Note 105 — LECTURE I THE SOURCES

The same sort of thing occurs occasionally even in these days of the printing press. In the early copies of a recent Blue Book on China, in the middle of a dispatch of Sir Claude Macdonald, occurred the following sentence: ‘not very grammatical, but I suppose we must let Sir Claude Macdonald write as he pleases.’ This is obviously the comment of some official, written on the margin of his proof, which escaped deletion when the proof was returned to the printer, and so was incorporated in the text.