1827.] [ 17 ] 



ON READING NEW BOOKS. 



' And what of this new book, that the whole world make such a rout about?" STERNE. 



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 1 consider the countless volumes that lie 

 unopened, unregarded, unread, and unthought-of, I cannot enter Info 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 passing incidents, and is out of date and old-fashioned, then it is so much 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 addi- 

 tion 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. What is it to me that another that hun- 

 dreds 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 1 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 fra- 

 grance of the scarcely-dry paper, to examine the type, to see who is tho 

 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 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 shew our 

 shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had 



* ft Laws are not like women, the worse for being old." The Duke of Buckingham's 

 Speech in the Hoitye of Lords, hi Charles the Second's time. 



M.M. New Series. VOL. IV. No. ID. D 



