Yes, most potent seignors, a complaint! Persuade me not; I will make a star chamber matter of it.

Which of us—humble and much enduring devotees of the Muse—having somehow got our song or sonnet accepted and in the course of years published, has not waxed wroth to find it mischievously meddled with, the trail of the editor’s blue pencil over all its printed lines?

In prose editorial interference is exasperating enough. But in verse, where a comma misplaced, arbitrarily inserted or omitted, may change the whole meaning or effect of a pet phrase! And when the editor comes to manipulating words instead of punctuation marks, and juggling with rhymes even and with titles, what is to be said? What the author commonly says cannot be printed here.

I once knew a poetaster who wrote a handful of little rhymes which he called rather happily after his own notion, “Songs of a Year,” and which in due time appeared in print. The editor, however, had thought “The Four Seasons” a more taking title. The poetaster disagreed with him, but it was too late. Another effort of this same unfortunate he protested tearfully that he could not recognize in its printed form except by the strawberry mark, that is, the signature; and he said he wished the editor had revised that, too, while he was about it.

What is an editor? Is he omniscient? We know better. Are all the articles in his magazine supposed to bear the imprint of his ideas and style? When Mr. Howells, at an alleged salary of fifteen thousand a year, edited the Cosmopolitan and wrote most of it himself—well, you remember.

If the editor knows to a comma how he wants his poetry written, let him write it himself, as Mr. Gilder mostly does. If he thinks he can improve on the poetical style of his contributor and wants to put in his time that way, let him write and propose collaboration, or at least submit to the poor mortal of an author a plan of the contemplated improvements. But to go ahead on his own hook and change the whole complexion of the thing perhaps, and then send it out over the original signature? It is not honest.

The author relinquishes for a time the child of his brain, fondly expecting to get it back again in beautiful new clothes of type. What he does get is a changeling with dyed hair and a clothespin on its nose. Is he grateful? Hardly.

When the editor accepts a drawing for his magazine does he proceed to work it over, put in a few more shadows, touch up the high lights and perhaps alter the arrangement of the model’s back hair? Not as a rule.

A magazine is not a school for drawing, nor is it a literary kindergarten. An editor is not a pedagogue.

If he thinks a thing good enough to print, let him print it honestly as it was made; if not, let him return it with thanks and encourage the author to send it somewhere else. That author, if he is worth his Attic salt, would rather have his verses printed in the Podunk Thinker as he wrote them than in the Century with R. W. Gilder’s emendations.

Neith Boyce.