--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 recalls 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
anywhere--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 midst 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 list, 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.