There is a fashion in reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for
a season. One would imagine that books were, like women, the worse for
being old;[2] 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. What is it to me that another--that
hundreds or thousands have in all ages read a work? Is it on this
account the less likely to give me pleasure, because it has delighted so
many others? Or can I taste this pleasure by proxy? Or am I in any
degree the wiser for their knowledge? Yet this might appear to be the
inference. _Their_ having read the work may be said to act upon us by
sympathy, and 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, to criticise, 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?
[2] "Laws are not like women, the worse for being old."--_The
Duke of Buckingham's Speech in the House of Lords, in Charles
the Second's time_.
A new work is something in our power; we mount the bench, and sit in
judgment 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 _accessaries after the fact_.
Though not the parent of the bantling that "has just come into this
breathing world, scarce half made up," without the aid of criticism and
puffing, yet we are the gossips and foster-nurses on the occasion, with
all the mysterious significance and self-importance of the tribe. If we
wait, we must take our report from others; if we make haste, we may
dictate ours to them. It is not a race, then, for priority of
information, but for precedence in tattling and dogmatising. The work
last out is the first that people talk and inquire about. It is the
subject on the _tapis_--the cause that is pending. It is the last
candidate for success, (other claims have been disposed of,) and appeals
for this success to us, and us alone. Our predecessors can have nothing
to say to this question, however they may have anticipated us on others;
future ages, in all probability, will not trouble their heads about it;
we are the panel. How hard, then, not to avail ourselves of our
immediate privilege to give sentence of life or death--to seem in
ignorance of what every one else is full of--to be behind-hand with the
polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of mankind--to be at a loss
and dumb-founded, when all around us are in their glory, and figuring
away, on no other ground than that of having read a work that we have
not! Books that are to be written hereafter cannot be criticised by us;
those that were written formerly have been criticised long ago; but a
new book is the property, the prey of ephemeral criticism, which it
darts triumphantly upon; there is a raw thin air of ignorance and
uncertainty about it, not filled up by any recorded opinion; and
curiosity, impertinence, and vanity rush eagerly into the vacuum. A new
book is the fair field for petulance and coxcombry to gather laurels
in--the butt set up for roving opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then,
that the circulating libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and
their grand-daughters, when a new novel is announced? That mail-coach
copies of the _Edinburgh Review_ are or were coveted? That the
manuscript of the _Waverley_ romances is sent abroad in time for the
French, German, or even Italian translation to appear on the same day as
the original work, so that the longing continental public may not be
kept waiting an instant longer than their fellow-readers in the English
metropolis, which would be as tantalizing and insupportable as a little
girl being kept without her new frock, when her sister's is just come
home, and is the talk and admiration of every one in the house? To be
sure, there is something in the taste of the times; a modern work is
expressly adapted to modern readers. It appeals to our direct
experience, and to well-known subjects; it is part and parcel of the
world around us, and is drawn from the same sources as our daily
thoughts. There is, therefore, so far, a natural or habitual sympathy
between us and the literature of the day, though this is a different
consideration from the mere circumstance of novelty. An author now
alive, has a right to calculate upon the living public; he cannot count
upon the dead, nor look forward with much confidence to those that are
unborn. Neither, however, is it true that we are eager to read all new
books alike; we turn from them with a certain feeling of distaste and
distrust, unless they are recommended to us by some peculiar feature or
obvious distinction. Only young ladies from the boarding-school, or
milliners' girls, read all the new novels that come out. It must be
spoken of or against; the writer's name must be well known or a great
secret; it must be a topic of discourse and a mark for criticism--that
is, it must be likely to bring us into notice in some way--or we take
no notice of it. There is a mutual and tacit understanding on this head.
We can no more read all the new books that appear, than we can read all
the old ones that have disappeared from time to time.--_Monthly
Magazine_.
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