atres and
Managerships, thou wert a scholar, and an early ripe one, under the
roofs builded by the munificent and pious Colet. For thee the Pauline
Muses weep. In elegies, that shall silence this crude prose, they
shall celebrate thy praise.

DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING

To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with
the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of
quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts
of his own.

_Lord Foppington in the Relapse._

An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this
bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether,
to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of
losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no
inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream
away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other
men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and
think. Books think for me.

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor
Jonathan Wild too low. I can read any thing which I call a _book_.
There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such.

In this catalogue of _books which are no books--biblia a-biblia_--I
reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards
bound and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks,
Statutes at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie,
Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's
library should be without:" the Histories of Flavins Josephus (that
learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I
can read almost any thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic,
so unexcluding.

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these _things in books'
clothing_ perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true
shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate
occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and
hope it is some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what "seem its
leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a
Steele, or a Farquhar, and find--Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged
assortment of blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas)
set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that
good leather would comfortably re-clothe