1827.] On Rending New Booh. 19 



notice of it. There is a mutual and tacit understanding on this lioad. 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. A question may be 

 started here, and pursued as far as needful, whether, if an old and worm- 

 eaten Manuscript were discovered at the present moment, it would be 

 sought after with the same avidity as a new and hot-pressed poem, or other 

 popular work ? Not generally, certainly, though by a few with perhaps 

 greater zeal. For it would not affect present interests, or amuse present 

 fancies, or touch on present manners, or fall in with the public egotism in 

 any way : it would be the work either of some obscure author in which 

 case it would want the principle of excitement ; or of some illustrious name, 

 whose style and manner would be already familiar to those most versed in 

 the subject, and his fame established so that, as a matter of comment and 

 controversy, it would only go to account on the old score : there would be 

 no room for learned feuds and heart-burnings. Was there not a Manuscript 

 of Cicero's talked of as having been discovered about a year ago ? But 

 we have heard no more of it. There have been several other cases, more 

 or less in point, in our time or near it. A Noble Lord (which may serve 

 to shew at least the interest taken in books not for being neiv) some time 

 ago gave 2,000/. for a copy of the first edition of the Decameron : but did 

 he read it ? It has been a fashion also of late for noble and wealthy per- 

 sons to go to a considerable expense in ordering reprints of the old Chro- 

 nicles and black-letter works. Does not this rather prove that the books 

 did not circulate very rapidly or extensively, or such extraordinary patron- 

 age and liberality would not have been necessary ? Mr. Thomas Taylor, 

 at the instance, I believe, of the old Duke of Norfolk, printed fifty copies 

 in quarto of a translation of the works of Plato and Aristotle. He did not 

 choose that a larger impression should be struck off, lest these authors 

 should get into the hands of the vulgar. There was no danger of a run in 

 that way. I tried to read some of the Dialogues in the translation of Plato, 

 but, I confess, could make nothing of it : " the logic was so different from 

 our's!"* A startling experiment was made on this sort of retrospective 



* An expression borrowed from a voluble German scholar, who gave this as an excuse 

 for not translating the Critique of Pure Reason into English. He might as well have said 

 seriously, that the Rule of Three in German was different from our's. Mr. Taylor (the 

 Platonist, as he was called) was a singular instance of a person in our time believing in 

 the heathen mythology. He had a very beautiful wife. An impudent Frenchman, who 

 came over to London, and lodged in the same house, made love to her, by pretending to 

 worship her as Venus, and so thought to turn the tables on our philosopher. I once spent 

 an evening with this gentleman at Mr. G. D.'s chambers, in Clifford 's-inn (where there was 

 no exclusion of persons or opinions), and where we had pipes and tobacco, porter, and 

 bread and cheese for supper. Mr. Taylor never smoked, never drank porter, and had an 

 aversion to cheese. I remember he shewed with some triumph two of his fingers, which 

 had been bent so that he had lost the use of them, in copying out the manuscripts of Proclus 

 and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand. Such are the trophies of human pride ! It would be 

 well if our deep studies often produced no other crookedness and deformity ! I endeavoured 

 (but in vain) to learn something from the heathen philosopher as to Plato's doctrine of 

 abstract ideas being the foundation of particular ones, which I suspect has more truth in it 

 than we moderns are willing to admit. Another friend of mine once breakfasted with Mr. 

 D. (the most amiable and absent of hosts), when there was no butter, no knife to cut the 

 loaf with, and the tea-pot was without a spout. My friend, after a few immaterial ceremo- 

 nies, adjourned to Peel's coffee-house, close by, where he regaled himself on buttered toast, 

 coffee, and the newspaper of the day (a newspaper possessed some interest when we were 

 young) ; and the only interruption to his satisfaction was the fear that bis host might sud- 

 denly enter, and be shocked at his imperfect hospitality. He would probably forget the 

 circumstance altogether. I am afraid that this veteran of the old school has not received 

 many proofs of the archaism of the prevailing taste ; and that the corrections in his History 

 of the University of Cambridge have cost him more than the public will ever repay him 

 for. D 2 



