calls the servant Sir; and insists on not in which Hooker, in his young days, possibly troubling him to hold her plate. The house- flaunted in a vein of no discommendable keeper patronises her. The children's vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in governess takes upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for harpsichord. his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among books, which insult not; and studies, that Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a ask no questions of a youth's finances. He notable instance of the disadvantages to was lord of his library, and seldom cared for which this chimerical notion of affinity looking out beyond his domains. The healing constituting a claim to acquaintance, may influence of studious pursuits was upon him, subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a healthy man ; when the waywardness of his lady with a great estate. His stars are fate broke out against him with a second and perpetually crossed by the malignant worse malignity. The father of W— had maternity of an old woman, who persists in hitherto exercised the humble profession of calling him "her son Dick." But she has house-painter at N, near Oxford. A wherewithal in the end to recompense his supposed interest with some of the heads of indignities, and float him again upon the colleges had now induced him to take up his brilliant surface, under which it had been abode in that city, with the hope of being her seeming business and pleasure all along employed upon some public works which to sink him. All men, besides, are not of were talked of. From that moment I read Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in in the countenance of the young man the real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank determination which at length tore him from indeed. Poor W- was of my own academical pursuits for ever. To a person standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a unacquainted with our universities, the youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it distance between the gownsmen and the was too much pride; but its quality was townsmen, as they are called-the trading inoffensive; it was not of that sort which part of the latter especially-is carried to an hardens the heart, and serves to keep excess that would appear harsh and increinferiors at a distance; it only sought to dible. The temperament of W's father ward off derogation from itself. It was the was diametrically the reverse of his own. principle of self-respect carried as far as it Old W- was a little, busy, cringing could go, without infringing upon that tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, respect, which he would have every one else would stand bowing and scraping, cap in equally maintain for himself. He would hand, to any thing that wore the semblance have you to think alike with him on this of a gown-insensible to the winks and topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, opener remonstrances of the young man, to when we were rather older boys, and our whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, tallness made us more obnoxious to obser- perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and vation in the blue clothes, because I would gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things not thread the alleys and blind ways of the could not last. W must change the air town with him to elude notice, when we have of Oxford, or be suffocated. He chose the been out together on a holiday in the streets former; and let the sturdy moralist, who of this sneering and prying metropolis. strains the point of the filial duties as high W— went, sore with these notions, to as they can bear, censure the dereliction; be Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of a W, the last afternoon I ever saw him, humble introduction, wrought in him a under the caves of his paternal dwelling. passionate devotion to the place, with a It was in the fine lane leading from the profound aversion from the society. The High-street to the back of **** college, servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under which Latimer must have walked erect, and where W- kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally him—finding him in a better moodupon a representation of the Artist Evan EE gelist, which the old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity or badge of gratitude to his saint. W- looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, "knew his mounted sign-and fled." A letter on his father's table, the next morning, announced that he had accepted a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was among the first who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. against him in some argument, touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill and in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious division between the boys who lived above (however brought together in a common school) and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading Mountaineer; and would still mainI do not know how, upon a subject which tain the general superiority, in skill and I began with treating half seriously, I should hardihood, of the Above Boys (his own have fallen upon a recital so eminently pain-faction) over the Below Boys (so were they ful; but this theme of poor relationship is called), of which party his contemporary had replete with so much matter for tragic as well been a chieftain. Many and hot were the as comic associations, that it is difficult to skirmishes on this topic-the only one upon keep the account distinct without blending. which the old gentleman was ever brought The earliest impressions which I received on out—and bad blood bred; even sometimes this matter, are certainly not attended with almost to the recommencement (so I exanything painful, or very humiliating, in the pected) of actual hostilities. But my father, recalling. At my father's table (no very who scorned to insist upon advantages, splendid one) was to be found, every Satur- generally contrived to turn the conversation day, the mysterious figure of an aged gentle- upon some adroit by-commendation of the man, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet old Minster; in the general preference of comely appearance. His deportment was of which, before all other cathedrals in the the essence of gravity; his words few or island, the dweller on the hill, and the plainnone; and I was not to make a noise in his born, could meet on a conciliating level, and presence. I had little inclination to have lay down their less important differences. done so for my cue was to admire in silence. Once only I saw the old gentleman really A particular elbow chair was appropriated ruffled, and I remembered with anguish the to him, which was in no case to be violated. thought that came over me: Perhaps he A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which will never come here again." He had been appeared on no other occasion, distinguished pressed to take another plate of the viand, the days of his coming. I used to think him which I have already mentioned as the indisa prodigiously rich man. All I could make pensable concomitant of his visits. He had out of him was, that he and my father had refused with a resistance amounting to been schoolfellows, a world ago, at Lincoln, rigour, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but and that he came from the Mint. The Mint who had something of this, in common with I knew to be a place where all the money my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes was coined and I thought he was the owner press civility out of season- uttered the of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower following memorable application—“ Do take twined themselves about his presence. He another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get seemed above human infirmities and passions. pudding every day." The old gentleman A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. said nothing at the time-but he took occaFrom some inexplicable doom I fancied him sion in the course of the evening, when some obliged to go about in an eternal suit of argument had intervened between them, to mourning; a captive—a stately being let out utter with an emphasis which chilled the of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I company, and which chills me now as I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, write it "Woman, you are superannuated!" in spite of an habitual general respect which John Billet did not survive long after the we all in common manifested towards him, digesting of this affront; but he survived would venture now and then to stand up long enough to assure me that peace was actually restored! and, if I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint (anno 1781), where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found in his escrutoire after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was-a Poor Relation. