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To mind the inside of a book is to eain ones self with the forced product of another mans brain. Now I think a man of quality a.９9ｌib?nd breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own.-- Lord Foppington in the Relapse.
AN ingenious acquaintany own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his inality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must fess that I dedicate no insiderable portion of my time to other peoples thoughts. I dream away my life in others speculations. I love to lose myself in other mens minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I ot sit and think. Books think for me.
I have nnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I read any thing which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I ot allow for such.
In this catalogue of books which are no books -- biblia a-biblia -- I re Court dars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards bound aered at the back, Stific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertsoie, Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which "lemans library should be without :" the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jealeys Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I read almost any thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.
I fess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate octs. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it is some kied play-book, then, opening what "seem its leaves," to e bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find -- Adam smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglias or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would fortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.
To be strong-backed a-bound is the desideratum of a volume. Magnifies after. This, when it be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or half-binding (with Russia backs ever) is our e. A Shakespeare, or a Milton (uhe first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them fers no distin. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so on), strao say, raises no sweet emotions, no tig sense of property in the owhomsons Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn, and dogs-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn out appearanay, the very odour (beyond Russia), if we would not fet kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old "Circulating Library" Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield! How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with delight! -- of the loress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-w mantuamaker) after her long days needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enting tents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better dition could we desire to<s>9９lｉｂ?</s> see them in?
In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes -- Great Natures Stereotypes -- we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be "eterne." But where a book is at oh good and rare -- where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes,
We know not where is that Promethean torch
That its light relumine" --
such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess -- no casket is riough, no g suffitly durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel.
Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted; but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose-works, Fuller -- of whom we have reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we know, have not endenizehemselves (nor possibly ever will) iional heart, so as to bee stock books -- it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakspeare. I rather prefer the oions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembrancers, to the text; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakspeare gallery engravings, which did. I have a unity of feeling with my trymen about his Plays, and I like those editions of him best, which have been ofteumbled about and handled. -- On the trary, I ot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the curreions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of uhing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the fashion to modern sure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever being popular ? -- The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him white-wash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashioed, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eye-brow, hair, the very dress he used to wear -- the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By ----, if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt both entator aon fast iocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets.
I think I see them at their work -- these sapient trouble-tombs.
Shall I be thought fantastical, if I fess, that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear -- to mi least -- than that of Milton or of Shakspeare? It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung upon in on discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley.
Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes sermons ?
Milton almost requires a solemn serviusic to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears.
Winter evenings -- the world shut out -- with less of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season, the Tempest, or his own Wiale --
These two poets you ot avoid reading aloud -- to yourself, or (as it ces) to some single person listening. More than one -- and it degees into an audience.
Books of quiterest, that hurry on for is, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to eveter kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.
A neer, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank offices it is the (to save so mudividual time) for one of the clerks -- who is the best scholar -- to ence upoimes, or the icle, ae its entire tents aloud pro bono publico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers shops and public-houses a fellow will get up, and spell out a paragraph, which he unicates as some discovery. Another follows with his sele. So the entire journal transpires at length by piece-meal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient no one in the pany would probably ever travel through the tents of a whole paper.
Neers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappoi.
What aernal time that gentleman in black, at Nandus, keeps the paper! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out incessantly, "the icle is in hand, Sir."
ing in to an inn at night -- having ordered your supper -- what be more delightful than to find lying in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the carelessness of some fuest -- two or three numbers of the old Town and try Magazine, with its amusie-d-tete <dfn></dfn>pictures" -- The Royal Lover and Lady G----;" "The Melting Platonid the old Beau," -- and such like antiquated sdal? Would you exge it -- at that time, and in that place -- for a better book?
Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did nret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading -- the Paradise Lost, or us, he could have read to him -- but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet.
I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading dide.
I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been oected -- by a familiar damsel -- reed at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading -- Pamela. There was nothing in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determio read in pany, I could have wished it had been any other book. We read on very sociably for a few pages; and, not finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and -- went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to jecture, whether the blush (for there was oween us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret.
I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I ot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinners-street was not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the m, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstra beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular tacts. An illiterate enter with a porters knot, or a bread basket, would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points.
There is a class of street-readers, whom I ever plate without affe -- the pentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls -- the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expeg every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, a uo deny themselves the gratification, they "snatch a fearful joy." Martin B----, in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, wheallkeeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no circumstances of his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfa which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralised upon this subje two very toug but homely stanzas.
I saw a boy with eager eye
Open a book upon a stall,
And read, as hed devour it all;
Which wheall-man did espy,
Soon to the boy I heard him call,
"You, Sir, you never buy a book,
Therefore in one you shall not look."
The boy passd slowly on, and with a sigh
He wishd he never had been taught to read,
Then of the old churls books he should have had no need.
Of sufferings the poor have many,
Whiever the rinoy:
I soon perceivd another boy,
Who lookd as if hed not had any
Food, for that day at least -- enjoy
The sight of eat in a tavern larder.
This boys case, then thought I, is surely harder,
Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny,
Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat:
No wonder if he wish he neer had learnd to eat.
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