Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/161

 *gust 28th, 1886, we find a tribute to the perfection of her "copy:"—

"The printers report that, owing to the fewness of the corrections and the clearness with which they are made, revises will be unnecessary, which will be a great gain in time, as well as a saving of expense."

Vice versâ, one calls to mind a tale of Miss Martineau's about Carlyle, who literally smothered his proof-sheets with corrections. One day he went to the office to urge on the printer. "Why, sir," said the latter, "you really are so very hard upon us with your corrections. They take so much time, you see!" Carlyle replied that he had been accustomed to this sort of thing—he had got works printed in Scotland, and "Yes, indeed, sir," rejoined the printer, "we are aware of that. We have a man here from Edinburgh, and when he took up a bit of your copy, he dropped it as if it had burnt his fingers, and cried out, 'Lord, have mercy! have you got that man to print for? Lord knows when we shall get done with his corrections.'"

It is evident that Mr. Bentley deemed his protégée—if we may so term her—capable of turning her pen in many directions. "I am not sure that you could not give us a fine historical novel," he wrote in 1887, "if you got hold of a character which fascinated your imagination."