“A man may make, as it were, cash entries of himself in a day-book, but the entries in the ledger and the balancing of the accounts should be done by others.”
When I began to write the Memoir of Butler on which I am still engaged, I marked all the more autobiographical notes and had them copied; again I was struck by the interest, the variety, and the confusion of those I left untouched. It seemed to me that any one who undertook to become Butler’s accountant and to post his entries upon himself would have to settle first how many and what accounts to open in the ledger, and this could not be done until it had been settled which items were to be selected for posting. It was the difficulty of those who dare not go into the water until after they have learnt to swim. I doubt whether I should ever have made the plunge if it had not been for the interest which Mr. Desmond MacCarthy took in Butler and his writings. He had occasionally browsed on my copy of the books, and when he became editor of a review, the _New Quarterly_, he asked for some of the notes for publication, thus providing a practical and simple way of entering upon the business without any very alarming plunge. I talked his proposal over with Mr. R. A. Streatfeild, Butler’s literary executor, and, having obtained his approval, set to work. From November 1907 to May 1910, inclusive, the _New Quarterly_ published six groups of notes and the long note on “Genius” (pp. 174–8 post). The experience gained in selecting, arranging, and editing these items has been of great use to me and I thank the proprietor and editor of the _New Quarterly_ for permission to republish such of the notes as appeared in their review.
In preparing this book I began by going through the notes again and marking all that seemed to fall within certain groups roughly indicated by the arrangement in the review. I had these selected items copied, distributed them among those which were already in print, shuffled them and turned them over, meditating on them, familiarising myself with them and tentatively forming new groups. While doing this I was continually gleaning from the books more notes 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: