'The sobs of the storm are musical chimes for a ghost-story, or one of
those fearful tales with which the blind fiddler in _Redgauntlet_ made
"the auld carlines shake on the settle, and the bits of bairns skirl
on their minnies out frae their beds."

'Shakspeare is always most welcome at the chimney-corner; so is
Goldsmith: who does not wish Dr Primrose to call in the evening, and
Olivia to preside at the urn? Elia affirms, that there is no such
thing as reading or writing, but by a candle; he is confident that
Milton composed the morning hymn of Eden with a clear fire burning in
the room; and in Taylor's gorgeous description of sunrise, he found
the smell of the lamp quite overpowering.... But Elia,' he says
further on, 'carried his fireside theory too far. Some people have
tried "the affectation of a book at noonday in gardens and sultry
arbours," without finding their task of love to be unlearnt. Indeed,
many books belong to sunshine, and should be read out of doors.
Clover, violets, and hedge-roses, breathe from their leaves; they are
most lovable in cool lanes, along field-paths, or upon stiles overhung
by hawthorn; while the black-bird pipes, and the nightingale bathes
its brown feathers in the twilight copse.

'The sensation is heightened when an author is read amid the scenery
or the manners which he describes--as Barrow studied the sermons of
Chrysostom in his own see of Constantinople. What daisies sprinkle the
walks of Cowper, if we take his _Task_ for a companion through the
lanes of Weston! Under the thick hedges of Horton, darkening either
bank of the field in the September moonlight, _Il Penseroso_ is still
more pensive. And whoever would feel at his heart the deep pathos of
Collins's lamentation for Thomson, must murmur it to himself, as he
glides upon the stealing wave, by the breezy lawns and elms of