personal talents and character, but does not quite come up to our expectations in print. All these contradictions and petty details interrupt the calm current of our reflections. If you want to know what any of the authors were who lived before our time, and are still objects of anxious inquiry, you have only to look into their works. But the dust, and smoke, and noise of modern literature have nothing in common with the pure, silent air of immortality.

When I take up a work that I have read before, (the oftener, the better,) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish,-turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt what to think of the composition. There is a want of confidence and security to second appetite. Newfangled books are also like madedishes in this respect, that they are generally little else than hashes and refaccimentos of what has been served up entire and in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in thus turning to a well-known author, there is not only a security, that my time will not be thrown away, and my palate nauseated with the most insipid or vilest trash,-but I shake hands with, and look an old, tried, and valued friend in the face,-compare notes, and chat the hours away. It is true, we form dear friendships with such ideal guests-dearer, alas! and more lasting, than those with our most intimate acquaintance. In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination, and of a critical relish of the work, but the pleasures of memory added to it. It recals the same feelings and associations which I had in first reading it, and which I can never have again in any other way. Standard productions of this kind are links in the chain of our conscious being. They bind together the different scattered divisions of our personal identity. They are land-marks and guides in our journey through life. They are pegs and loops on which

we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours. They are "for thoughts and for remembrance!" They are like Fortunatus's Wishing Cap-they give us the best riches-those of Fancy; and transport us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives, at a word's notice!

My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give me for this purpose a volume of Peregrine Pickle or Tom Jones. Open either of them any where-at the Memoirs of Lady Vane, or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum and Square, or the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and her muff, or the edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture-and there I find the same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the same as when I was first introduced into the thick of it. Nay, sometimes the sight of an odd volume of these good old English authors on a stall, or the name lettered on the back, among others on the shelves of a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole train of ideas, and sets "the puppets dallying.' Twenty years are struck off the score, and I am a child again. A sage philosopher, who was not a very wise man, said, that he should like very well to be young again, if he could take his experience along with him. This ingenious person did not seem to be aware, by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being young is to be without this weight of experience, which he would fain place upon the shoulders of youth, and which never comes too late with years. Oh! what a privilege to be able to let this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop from off one's back, and transport one's-self, by the help of a little musty duodecimo, to the time when "ignorance was bliss," and when we first got a peep at the raree-show of the world, through the glass of fiction-gazing at mankind, as we do at wild beasts in a menagerie, through the bars of their

cages, or at curiosities in a museum, that we must not touch! For myself, not only are the old ideas of the contents of the work brought back to my mind, in all their vividness; but the old associations of the faces and persons of those I then knew, as they were in their lifetime-the place where I sat to read the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky-return, and all my early impressions with them. This is better to me-those places, those times, those persons, and those feelings that come across me as I retrace the story and devour the page, are to me better far than the wet sheets of the last new novel from the Ballantyne press, or even from the Minerva press in Leadenhall-street. It is like visiting the scenes of early youth. I think of the time "when I was in my father's house, and my path ran down with butter and honey," when I was a little, thoughtless child, and had no other wish or care but to learn my task, and be happy!-Tom Jones, I remember, was the first work that broke the spell. It came down in numbers once a fortnight, in Cooke's pocket-edition embellished with cuts. I had hitherto read only in schoolbooks, and a little ecclesiastical history (with the exception of Mrs. Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest): but this had a different relish with it," sweet in the mouth," though not "bitter in the belly." It smacked of the world I lived in, and in which I was to live-and showed

Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, very undesignedly gets to bed to Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me caution the reader against this impression of Joseph Andrews; for there is a picture of Fanny in it which he should not set his heart on, lest he should never meet with any thing like it; or if he should, it would, perhaps, be better for him that he had not. It was just like ! With what eagerness I used to look forward to the next number, and open the prints! Ah! never again shall I feel the enthusiastic delight with which I gazed at the figures, and anticipated the story and adventures of Major Bath and Commodore Trunnion, of Trim and My Uncle Toby, of Don Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil Blas and Dame Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia, whose lips opened and shut like buds of roses. To what nameless ideas did they give rise,— with what airy delights I filled up the outlines, as I hung in silence over the page!-Let me still recal you, that you may breathe fresh life into me, and that I may live that birthday of thought and romantic pleasure over again! Talk of the ideal! This is the only true ideal-the heavenly tints of Fancy reflected in the bubbles that float upon the springtide of human life.

Oh! Memory! shield me from the world's And give those scenes thine everlasting poor strife,

life!

The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less so than it was: the reader will, by this time, have been let into my secret. Much about the same time, (or I believe rather earlier,) I took a particular satisfaction in reading Chubb's Tracts, and I often think I will get them again to wade through. There is a high gusto of polemical divinity in them: and you fancy that you hear a club of shoemakers, at Salisbury, debating a disputable text from one of St. Paul's Epistles, in a workmanlike style, with equal shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say so much for my metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after with great ardour, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I was presently entangled

deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive every thing but the plain, downright, simple, honest truthsuch as we see it chalked out in the character of Emilius.To return from this digression, which is a little out of place here.

