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 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 any thing 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 at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks,
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 Flavins Josephus (that
learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I
can read almost any thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic,
so unexcluding.
I confess 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
occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and
hope it is some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what "seem its
leaves," to come 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 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 Shakespeare,
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 worn out appearance, nay, the very
odour (beyond Russia), if we would not forget 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 lone sempstress, whom they may
have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her 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 a
whit less soiled? What better condition could we desire to see them
in?
In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from
binding. Fielding, Smollet, 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
That can its light relumine--
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.
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 without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are
so much better than the Shakspeare gallery _engravings_, which _did_.
I have a community of feeling with my 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. I do not know a more heartless sight than 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 could
dream of Burton ever becoming 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 fashion depicted, 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 commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair
of meddling sacrilegious varlets.