which I had overlooked, and making such verbal alterations as seemed
necessary to avoid repetition, to correct obvious errors and to
remove causes of reasonable offence. The ease with which two or more
notes would condense into one was sometimes surprising, but there
were cases in which the language had to be varied and others in which
a few words had to be added to bridge over a gap; as a rule, however,
the necessary words were lying ready in some other note. I also
reconsidered the titles and provided titles for many notes which had
none. In making these verbal alterations I bore in mind Butler's own
views on the subject which I found in a note about editing letters:

"Granted that an editor, like a translator, should keep as
religiously close to the original text as he reasonably can, and, in
every alteration, should consider what the writer would have wished
and done if he or she could have been consulted, yet, subject to
these limitations, he should be free to alter according to his
discretion or indiscretion."

My "discretion or indiscretion" was less seriously strained in making
textual changes than in determining how many, and what, groups to
have and which notes, in what order, to include in each group. Here
is a note Butler made about classification:

"Fighting about words is like fighting about accounts, and all
classification is like accounts. Sometimes it is easy to see which
way the balance of convenience lies, sometimes it is very hard to
know whether an item should be carried to one account or to another."

Except in the group headed "Higgledy-Piggledy," I have endeavoured to
post each note to a suitable account, but some of Butler's leading