It is not uncommon to see the titles of books, especially in the printed catalogues of our Public Libraries, begin with a small or lower-case letter. This style is not only incorrect, but misleading, and corrupting good taste, and should not be adopted by men of letters. The reason given for it, namely, ease in reading, is very weak and inadequate. The plea of “good usage,” urged in many cases, is not sufficient justification of any literary practice in itself incorrect and vulgar.
When phonetic spelling and writing come to take the place of our present or ideographic method, the difficulties of the proof-reader will be greatly increased. To-day it would be a difficult matter for him to spell the expression, “Uneeda Biscuit,” or to decide the correct mode of printing the word “coffee,” which sometimes appears as kaughphy. It is true that phonotypy would enable the child the more easily to master the art of spelling; but whether words meaning the same thing would be spelled alike by all writers is very questionable, as the most common words are frequently mispronounced; as, sech for such, gud for good, git for get, gut for got, etc.
With a few exceptions, the words of MS. books, to the 15th century, run on continuously without spacing; and as to punctuation, little or nothing was known. In the Greek works on papyrus before Christ, there are to be found certain marks indicating pauses, such as the wedge-shaped sign (>). In Biblical MSS., however, the division of the text into lines enabled the reader the more easily to understand the meaning, and was an assistance to him in public reading. As many blunders were made by the monks in transcribing and re-transcribing the ancient MSS., the assistance of the corrector, or proof-reader, was as much needed then as now; the wrong words were erased with a sponge or with a knife, and the corrected words inserted. Solomon, three thousand years ago, said, “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” This was uttered at a time when few read or studied, and when all books were in manuscript, the printer’s art being then unknown. To-day everybody reads, studies, and writes; what at one time was a “weariness of the flesh” has to-day become a pleasure and a joy. Jeremy Belknap, in his Papers, says that there are four things necessary to constitute a man: “first, he should build a house; second, he should write a book; third, he should get a child; fourth, he should plant a tree.”
Now, let us not only do all these things prescribed, but let us supplement them by four others, which the proof-reader thinks are just as, if not more, important; namely: let our chirography be readable, our spelling correct, our punctuation faultless, and our rhetoric such that “he who runs may read.”
As members of The Odd Volume Club, we all love not only rare, but good books. When I enter a bookstore, or more especially a large publishing house, like that for instance of Little, Brown, & Co., and behold before me row upon row of books,—“a sea of upturned faces,” as it were,—my feelings are like those of a loving mother, who, with outstretched arms, is ever ready to embrace and press to her bosom her beloved child. I long to clasp by the hand one and all of these attractive, silent spirits, to press them to my heart, and to exclaim, in the words of Channing, “God be thanked for books! ”
These words of Channing recall an incident in my boyhood. One night, as I was studying my lessons for the morrow, my father read to me, from Channing’s Essay on Self Culture, the words I have quoted, which illustrate not only Channing’s enthusiasm, but the power and influence of books. Let me repeat a few more lines from the passage:—
“God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof,—if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart; and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom,—I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.”
Byron says that “a small drop of ink may make millions think.” Many a time a book has decided the character of a man’s life. A book makes friends for you; for there springs up from its reading an acquaintanceship not only between you and the author, but between you and another man who reads the same book. Samuel Johnson, hearing that a man had read Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” exclaimed, “If I knew that man I could hug him.” It is said that Cæsar, when shipwrecked and in danger of drowning, did not try to save his gold, but took his Commentaries between his teeth and swam to shore.
All these instances I have cited tend to prove how great is the appreciation which men of culture have for those books out of which they have drawn inspiration for their lives, or into the making of which they have put their souls; and they all prove, also, the immense importance of the accomplished proof-reader in helping to create for us the books which we love.