to it exactly at the point at which it was forced to leave it. But there are the recorded facts; the direct conclusions to be drawn remain unaltered; nothing has disappeared, nothing has lost its identity. But suppose, let us say, a dramatist, devising his crisis after hours, perhaps days, of gradual growth, to the moment when he sees it before him as a reality.... Force his attention away, and he has lost, not merely the time he needed to complete a spell of works, with something over for the difficulty of resuming, but the _power_ of resuming. All has faded into a haze; and the fruit of days, may be, has been thrown away at the ripening, for such moments do not come twice." There are but few of Mr. Napier's own letters in this volume, so that we have only indirect means of measuring his idea of his editorial rights or duties as against contributors. There is one case in which Macaulay complains strongly of certain excisions, and there is another in which he defends certain phrases of his own which appear to have offended the taste of Mr. Napier, who found them undignified, if not slightly vulgar. He submits of course--all the mutilated ones submit--and he says he submits "willingly;" but all the while we can too plainly see the wry faces he is making. Mr. Napier was, apparently, a purist in the matter of style; but there is something almost grotesque in the spectacle of a man of his quality correcting Macaulay. It reminds one of _cet imbécile Buloz_.[37] The case of Leigh Hunt was very different, for he sometimes went to the extreme verge of decorum--quarterly review decorum, that is--and beyond it. But we may safely conclude that Macaulay knew much better than his editor how to turn a sentence, or when the use of a French locution was desirable for ends of literary effect. Upon this subject of imported phrases Mr. Napier was, it seems, very punctilious, for with Mr. G. H. Lewes he must have had a brisk correspondence about it. Mr. Lewes, who was then a young writer, anxious to get his feet well planted, submits, with every possible expression of acquiescence, one might almost say, of abject agreement; but it is easy to see that his compliance was forced. Macaulay in his discussion of this little matter with Napier, easily and decisively lays down the true guiding principle:--"The first rule of all writing,--that rule to which every other rule is subordinate,--is that the words used by the writer shall be such as most fully and precisely convey his meaning to the great body of his readers. All considerations about the purity and dignity of style ought to bend to this consideration."