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.3 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 let
tered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large; the works
of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soamejenyns, and, generally, all those
volumes which 'no gentleman's library should be without':4 the Histories of
Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy.5 With these
exceptions, I can read almost any thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic,
so unexcluding.
8. An undergraduate at Cambridge University ond. For a contrast to his bookishness, see Words- who receives an allowance from the college and worth's 'Expostulation and Reply' and 'The Tables
who in former times was expected in return to per-Turned' (pp. 250-52).
form certain menial duties. 'Le G ': Samuel Le 2. The would-be man of fashion in Sir John Van-
Grice, who became an army officer and died in the brugh's comedy of 1696, The Relapse.
West Indies. 'F ': Joseph Favell. 3. Two extremes in 18th-century prose: the third
9. Marmaduke Thompson. 'Fr ': Frederick earl of Shaftesbury (1671?1713), philosopher and William Franklin. essayist, and the gang leader who inspired Henry
1. Published in the London Magazine, July 1822, Fielding's 1743 crime novel Jonathan Wild the and revised for Last Essays of Elia (1833), Lamb's Great. essay, although often tongue in cheek, shrewdly 4. Elia's list begins with the types of books sold by challenges the hierarchies the era's reviewers and stationers and ends with those authored by ven
others used to rank different kinds of writing and erated and prolific moralists, philosophers, and
sort out good, tasteful readers from bad. Elia's historians of the 18th century.
fondness for novels from circulating libraries is as 5. Josephus (37?100 C.E.), historian of the Jewish
unusual as his willingness to present himself as a people; William Paley (1743-1805), theologian
receptive reader first and an original author sec-and philosopher.
.
506 / CHARLES LAMB
I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in hooks' 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 Popula
tion Essay.6 To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find?Adam Smith.7 To
view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas
or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco,8 when a tithe of
that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would ren
ovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself
again in the world.9 I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to
warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume. Mag
nificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon
all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for
instance, in full suit. The dishabille,1 or half-binding (with Russia backs ever)
