University of Virginia Library

Conclusion

These matters indicate that we have been thinking of our audience. I have speculated much on the curious mix of folk who are interested in John Stuart Mill, but I need not attempt to characterize them here, the relevant point being that they provide a differentia of our edition. More significantly for other editors, though even vaguer, is the consideration of future audiences. Scholarly editors, though they of course feel a special warmth for those who rush out to buy copies hot from the cold type, know that their volumes will sit quietly on shelves for most of their lives—that

is, the lives of the volumes, which should be much longer than those of their transitory midwives. (Which of us who habitually gives presents to family members thinks seriously of giving copies of our textually sound editions to them?) So we have tried to design our treatment for the fit few who will want to know all about Mill in ages to come.

What will they (or she or he) need to be told? It certainly is safe to assume that future readers will not know more about nineteenth-century England (or France, or Ireland) than do our contemporaries. And how much do the latter know? To make a worst-case assumption is not practicable, for it would entail more effort, time, and money than we can supply; it is also uncharitable, and we are essentially an eleemosynary profession. As indicated above, we have made what is almost a best-case assumption in the earlier volumes of the edition (excepting the letters), but here believe it unfair to well-intentioned readers. Somewhere in between lies the optimum case, which is related to our judgment of ourselves as representatives, even if not typical, of those to buy and to come; we are not adequate par nature, however, because in seeking for what we do not know but think should be known we modify necessarily our understanding of what we did know or thought we knew—here is a common but undiscussed analogy to the quantum uncertainty principle. Many hours were spent in discussion, decision, revision, as well as in search, and the results are certainly not perfect: like the strenuous Victorian strivers whom we emulate, we are seeking a personal best, not a perfect "10." What we have had to do is compromise, taking into account our resources, abilities, and the all-too-frequent inaccessibility of what we hoped to find.

All this is somewhat obvious, and might be taken for a counsel of despair. What I have earlier said about the text will suggest the same comment. But the despair will be such only to those who seek a comprehensive theory. Let me be confessedly open: in certain circumstances, theory is merely practice with the hard bits left out. It is wisely said that hard cases make bad laws; the history of law-making and -breaking in the last quarter century, when this maxim has often been scorned, indicates, at least to me, its validity. And editing is made up of hard cases.[23] James Mill's view, expressed in my opening quotation, puts the bald position that we repudiate. My confidence in our attitude may be explicated by an anecdote. Some years ago, Claude Bissell, then President of the University of Toronto, began to explain its long-standing college system; after a few moments, an Irishman stopped him, saying: "That's all very well in practice, but it won't work in theory!" Subsequently we had a President who tried to make it work in theory, and now it doesn't work at all. Even Jerome J. McGann, in his thought-provoking Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (1983), where he raises many of the issues

I am troubled about, though his is a literary corpus, feels compelled still to search for an encompassing theory, though his examples indicate quite clearly that such a theory would be empty of useful advice.

I am not saying, let it be clear, that one can manage without principles: these we have established, and have tried to follow for twenty-five years with all the diligence and care we can muster—but also with what commonsense and experience we can preserve. All editors worth their ink try to get it right. But what is "it"? And what if there is no "right"? I hold with Edmund Burke that circumstances alter cases, and—though he did not bother to say so—that in editing all cases are different.[24] Not all are significantly different, of course, and there is much that each of us can learn from others. My debts are very great, though my repayments may not seem worth the cost of collection.

