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 Flavius 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 Encyclopaedias (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.--C. LAMB. _Detached Thoughts on Books
and Reading._