as it could go, without infringing upon that respect, which he would have every one else equally maintain for himself. He would have you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him when we were rather older boys, and our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude notice, when we have been out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. W went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in him a passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb under which Latimer must have walked erect, and in which Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among books, which insult not; and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond his domains. The healing influence of studious pursuits was upon him, to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man; when the waywardness of his fate broke out against him with a second and worse malignity. The father of W had hitherto exercised the humble profession of house-painter at N, near Oxford. A supposed interest with some of the heads of colleges had now induced him to take up his abode in that city, with the hope of being em. ployed upon some public works which were talked of. From that moment I read in the countenance of the young man the determination which at length tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted with our universities, the distance between the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called -the trading part of the latter especially, is carried to an excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament of W's father was diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that wore the semblance of a gowninsensible to the winks and opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamberfellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not last. W

must

change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. He chose the former; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction; he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with

W the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High Street to the back of college, where W kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally him-finding him in a better mood-upon a representation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity or badge of gratitude to his saint. W- looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, "knew his mounted sign-and fled." A letter on his father's table the next morning announced that he had accepted a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was among the first who perished before the walls of St Sebastian. I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so eminently painful; but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending. The earliest impressions which I received on this matter, are certainly not attended with anything painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At my father' table (no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little inclination to have done so for my cue was to admire in silence. A particular elbowchair was appropriated to him, which was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could make out of him was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows, a world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all the money was coinedand I thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his presence. He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning. A captive -a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect which we all in common manifested towards him, would venture now and then to stand up against him in some argument, touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill, and in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious division between the boys

eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves and worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old circulating library "Tom Jones " or "Vicar of Wakefield!" How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight! of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner or hard-working mantua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill-spared, from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could we desire to see them in?

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually selfreproductive volumes-Great Nature's Stereotypes-we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be "eterne." But where a book is at once both good and rare-where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes,

"We know not where is that Promethean torch That can its light relumine-"

such a book, for instance, as the "Life of the Duke of Newcastle," by his Duchess-no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel.

Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted; but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sidney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller-of whom we have reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we know, have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books-it is good to possess these in durable costly covers. I do not care for a first folio of Shakespeare. You cannot make a pet book of an author whom everybody reads. I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembrancers, to the text; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakespeare gallery engravings, which did. I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his plays, and I like those editions of him best which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled. On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in folio. The octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them, nor with Mr Gifford's "Ben Jonson." If they were as much read as the current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the " Anatomy of

Melancholy." What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man to expose them in a winding-sheet of the | latest edition to modern censure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular? The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the painted effigy of old Shakespeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear-the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapped both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets.

I think I see them at their work-these sapient trouble-tombs.

Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear-to mine at least than that of Milton or of Shakespeare? It may be that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the men tion, are Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley.

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the "Fairy Queen" for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons?

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music-to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts and purged

ears.

Winter evenings-the world shut out-with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a season, the "Tempest," or his own "Winter's Tale."

These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud-to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one-and it degenerates into an audience.

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over solely. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.

A newspaper read out is intolerable. In some of the bank offices it is the custom (to save so much individual time) for one of the clerks— who is the best scholar-to commence upon the Times or the Chronicle, and recite its entire contents aloud, pro bono publico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and publichouses a fellow will get up and spell out a

paragraph, which he communicates as some discovery. Another follows with his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length by piecemeal. Seldom readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no one in the company would probably ever travel through the contents of a whole paper.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, keeps the paper? I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out incessantly, "The Chronicle is in hand, sir."

As in these little diurnals I generally skip the foreign news, the debates, and the politics, I find the Morning Herald by far the most entertaining of them. It is an agreeable miscellany rather than a newspaper.

Coming into an inn at night, having ordered your supper, what can be more delightful than to find lying in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the carelessness of some former guest, two or three numbers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing tete a tete pictures-"The Royal Lover and Lady G "The Melting Platonic and the old Beau"-and such-like antiquated scandal? Would you exchange it, at that time and in that place, for a better book?

"

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading the "Paradise Lost" or "Comus" he could have read to him-but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine or a light pamphlet.

I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone and reading"Candide!"

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected, by a familiar damsel, reclined at my ease upon the grass on Primrose Hill (her Cythera) reading "Pamela." There was nothing in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure, but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could have wished it had been any other book. We read on very sociably for a few pages, and not finding the author much to her taste, she got up and-went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret.

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's Street was not) between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along,

keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's knot or a bread-basket would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points.

I was once amused-there is a pleasure in affecting affectation-at the indignation of a crowd that was jostling in with me at the pitdoor of Covent Garden Theatre to have a sight of Master Betty, then at once in his dawn and his meridian, in "Hamlet." I had been invited quite unexpectedly to join a party whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steeven's "Shakespeare," which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening-the rush, as they term it-I deliberately held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamp-light. The clamour became universal. "The affectation of the fellow," cried one. "Look at that gentleman reading, papa," squeaked a young lady, who, in her admiration of the novelty, almost forgot her fears. I read on. "He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand," exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read on, and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved as St Anthony at his holy offices, with satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins mopping and making mouths at him in the picture, while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight as if he were sole tenant of the desert. The individual rabble (I recognised more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance.

There is a class of street-readers whom I can never contemplate without affection-the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls, the owner with his hard eye casting envi ous looks at them all the while and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they "snatch a fearful joy." Martin B, in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of "Clarissa," when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares that under no circumstance in his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in perusing those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralised upon this subject in two very touching but two homely stanzas: