as the fluid state of his mind at the time. Very often it reflects his attitude toward his subject, whether he wrote meticulously, carefully, or with assurance and ease. The early manuscripts of great writers are curiously alike in that they seldom show any large amount of correction or rewriting. When these men are young their very passion sweeps them along. But as they grow older they develop a certain attitude of critical acuteness which study brings, the experiences of life itself also cause them to be less sure. Very often they become the worst faultfinders, and tear their work to pieces to build and rebuild glorious phrases that later become household words. The bugaboo of rewriting comes with the years, accompanying the stern virtues of maturity.
In his later manuscripts you can almost see the author at work, bending over his pages, writing lines, whole paragraphs, then deleting them. These later manuscripts of noted men and women show not only blotted lines but entirely new readings. However, the notable phrase in the verses prefixed to the first folio of Shakespeare by his editors, John Heminge and Henry Condell, dated 1623, does not apply to most of the modern manuscripts. “And what he thought,” they wrote, “he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot on his papers.”
