I know this by
experience: I was an author, I am a bookseller. The author thinks
what will conduce to his honour: the bookseller what will cause
his commodities to sell.

You, or some other wise man, I have heard to say, It is children
that read children's books, when they are read, but it is parents
that choose them. The critical thought of the tradesman put itself
therefore into the place of the parent, and what the parent will
condemn.

We live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of your manuscript,
of which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the
squeamish say to such expressions as these,--'devoured their
limbs, yet warm and trembling, lapping the blood,' page 10. Or
to the giant's vomit, page 14; or to the minute and shocking
description of the extinguishing the giant's eye in the page
following. You, I daresay, have no formed plan of excluding the
female sex from among your readers, and I, as a bookseller, must
consider that if you have you exclude one half of the human
species.

Nothing is more easy than to modify these things if you please,
and nothing, I think, is more indispensable.

Give me, as soon as possible, your thoughts on the matter.

I should also like a preface. Half our customers know not Homer,
or know him only as you or I know the lost authors of antiquity.
What can be more proper than to mention one or two of those
obvious recommendations of his works, which must lead every human
creature to desire a nearer acquaintance.--Believe me, ever
faithfully yours,

W. GODWIN.

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN

_March_ 11, 1808.

Dear Godwin,--The giant's vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am
glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the
other passages I can find no other objection but what you may
bring to numberless passages besides, such as of Scylla snatching
up the six men, etc.,--that is to say, they are lively images of
_shocking_ things. If you want a book, which is not occasionally
to _shock_, you should not have thought of a tale which was so
full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these things
without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if the
penalty should be that you and all the London booksellers should
refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I must say that I