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. 10 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 66 66 66 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 Bath and Commodore Trunnion, of Trim and my Uncle Toby, of Don Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil Blas and Dame Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia, whose lips open and shut like buds of roses. To what nameless ideas did they give rise, with what airy delights I filled 5 up the outlines, as I hung in silence over the page. Let me still recall them, that they may breathe fresh life into me and that I may live that birthday of thought and romantic pleasure over again! Talk of the ideal! This is the only true ideal the heavenly tints of fancy reflected in the bubbles 10 that float upon the spring-tide of human life. 66 “O Memory, shield me from the world's poor strife, The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less startling that it was; the reader will, by this time, have been let into 15 my secret. Much about the same time, or I believe rather earlier, I took a particular satisfaction in reading Chubb's Tracts, and I often think I will get them again to wade through. There is a high gusto of polemical divinity in them; and you fancy that you hear a club of shoemakers at Salis- 20 bury debating a disputable text from one of St. Paul's epistles in a workmanlike style, with equal shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say much for my metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after with great ardor, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I was presently entangled in 25 the briers and thorns of subtle distinctions-of "fate, freewill, fore-knowledge absolute," though I cannot add that "in their wandering mazes I found no end," for I did arrive at some very satisfactory and potent conclusions; nor will I go so far, however ungrateful the subject might seem, as to 30 exclaim with Marlowe's Faustus, "Would I had never seen Wittenberg, never read book "—that is, never studied such authors as Hartley, Hume, Berkeley, etc. Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding is, however, a work from which I never derived either pleasure or profit; and Hobbes, 35 dry and powerful as he is, I did not read till long afterwards. I read a few poets, which did not much hit my taste-for I would have the reader understand I am deficient in the faculty of imagination; but I fell early upon French romances and philosophy, and devoured them tooth-and-nail. Many a dainty repast have I made of the New Eloise-the descrip5 tion of the kiss; the excursion on the water; the letter of St. Preux, recalling the time of their first loves; and the account of Julia's death: these I read over and over again with unspeakable delight and wonder. Some years after, when I met with this work again, I found I had lost nearly my whole 10 relish for it (except some few parts), and was, I remember, very much mortified with the change in my taste, which I sought to attribute to the smallness and gilt edges of the edition I had bought, and its being perfumed with roseleaves. Nothing could exceed the gravity, the solemnity, 15 with which I carried home and read the dedication to the Social Contract, with some other pieces of the same author, which I had picked up at a stall in a coarse leathern cover. Of the Confessions I have spoken elsewhere, and may repeat what I have said: "Sweet is the dew of their memory, and 20 pleasant the balm of their recollection." Their beauties are not "scattered like stray gifts o'er the earth," but sown thick on the page, rich and rare. I wish I had never read the Emilius, or read it with less implicit faith. I had no occasion to pamper my natural aversion to affectation or pre25 tence, by romantic and artificial means. I had better have formed myself on the model of Sir Fopling Flutter. There is a class of persons whose virtues and most shining qualities sink in, and are concealed by, an absorbent ground of modesty and reserve; and such a one I do, without vanity, profess 30 myself. Now, these are the very persons who are likely to attach themselves to the character of Emilius, and of whom it is sure to be the bane. This dull, phlegmatic, retiring humor is not in a fair way to be corrected, but confirmed and rendered desperate, by being in that work held up as an 35 object of imitation, as an example of simplicity and magnanimity, by coming upon us with all the recommendations of novelty, surprise, and superiority to the prejudices of the world, by being stuck upon a pedestal, made amiable, daz |