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 and 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 whio gentlemans 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