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ever manner the ruling dynasties of England or France may have begun, the king of Great Britain is at this day king by a fixed rule of succession, according to the laws of his country; and whilst the legal conditions of the compact of sov5 ereignty are performed by him (as they are performed), he holds his crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolution Society, who have not a single vote for a king amongst them, either individually or collectively, though I make no doubt they would soon erect themselves into an electoral college if 10 things were ripe to give effect to their claim. His Majesty's heirs and successors, each in his time and order, will come to the crown with the same contempt of their choice with which his Majesty has succeeded to that he wears.

Whatever may be the success of evasion in explaining away 15 the gross error of fact which supposes that his Majesty (though he holds it in concurrence with the wishes) owes his crown to the choice of his people, yet nothing can evade their full, explicit declaration concerning the principle of a right in the people to choose, which right is directly maintained 20 and tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insinuations concerning election bottom in this proposition and are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the king's exclusive legal title should pass for a mere rant of adulatory freedom, the political divine proceeds dogmatically to assert that by the 25 principles of the Revolution the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights, all which, with him, compose one system and lie together in one short sentence, namely, that we have acquired a right (1) "to choose our own governors," (2) "to cashier them for misconduct," (3) 30" to frame a government for ourselves." This new and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made in the name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction only. The body of the people of England have no share in it. They utterly disclaim it. They will resist the 35 practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of their country, made at the time of that very Revolution which is appealed to in favor of the fictitious rights claimed by the society which abuses its name.

William Hazlitt.

1778-1830.

ON READING OLD BOOKS.

(From The Plain Speaker, 1826.)

I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes that I have read over and over again, and these are the only ones that I have any desire ever to read at all. It was a long time before I could bring myself to sit down to the Tales of My Landlord, but now that author's works have 5 made a considerable addition to my scanty library. I am told that some of Lady Morgan's are good, and have been recommended to look into Anastasius; but I have not yet ventured upon that task. A lady, the other day, could not refrain from expressing her surprise to a friend who said he 10 had been reading Delphine: she asked if it had not been published some time back. Women judge of books as they do of fashions or complexions, which are admired only "in their newest gloss." That is not my way. I am not one of those who trouble the circulating libraries much, or pester the book- 15 sellers for mail-coach copies of standard periodical publications. I cannot say that I am greatly addicted to black-letter, but I profess myself well versed in the marble bindings of Andrew Millar, in the middle of the last century; nor does my taste revolt at Thurloe's State Papers in Russia leather, 20 or an ample impression of Sir William Temple's Essays, with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller in front. I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living. Contemporary writers may generally be 25 divided into two classes-one's friends or one's foes. Of the first we are compelled to think too well, and of the last we are disposed to think too ill, to receive much genuine pleasure

from the perusal or to judge fairly of the merits of either. One candidate for literary fame, who happens to be of our acquaintance, writes finely and like a man of genius, but unfortunately has a foolish face, which spoils a delicate passage; 5 another inspires us with the highest respect for his personal talents and character, but does not quite come up to our expectations in print. All these contradictions and petty details interrupt the calm current of our reflections. If you want to know what any of the authors were who lived before 10 our time and are still objects of anxious inquiry, you have only to look into their works. But the dust and smoke and noise of modern literature have nothing in common with the pure, silent air of immortality.

When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener 15 the better), I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish-turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt what to think of the composition. There is a want 20 of confidence and security to second appetite. New-fangled books are also like made dishes in this respect, that they are generally little else than hashes and rifaccimentos of what has been served up entire, and in a more natural state, at other times. Besides, in thus turning to a well-known author 25 there is not only an assurance that my time will not be thrown away, or my palate nauseated with the most insipid or vilest trash, but I shake hands with and look an old, tried, and valued friend in the face, compare notes, and chat the hours away. It is true we form dear friendships with such 30 ideal guests-dearer, alas, and more lasting than those with our most intimate acquaintance. In reading a book which is an old favorite with me (say the first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination and of a critical relish of the work, but the pleasures of memory added to it. 35 It recalls the same feelings and associations which I had in first reading it and which I can never have again in any other way. Standard productions of this kind are links in the chain of our conscious being. They bind together the

different scattered divisions of our personal identity. They are landmarks and guides in our journey through life. They are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and 5 records of our happiest hours. They are "for thoughts and for remembrance." They are like Fortunatus's wishing-cap -they give us the best riches, those of fancy, and transport us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives, at a word's notice.

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My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give me for this purpose a volume of Peregrine Pickle or Tom Jones. Open either of them anywhere-at the Memoirs of Lady Vane, or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum and Square, or 15 the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and her muff, or the edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture,and there I find the same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the same as when I was first introduced into the midst of it. Nay, sometimes the sight of an odd 20 volume of these good old English authors on a stall, or the name lettered on the back among others on the shelves of a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole train of ideas, and sets "the puppets dallying." Twenty years are struck off the list, and I am a child again. A sage philosopher, who 25 was not a very wise man, said that he should like very well to be young again if he could take his experience along with him. This ingenious person did not seem to be aware, by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being young is to be without this weight of experience, which he 30 would fain place upon the shoulders of youth and which never comes too late with years. O what a privilege to be able to let this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop from off one's back, and transport oneself, by the help of a little musty duodecimo, to the time when "ignorance was bliss," and when 35 we first got a peep at the raree-show of the world through the glass of fiction, gazing at mankind, as we do at wild beasts in a menagerie, through the bars of their cages, or at curi

osities in a museum, that we must not touch! For myself, not only are the old ideas of the contents of the work brought back to my mind in all their vividness, but the old associations of the faces and persons of those I then knew, as they 5 were in their lifetime-the place where I sat to read the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky-return, and all my early impressions with them. This is better to me-those places, those times, those persons, and those feelings that come across me as I retrace 10 the story and devour the page, are to me better far than the wet sheets of the last new novel from the Ballantyne press, to say nothing of the Minerva press in Leadenhall Street. It is like visiting the scenes of early youth. I think of the time "when I was in my father's house, and my path ran 15 down with butter and honey "-when I was a little thoughtless child, and had no other wish or care but to con my daily task and be happy. Tom Jones, I remember, was the first work that broke the spell. It came down in numbers once a fortnight, in Cooke's pocket-edition, embellished with cuts. 20 I had hitherto read only in school-books and a tiresome ecclesiastical history (with the exception of Mrs. Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest); but this had a different relish with it-“ sweet in the mouth," though not "bitter in the belly." It smacked of the world I lived in and in which I was to 25 live, and showed me groups, "gay creatures" not "of the element" but of the earth, not "living in the clouds" but travelling the same road that I did some that had passed on before me, and others that might soon overtake me. My heart had palpitated at the thoughts of a boarding-school 30 ball, or gala-day at midsummer or Christmas; but the world. I had found out in Cooke's edition of the British Novelists was to me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day. The sixpenny numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the middle of a sentence and in the nick of a 35 story. . . . With what eagerness I used to look forward to the next number, and open the prints! Ah, never again shall I feel the enthusiastic delight with which I gazed at the figures, and anticipated the story and adventures of Major

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