I cannot understand the rage manifested by the greater part of the world
for reading new books. If the public had read all those that have gone
before, I can conceive how they should not wish to read the same work
twice over; but when I consider the countless volumes that lie unopened,
unregarded, unread, and unthought of, I cannot enter into the pathetic
complaints that I hear made that Sir Walter writes no more--that the
press is idle--that Lord Byron is dead. If I have not read a book
before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was
printed yesterday or three hundred years ago. If it be urged that it has
no modern, passing incidents, and is out of date and old-fashioned, then
it is so much the newer; it is farther removed from other works that I
have lately read, from the familiar routine of ordinary life, and makes
so much more addition to my knowledge. But many people would as soon
think of putting on old armour as of taking up a book not published
within the last month, or year at the utmost. There is a fashion in
reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for the season. One would
imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being old; that they
have a pleasure in being read for the first time; that they open their
leaves more cordially; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the
spirit of novelty; and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put
them on the shelf. This conceit seems to be followed up in practice....
The knowledge which so many other persons have of its contents deadens
our curiosity and interest altogether. We set aside the subject as one
on which others have made up their minds for us (as if we really could
have ideas in their heads), and are quite on the alert for the next new
work, teeming hot from the press, which we shall be the first to read,
criticize, and pass an opinion on. Oh, delightful! To cut open the
leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the scarcely dry paper, to examine
the type to see who is the printer (which is some clue to the value that
is set upon the work), to launch out into regions of thought and
invention never trod till now, and to explore characters that never met
a human eye before--this is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner-party,
or a few hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, when the work is
critical and full of expectation, would venture to dine out, or to face
a coterie of blue-stockings in the evening, without having gone through
this ordeal, or at least without hastily turning over a few of the first
pages, while dressing, to be able to say that the beginning does not
promise much, or to tell the name of the heroine?
A new work is something in our power: we mount the bench, and sit in
judgement on it; we can damn or recommend it to others at pleasure, can
decry or extol it to the skies, and can give an answer to those who have
not yet read it, and expect an account of it; and thus show our
shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had
time to form an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by
busying ourselves about it, a kind of _accessories after the fact_.--W.
HAZLITT. _Sketches and Essays._