Do not despise any honest propitiation, however small, in dealing with
your editor. Look to the physical aspect of your manuscript, and prepare
your page so neatly that it shall allure instead of repelling. Use good
pens, black ink, nice white paper and plenty of it. Do not emulate
"paper-sparing Pope," whose chaotic manuscript of the "Iliad," written
chiefly on the backs of old letters, still remains in the British
Museum. If your document be slovenly, the presumption is that its
literary execution is the same, Pope to the contrary notwithstanding.
An editor's eye becomes carnal, and is easily attracted by a comely
outside. If you really wish to obtain his good-will for your production,
do not first tax his time for deciphering it, any more than in visiting
a millionnaire to solicit a loan you would begin by asking him to pay
for the hire of the carriage which takes you to his door.

On the same principle, send your composition in such a shape that it
shall not need the slightest literary revision before printing. Many a
bright production dies discarded which might have been made thoroughly
presentable by a single day's labor of a competent scholar, in shaping,
smoothing, dovetailing, and retrenching. The revision seems so slight
an affair that the aspirant cannot conceive why there should be so much
fuss about it.

"The piece, you think, is incorrect; why, take it;
I'm all submission; what you'd have it, make it."

But to discharge that friendly office no universal genius is salaried;
and for intellect in the rough there is no market.

Rules for style, as for manners, must be chiefly negative: a positively