_Blackwood's Magazine_.

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ON READING NEW BOOKS.


There is a fashion in reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for
a season. One would imagine that books were, like women, the worse for
being old;[2] that they have a pleasure in being read for the first
time; that they open their leaves more cordially; that the spirit of
enjoyment wears out with the spirit of novelty; and that, after a
certain age, it is high time to put them on the shelf. This conceit
seems to be followed up in practice. What is it to me that another--that
hundreds or thousands have in all ages read a work? Is it on this
account the less likely to give me pleasure, because it has delighted so
many others? Or can I taste this pleasure by proxy? Or am I in any
degree the wiser for their knowledge? Yet this might appear to be the
inference. _Their_ having read the work may be said to act upon us by
sympathy, and the knowledge which so many other persons have of its
contents deadens our curiosity and interest altogether. We set aside the
subject as one on which others have made up their minds for us, (as if
we really could have ideas in their heads,) and are quite on the alert
for the next new work, teeming hot from the press, which we shall be the
first to read, to criticise, and pass an opinion on. Oh, delightful! To
cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the scarcely-dry paper,
to examine the type, to see who is the printer, (which is some clue to
the value that is set upon the work,) to launch out into regions of