Lucian the Dreamer by J.S. Fletcher

During the greater part of that summer Lucian had been working steadily on two things: the tragedy which Mr. Harcourt was to produce at the Atheneum in December, and a new poem which Mr. Robertson intended to publish about the middle of the autumn season. Lucian was flying at high game in respect of both. The tragedy was intended to introduce something of the spirit and dignity of Greek art to the nineteenth-century stage -- there was to be nothing common or mean in connection with its production; it was to be a gorgeous spectacle, but one of high distinction, and Lucian's direct intention in writing it was to set English dramatic art on an elevation to which it had never yet been lifted. The poem was an equally ambitious attempt to revive the epic; its subject, the Norman Conquest, had filled Lucian's mind since boyhood, and from his tenth year onwards he had read every book and document procurable which treated of that fascinating period. He had begun the work during his Oxford days; the greater part of it was now in type, and Mr. Robertson was incurring vast expense in the shape of author's corrections. Lucian polished and rewrote in a fashion that was exasperating; his publisher, never suspecting that so many alterations would be made, had said nothing about them in drawing up a formal agreement, and he was daily obliged to witness a disappearance of profits.

‘What a pity that you did not make all your alterations and corrections before sending the manuscript to press! ' he exclaimed one day, when Lucian called with a bundle of proofs which had been hacked about in such a fashion as to need complete resetting. ‘It would have saved a lot of trouble -- and expense.'