It is a book (not to say it immodestly) intended to lie in old parlour windows, in studies, in cottages, in cabins aboard ship, in country-inns, in countryhouses, in summer-houses, in any houses that have wit enough to like it, and are not the mere victims of a table covered with books for show. When Shenstone was a child, he used to have a new book brought him from the next countrytown, whenever any body went to market. If he had gone to bed and was asleep, it was put behind his pillow; and if it had been forgotten, and he was awake, his mother (more kindly than wisely) "wrapped up a piece of wood of the same form, and pacified him for the night." This is the sort of child we hope to be a reader of our volumes. When Gray and Walpole were at Eton, they partitioned out the fields into territories of which they had read in books, and so ruled over them and sent ambassadors to one another. These are the sort of school-boys we look to entertain. When Mrs. Inchbald, who was a farmer's daughter, first came to London, she was alone, and would have been subjected to no small perils but for the knowledge she had acquired from books; for she was poor, lovely, and sensitive. She turned the knowledge to the greatest account, and lived to add precious matter to the stock. We flatter ourselves, or rather we dare to aver, considering the authors who furnish our extracts, that nobody would have more approved of our book than Mrs. Inchbald. Some of the most stirring men in the world, persons in the thick of business of all kinds, and indeed with the business of the world itself on their hands, Lorenzo de Medici, for instance, who was at once the great merchant and political arbiter of his time, have combined with their other energies the greatest love of books, and found no other recreation at once so wholesome and so useful. We hope many a man of business will refresh himself with the short pieces in these volumes, and return to his work the fitter to battle craft, and yet retain a reverence for simplicity. "Books, Venus, books." It is those that teach us to refine on our pleasures when young, and which, having so taught us, enable us to recall them with satisfaction when old. For let the half-witted say what they will of delusions, no thorough reader ever ceased to believe in his books, whatever doubts they might have taught him by the way. They are pleasures too palpable and habitual for him to deny. The habit itself is a pleasure. They contain his young dreams and his old discoveries; all that he has lost, as well as all that he has gained; and, as he is no surer of the gain than of the loss, except in proportion to the strength of his perceptions, the dreams, in being renewed, become truths again. He is again in communion with the past; again interested in its adventures, grieving with its griefs, laughing with its merriment, forgetting the very chair and room he is sitting in. Who, in the mysterious operation of things, shall dare to assert in what unreal corner of time and space that man's mind is; or what better proof he has of the existence of the poor goods and chattels about him, which at that moment (to him) are non-existent? "Oh!" people say, "but he wakes up, and sees them there." Well; he woke down then, and saw the rest. What we distinguish into dreams and realities, are, in both cases, but representatives of impressions. Who shall know what difference there is in them at all, save that of degree, till some higher state of existence help us to a criterion? For our part, such real things to us are books, that, if habit and perception make the difference between real and unreal, we may say that we more frequently wake out of common life to them, than out of them to common life. - A Book for a Corner. WERE ANGELS TO WRITE JOHN NORRIS CONCERNING the Essays and Discourses, I have only this to say, that I designed in them as much Brevity and Clearness as are consistent with each other, and to abound in Sense rather than Words: I wish all Men would observe this in their Writings more than they do. I'm sure the multitude of Books, and the shortness of Life require it; and Sense will lie in a little compass, if Men would be persuaded to vent no Notions but what they are Masters of; and were Angels to write, I fancy we should have but few Folios. — Miscellanies. |