18 On Reading Netv Books. [JULY, 



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 myste- 

 rious significance and self-importance of the tribe. If we wait, we must 

 take our report from others; if we make haste, we may dictate our's 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 pend- 

 ing. 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 antici- 

 pated us on others ; future ages, in all probability, will riot trouble their 

 heads about it; we are the panel. How hard, then, not to avail our- 

 selves 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 pro- 

 perly, 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 but 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 an- 

 nounced ? 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 Eng- 

 lish 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 pub- 

 lic : he cannot count upon the dead, nor look forward with much confi- 

 dence 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 feel- 

 ing of distaste and distrust, unless they are recommended to us by some 

 peculiar feature or obvious distinction. Only young ladies from the board- 

 ing-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 