As I have said, perhaps arrogantly, the differences between works are obviously relevant to the procedures used in editing them; certainly arrogantly I am implying that this obviousness has not always been obvious enough. In brief, and using categories I have employed elsewhere in discussing rhetoric, one should take into account (though not equally or in all cases) the particularities of the author, the audience, the purpose, thesis, and subject, the genre, the occasion (time and place), the "resistance" to communication, and the argument (in the broad sense)—and should recognize, as relevant, the fact that each and all of these may be, in fact likely are, plural, and that in many cases the ostensible and the actual are not identical. Of these, the most significant in our case are those of subject and audience. Mill is seldom "literary" in the narrow sense, and when he is, writes as a critic, not as an author of imaginative works. Consequently, his audiences are seldom, in their primary interests, literary. What matters for them is not what matters for close students of Elizabethan drama or seventeenth-century lyric poetry or nineteenth-century fiction. Philosophers, political scientists, economists, historians: all should care about the accuracy of what they are reading, and usually they can be persuaded that it is important to know just what basis a text has. But their span of attention for such matters is very short, and they insist on pressing on to matters that concern them more. They will, within reason (their definition of reason) humour the textual editor, but they will not offer reverence. So, trying to serve them, one must take into account their reasonable expectations (our definition of reasonable). And one must recognize the different value that minor variants have in non-imaginative prose, compared with those in Shakespeare's plays and Byron's poetry.

Let me mention just one other of these rhetorical considerations, that of single authorship. Quite apart from any undetected surgery by the

editors of the newspapers, there is an unresolved problem about the part played by Harriet Taylor (later Mill) in several of the leading articles and letters to the editor dealing with justice and domestic cruelty. The entry in Mill's list of his published writings says of a leader dated 10 February 1846: "a joint production—very little of which was mine" (MacMinn, p. 59). Thirteen subsequent entries for newspaper writings of the 1840s and 50s contain similar comments, one of which (for 28 August 1851) is upsetting: "This, like all my newspaper articles on similar subjects, and most of my articles on all subjects, was a joint production with my wife."[25] Several items in these volumes that are not specifically described as "joint productions" certainly can be inferred to be covered by this blanket of vague dimensions, and a few, including some of the manuscript texts, even though they are in Mill's hand, almost certainly have two authors.

Even to mention the applicability of the other rhetorical variables to our practice is here impracticable. My main purpose in alluding to them is to indicate that we accept the sad inevitability that our edition cannot be either definitive or a sure guide for others. It may be that ours will be the last (as it is the first) comprehensive edition of Mill's writings, though of course some of his works will probably be reedited if more evidence comes to light and when fashions change. But the market is not bullish: even some of our most popular volumes are now out of print, though the edition is not yet completed, and I cannot foresee a time when it will be thought useful to begin again de novo on a parallel endeavour. (I am not overlooking such possibilities as electronic and microform editions.)

We are also guilty of not paying sufficient attention to the considerations that D. F. McKenzie has been insisting on in recent years. There can be no doubt that the form in which a work appears affects its received meaning. His argument is always telling, and it applies with special force to newspaper writings, for newsprint affects all the rhetorical variables. Certainly a case could be made for facsimile reproduction of texts, and I for one would be happier at least part of the time if we had taken this route. But I would not be happy all of the time, for many of the texts would be illegible, and the impossibility of reproducing each of the defining qualities (the feel of the paper, the textual "surround," and so on), make the ideal unattainable; and if it were practicable, it would in many respects be annoying to most readers. Furthermore, we are not the original audience, and cannot realize fully, even with the exact artifacts in front of us, that audience's sensibilities and expectations (which of course were not uniform). Nonetheless, one should make some attempt

to make the reader constantly aware of the original form through comment and reproduction of the textual context—and as many illustrations as the price will admit.

As I have said, even if our edition, or let us say more specifically our volumes of Mill's newspaper writings, were definitive (taking out of the account the mistakes that we have made), I do not think it should serve as a model for others. The conditions that I have described make it necessarily different. Of course our practice will, if reasonably "right," offer suggestions to others, just as the practice of others has been of help to us. Our main effort, however, has been, and has properly been, to make Mill's writings available in a reliable form, and a form clearly explained, to those who wish to read him. That we have contributed little to the theory of editing will, we hope, be at least partly offset by our contributing something to its practice (sins and silliness included), but if finally and fully offset, it will be by our fulfilling our primary intention of satisfying our real and ideal scholarly audiences' desire for a clean and wholesome Mill.