"I entreat you to believe that I feel truly obliged by your kind intentions towards me, and that I entertain the most unfeigned respect for your most tasteful talents. If it would not suit me to engage in the publication of your present work, it is only because I do not see that scope in the nature of it which would enable me to make those satisfactory accounts between us which I really feel no satisfaction in engaging." Now, surely, as Justice Shallow says, good phrases are, and ever were, very commendable. While Murray dealt in good phrases, his rival Longman expressed himself through the more tangible medium of good cheques. He was the London publisher, and apparently the financier, of the _Edinburgh Review_, and, according to Sydney Smith's testimony, his fiscal system was simplicity itself. "I used to send in a bill in these words, 'Messrs. Longman & Co. to the Rev. Sydney Smith. To a very wise and witty article on such a subject; so many sheets, at forty-five guineas a sheet,' and the money always came." Here is another passage from the financial dealings of the same great house, which during the last fifty years has caused many a penman's mouth to water. On the 7th of March 1856 Macaulay wrote in his diary: "Longman came, with a very pleasant announcement. He and his partners find that they are overflowing with money, and think that they cannot invest it better than by advancing to me, on the usual terms of course, part of what will be due to me in December. We agreed that they shall pay twenty thousand pounds into Williams's Bank next week. What a sum to be gained by one edition of a book! I may say, gained in one day. But that was harvest-day. The work had been near seven years in hand." After that glorious instance, all tales of profit from books seem flat and insignificant. As a rule, we have to reckon our makings on a far more modest scale. "Sir," said an enthusiastic lady to Mr. Zangwill, "I admire 'The Children of the Ghetto' so much that I have read it eight times." "Madam," replied Mr. Zangwill, "I would rather you had bought eight copies." Even so, with our exiguous profit on eight copies duly sold, our state is more gracious than that of more deserving men. Here is a touching vignette from a book of travels, which was popular in my youth: "At _table d'hôte_ there is a charming old gentleman who has translated Æschylus and Euripides into English verse; he has been complimented by the greatest scholars of the day, and his publishers have just sent him in his bill for printing, and a letter to know what the deuce they shall do with the first thousand."