Library (Circulating) for Reviewers and Young Ladies.--I still always
adhere to my purpose of having it inserted in the Intelligence-leaf of
the Literary Gazette, that I shall not destroy the purchase-money which
I raise upon my _evening star_ [Hesperus], nor, like Musæus, fritter it
away in the purchase of summer-houses, but shall lay out the whole
capital upon a complete collection of all German _prefaces_ and
_titles_ that appear from fair to fair. I can carry out the plan, if I
give out a preface a week, on the payment of a penny, to reviewers, who
do not care to read the book itself when they review it.
That not even the surplus of the aforesaid mintage may lie as dead
capital in my house, I shall employ it--if I do not change my mind--in
getting the bookbinder to publish the _heavier_ German masterpieces,--e. g.
Frederick Jacobi's, Klinger's, Goethe's Tasso,--likewise the better
satirical and philosophical ones, in a _lighter_ ladies' edition, which
shall consist wholly of so-called _puzzle-volumes_, which have no book
slid into them. I shall thereby, methinks, be playing something pithy
into the hands of my fair readers, which shall be as well bound and
as well titled as the booksellers' edition, and in which--because the
hard stone-fruit is already _shelled out_, and there is nothing
inside--they can lay not only just as much of silk threads and silk
snippings as in the printed edition, but six ounces more. _Allwill's_
correspondence--a heavy, two-yolked ostrich's egg of the author's,
which I have had _blown out_ by the bookbinder in this manner, because
most of the fair readers are too _cold_ to hatch it--is now quite _light_.
But of the German romances I shall never prepare such a work-box edition
of empty state-carriages of the God of the Sun and the Muses, because I
fear the trade would cry out about _piracy_.--A happy man were I, if
the joint subscribers to my circulating-capsule-library had only been
shown round as much as twice in some Italian and Portuguese bookeries:[228]
they would there, where often only the titles of works--and of the
stupidest, into the bargain--are daubed on the wall, be astonished to see
what a miserable figure such useless libraries, beside my bookery of
regular puzzle-books, which I select from so many departments and with
some originality, cannot do otherwise than cut.
--Thus, of course, German capsule-readers among the ladies will never
be overtaken by you Portuguese women! Much rather will the former
follow in the footsteps even of the men, advocates and business people,
who subscribe to similar capsule-journalistics, and jointly read and
circulate the covers of the best German journals,--which latter are
often annexed as _curiosa_ even to the capsules, and fill them out....
Such is my plan and sketch; but even sheep would presume I were merely
playing off a joke here, unless I really carried it through.