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ies of Literature, iii. 339.] Of course any one ambitious of enlightening the world on either the political or the literary history of Rome at the commencement of the empire, must be as thoroughly acquainted with every word of Cicero as the writer of the Times leader on a critical debate is with the newly-delivered speeches. The more fortunate vagabond reader, too, lounging about among the Letters, will open many little veins of curious contemporary history and biography, which he can follow up in Tacitus, Sallust, Caesar, and the contemporary poets. Both are utterly different from the stated-task reader, who has come under a vow to work so many hours or get through so many pages in a given time. _They_ are drawn by their occupation, whether work or play; _he_ drives himself to his. All such work is infliction, varying from the highest point of martyrdom down to tasteless drudgery; and it is as profitless as other supererogatory inflictions, since the task-reader comes to look at his words without following out what they suggest, or even absorbing their grammatical sense, much as the stupid ascetics of old went through their penitential readings, or as their representatives of the present day, chiefly of the female sex, read "screeds of good books," which they have not "the presumption" to understand. The literary Bohemian is sometimes to be pitied when his facility of character exposes him to have a modification of this infliction forced upon him. This will occur when he happens to be living in a house frequented by "a good reader," who solemnly devotes certain hours to the reading of passages from the English or French classics for the benefit of the company, and becomes the mortal enemy of every guest who absents himself from the torturing performance. As to collectors, it is quite true that they do not in general read their books successively straight through, and the practice of desultory reading, as it is sometimes termed, must be treated as part of their case, and if a failing, one cognate with their habit of collecting. They are notoriously addicted to the practice of standing arrested on some round of a ladder, where, having mounted up for some certain book, they have by wayward chance fallen upon another, in which, at the first opening, has come up a passage which fascinates the finder as the eye of the Ancient Mariner fascinated the wedding-guest, and compels him to stand there poised on his uneasy perch a
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