1 83 1 . J The Perplexities of a Book- Worm. 393 



sonal tediousness, courtesies, formalities, or peculiarities. I could take the 

 book, and do \vith it as I pleased ; I could refute it, or imbibe its instruc- 

 tion, or arraign it, or worship it, or laugh with it, in the certainty that it 

 would not start upon me with an arrogant presumption, or a triumphant 

 chuckle, or an apothegm to destroy my illusion : in the certainty that in 

 its pride, or its mortification, it would not do one single thing to inter- 

 rupt my bent, or throw me back into a hatred of my fellows. In my 

 lonely chamber I sat with my books housed night and day with my 

 speechless companions ; nor did they always fill me with melancholy, 

 they frequently excited me to hilarity and joyousness. I have cracked a 

 bottle with old Burton, and caroused and lampooned with Lloyd and 

 Churchill. But then my mirth was of an ascetic kind, and was changed 

 at the least intrusion, or interruption, into vexation and spleen. I knew 

 not what it was to share the happiness of others, or to impart my own. 

 I could not talk of books, for they were my Penates, and I would not 

 defile their sacred office by intermixing them with every-day life. My 

 dreams were all my own unshared and incommunicable. Did sorrow, 

 or annoyance assail me from without, I rushed into my chamber, locked 

 myself up with my confederates, my confidantes, brightened up my fire, 

 roused myself to that pitch of energy a lonely man exerts when he sits 

 down on a winter night to study a problem in Euclid ; and, finally for- 

 getting the ills that awaited or thwarted me abroad, endeavoured to feel 

 myself at home, and to relish that silent selfish enjoyment which humanity 

 cannot enlarge by a single ray of hope. 



My passion, therefore, for books, increased with the necessity I created 

 for perusing them. I was perpetually reading, and demanding fresh 

 supplies. But my course of study was naturally wandering, imperfect, 

 and, in a measure, fruitless. Yet from the chaos I gathered some know- 

 ledge, dangerous, perhaps, because incomplete, but far beyond the 

 general information gleaned by those who mix largely in the world. My 

 early studies were books of a sombre nature ; old tracts, rhetorical 

 essays on theology, cynical histories, and elaborate works on the sciences. 

 From these I imbibed the groundwork of my system of thinking a few 

 cramped and sententious first principles. Of course every human ques- 

 tion was tried by my new standard ; my scholastic, or rather monastic, 

 divinity was the test of every religion under heaven ; and my dogmas in 

 composition sat as judges upon every treatise that came before me. This 

 was the first error of my system, but it was an extensive and ruinous one. 

 It has deprived me of the advantages of many a valuable book, which 

 stood condemned in its first page by my theory of judgment; it has led 

 me into occasional admiration of absurd and pernicious works, and pre- 

 judiced me altogether against whole classes of productions, good and 

 useful in their kind. 



But wandering and unsettled as it was, my reading was various and 

 diversified. I slowly progressed through the most popular works that 

 treat of the age of chivalry, until at length I almost became a knight- 

 errant myself, and could have done every thing but wield a lance, and 

 write madrigals. I ranged through every age of the drama, from its 

 obscene mysteries in the olden time, to its mysterious obscenities in our 

 own days : I was drunk with the love of Shakspeare, and Marlowe, and 

 Ford, and Massinger ; they inspired me to the worst excesses of which 

 my solitude was capable : Prince Harry and I have exchanged a cup of 

 sack, and I have sent Falstaff to bed in a barrel of ale, and taken on 



M.M. New Series. -VOL. XI. No. 64. 3 E 