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING, To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's 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 acquaintance of my own was come bolt upon a withering Population so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. In this catalogue of books which are no books-biblia a-biblia-I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large: the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes which no gentleman's library should be without:" the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. Essay. To expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find-Adam Smith. To view a wellarranged assortment of block-headed Encyclopædias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia, or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably 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 and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can 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 costume. A Shakspeare or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and I confess that it moves my spleen to see worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour these things in books' clothing perched upon (beyond russia), if we would not forget kind shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true feelings in fastidiousness, of an old “Circushrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrust-lating Library" Tom Jones, or Vicar of ing out the legitimate occupants. To reach Wakefield! How they speak of the thoudown a well-bound semblance of a volume, sand thumbs that have turned over their and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, pages with delight!—of the lone sempstress, then, opening what seem its leaves," to whom they may have cheered (milliner, or 66 harder-working mantua-maker) after her I do not know a more heartless sight than long day's 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 enchanting contents! Who would have them the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer a whit less soiled? What better condition could dream of Burton ever becoming could we desire to 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 Nature's 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 once both good and rare-where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes, We know not where is that Promethean torch such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess-no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. the popular?-The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, eyebrow, 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 commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, 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 confess, that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear— to mine, at least-than that of Milton or of Shakspeare? It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common 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 stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons? 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 endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become 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 common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps 'or modest remembrancers, to the text; and Milton almost requires a solemn service of without pretending to any supposable emula-music to be played before you enter upon tion with it, are so much better than the him. But he brings his music, to which, Shakspeare gallery engravings, which did. who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, I have a community of feeling with my and purged ears. countrymen about his Plays, and I like those editions of him best which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled.-On the contrary, I cannot 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 current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. Winter evenings-the world shut outwith less of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud-to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than oneand it degenerates into an audience. Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. book to make a man seriously ashamed at It will not do to read them out. I could the exposure; but as she seated herself down never listen to even the better kind of by me, and seemed determined to read in modern novels without extreme irksomeness. company, I could have wished it had been A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In any other book. We read on very some of the Bank offices it is the custom (to sociably for a few pages; and, not finding save so much individual time) for one of the the author much to her taste, she got up, and clerks who is the best scholar-to com--went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to mence upon the "Times," or the "Chronicle," thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for and recite its entire contents aloud, pro bono there was one between us) was the property publico. With every advantage of lungs and of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In From me you shall never get the secret. barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow I am not much a friend to out-of-doors will get up and spell out a paragraph, which reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I he communicates as some discovery. Another knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally follows with his selection. So the entire to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner'sjournal transpires at length by piece-meal. street was not), between the hours of ten and Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, with- eleven in the morning, studying a volume of out this expedient, no one in the company Lardner. I own this to have been a strain would probably ever travel through the con- of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to tents of a whole paper. admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's 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. Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, keeps the paper! I am sick of hearing the water bawling out incessantly, "The 'Chronicle' is in hand, Sir." Coming into an inn at night-having ordered your supper-what can be more delightful than to find lying in the windowseat, left there time out of mind by the carelessness of some former guest-two or three numbers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing tête-à-tête pictures "The Royal Lover and Lady G- -;" "The Melting Platonic and the old Beau,”and such-like antiquated scandal? Would you exchange it—at that time, and in that place for a better book? Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading the Paradise Lost, or Comus, 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 Candide. I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected-by a familiar damsel-reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading-Pamela. There was nothing in the There is a class of street readers, whom I can never contemplate without affection— the poor gentry, 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, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they "snatch a fearful joy." Martin B- -, in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper 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 circumstance in his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralised upon this subject in two very touching but homely stanzas. I saw a boy with eager eye |