I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes that I have
read over and over again, and these are the only ones that I have any
desire ever to read at all. It was a long time before I could bring
myself to sit down to the _Tales of My Landlord_, but now that author's
works have made a considerable addition to my scanty library.... Women
judge of books as they do of fashions or complexions, which are admired
only 'in their newest gloss'. That is not my way. I am not one of those
who trouble the circulating libraries much, or pester the booksellers
for mail-coach copies of standard periodical publications. I cannot say
that I am greatly addicted to black-letter, but I profess myself well
versed in the marble bindings of Andrew Millar, in the middle of the
last century; nor does my taste revolt at Thurloe's _State Papers_, in
russia leather; or an ample impression of Sir William Temple's _Essays_,
with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller in front. I do not think
altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a
generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the
living.... When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener
the better), I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not
lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is altogether new,
I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish--turn and pick out a bit
here and there, and am in doubt what to think of the composition. There
is a want of confidence and security to second appetite. New-fangled
books are also like made-dishes in this respect, that they are generally
little else than hashes and _rifaccimentos_ of what has been served up
entire and in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in thus
turning to a well-known author, there is not only an assurance that my
time will not be thrown away, or my palate nauseated with the most
insipid or vilest trash, but I shake hands with, and look an old, tried,
and valued friend in the face, compare notes, and chat the hours away.
It is true, we form dear friendships with such ideal guests--dearer,
alas! and more lasting, than those with our most intimate acquaintance.
In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel
I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination and of a
critical relish of the work, but the pleasures of memory added to it.
It recalls the same feelings and associations which I had in first
reading it, and which I can never have again in any other way. Standard
productions of this kind are links in the chain of our conscious being.
They bind together the different scattered divisions of our personal
identity. They are landmarks and guides in our journey through life.
They are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can
take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics
of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours.
They are 'for thoughts and for remembrance'! They are like Fortunatus's
Wishing Cap--they give us the best riches--those of Fancy; and transport
us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives,
at a word's notice!
My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give me for this
purpose a volume of _Peregrine Pickle_ or _Tom Jones_. Open either of
them anywhere--at the memoirs of Lady Vane, or the adventures at the
masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum and
Square, or the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and
her muff, or the edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture--and there I
find the same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself
the same as when I was first introduced into the midst of it. Nay,
sometimes the sight of an odd volume of these good old English authors
on a stall, or the name lettered on the back among others on the shelves
of a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole train of ideas, and
sets 'the puppets dallying'. Twenty years are struck off the list, and I
am a child again. A sage philosopher, who was not a very wise man, said,
that he should like very well to be young again, if he could take his
experience along with him. This ingenious person did not seem to be
aware, by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being
young is to be without this weight of experience, which he would fain
place upon the shoulders of youth, and which never comes too late with
years. Oh! what a privilege to be able to let this hump, like
Christian's burthen, drop from off one's back, and transport oneself, by
the help of a little musty duodecimo, to the time when 'ignorance was
bliss', and when we first got a peep at the raree-show of the world,
through the glass of fiction--gazing at mankind, as we do at wild beasts
in a menagerie, through the bars of their cages--or at curiosities in a
museum, that we must not touch! For myself, not only are the old ideas
of the contents of the work brought back to my mind in all their
vividness, but the old associations of the faces and persons of those I
then knew, as they were in their lifetime--the place where I sat to read
the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields,
the sky--return, and all my early impressions with them. This is better
to me--those places, those times, those persons, and those feelings that
come across me as I retrace the story and devour the page, are to me
better far than the wet sheets of the last new novel.--W. HAZLITT. _The
Plain Speaker._