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"Resist the temptation to invent ingenious devices for presenting your notes and index. Do not on any account be clever. References should be made in as concise a manner as possible, but compression can be carried too far; the edition should not be turned into a private language intelligible only to those initiated into it." "It is a mistake for an editor to display ingenuity, mastery of libraries, and indomitable will." "The causes of hypertension lurk everywhere. There is the fear of missing an obvious reference and being called 'superficial'; there is the annoyance of having 'new' letters turn up after the edition is published. Although editing is perhaps the least studied and respected of scholarly exercises, it is one of the most useful, and an editor may be subject to the gusts of self-pity that upset unappreciated people aware of their own merit." --Quotes from a book (an amusing book) on editing literary correspondence.