Books have in a great measure lost their power over me; nor can I revive the same interest in them as formerly. I perceive when a thing is good, rather than feel it. It is true,

Marcian Colonna is a dainty book;

and the reading of Mr. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes lately made me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and tender images there conjured up, "come like shadows-so depart." The "tiger-moth's wings," which he has spread over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy; the gorgeous twilight window which he has painted over again in his verse, to me "blushes" almost in vain" with blood of queens and kings." I know how I should have felt at one time in reading such authors; and that is all. The sharp luscious flavour, the fine aroma is fled, and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of literature is left. If any one were to ask me what I read now, I might answer with my lord Hamlet in the play,-" Words, words, words."—"What is the matter?" "Nothing!"-They have scarce a meaning. But it was not always so. There was a time when, to my thinking, every word was a flower or a pearl, like those which dropped from the mouth of the little peasant in the Fairy Tale, or like those in Mr. Fellowes's answers to the Addresses to the Queen! I drank of the stream of knowledge that tempted, but did not mock my lips, as of the river of life freely. How eagerly I slaked my thirst of German sentiment," as the hart that panteth for the water-springs:" how I bathed and revelled, and added my floods of tears to Goethe's Sorrows of Werter, and to Schiller's Robbers

soul to Coleridge's fine Sonnet, beginning

Schiller! that hour I would have wish'd to die,

If through the shuddering midnight I had

sent,

From the dark dungeon of the tow'r time

rent,

That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry!

I believe I may date my insight into the mysteries of poetry from the commencement of my acquaintance with the authors of the Lyrical Ballads; at least, my discrimination of the higher sorts-not my predilection for such writers as Goldsmith or Pope: nor do I imagine they will say I got my liking of the novelists, or the comic writers,-for the characters of Valentine, Tattle, or Miss Prue, from them. If so, I must have got from them what they never had themselves. In points where poetic diction and conception are concerned, I may be at a loss, and liable to be imposed upon: but in forming an estimate of passages relating to common life and manners, I cannot think I am a plagiarist from any man. I there "know my cue without a prompter." I may say of such studies-Intus et in cute. I am just able to admire those literal touches of observation and description, which persons of loftier pretensions overlook and despise. I think I comprehend something of the characteristic part of Shakspeare; and in him indeed, all is characteristic, even the nonsense and poetry. I believe it was the celebrated Sir Humphry Davy, who used to say that Shakspeare was more a metaphysician than a poet. At any rate, it was very well to say so. I wish that I had sooner known the dramatic writers contemporary with Shakspeare; for in looking them over, about a year ago, I almost revived my old passion for reading, and my old delight in books, though they were very nearly new to me. The Periodical Essayists I read long ago. The Spectator I liked extremely: but the Tatler took my fancy most. I read the others soon after, the Rambler, the Adventurer, the World, the

too much!

66

adept in Richardson. I like the longest of his novels best, and think no part of them tedious; nor should I like to have any thing better to do than to read them from beginning to end, to take them up when I chose, and lay them down when I was tired, in some old family-mansion in the country, till every word and syllable relating to the bright Clarissa, the divine Clementina, the beautiful Pamela, "with every trick and line of their sweet favour," were once more graven in my heart's table." I have a sneaking kindness for Mackenzie's Julia de Roubignè the deserted mansion, and straggling gilliflowers on the mouldering garden-wall; and still more for his Man of Feeling; not that it is better, or so good; but at the time I read it, I sometimes thought of the heroine, Miss Walton, and of Miss together, and "that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken!"-One of the poets that I have always read with most pleasure, and can wander in for ever with a sort of voluptuous indolence, is Spenser; and I like Chaucer even better. The only writer among the Italians I can pretend to any knowledge of, is Boccacio, and of him I cannot express half my admiration. His story of the Hawk I could read and think of from day to day, just as I would look at a picture of Titian's!

I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a neighbouring town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar had laid the plot of his Recruiting Officer) and bringing home with me, "at one proud swoop," a copy of Milton's Paradise Lost, and another of Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution-both which I have still, and I still recollect, when I see the covers, the pleasure with which I dipped into them as I returned with my double prize. I was set up for one while. That time is past "with all its giddy raptures:" but I am

still anxious to preserve its memory, "embalmed with odours."-With respect to the first of these works, I would be permitted to remark here, in passing, that it is a sufficient answer to the German criticism which has since been started against the character of Satan (viz. that it is not one of disgusting deformity, or pure, defecated malice) to say that Milton has there drawn, not the abstract principle of evil, not a devil incarnate, but a fallen angel. This is the scriptural account, and the poet has followed it. We may safely retain such passages as that well-known one

His form had not yet lost All her original brightness; nor appear'd Less than arch-angel ruin'd; and the ex

cess

Of glory obscur’d—

for the theory, which is opposed to them, "falls flat upon the grunsel edge, and shames its worshippers." Let us hear no more then of this monkish cant, and bigotted outcry for the restoration of the horns and tail of the devil.-Again, as to the other work, Burke's Reflections, I took a particular pride and pleasure in it, and read it to myself and others for months afterwards. I had reason for my prejudice in favour of this author. To understand an adversary is some praise: to admire him is more. I thought I did both: L knew I did one. From the first time I ever cast my eyes on any thing of Burke's (which was an extract from his Letter to a Noble Lord in a three-times a week paper, The St. James's Chronicle, in 1796) I said to myself, "This is true eloquence: this is a man pouring out his mind on paper.' All other style seemed to me pedantic and impertinent. Dr. Johnson's was walking on stilts; and even Junius (who was at that time a

favourite with me), with all his terseness, shrunk up into little antithetic points and well-trimmed sen