I think Gibbon has said he would not exchange his love of reading, for all the riches of the East. The sentiment is not only noble, but just. What pleasure is so pure, so cheap, so constant, so independent, so worthy a rational being? But we cannot mingle much with mankind, without meeting, among a large proportion of those, with whom we are conversant, an opinion expressed, or implied, that books are, for the most part, an useless incumbrance upon our time and our faculties. They value nothing which does not increase, what they call, practical wisdom, and which does not tend to advance them in life, by rendering them expert in the common affairs of daily occur

rence.

It must be admitted that books, more especially with those, who are much occupied by them, seldom produce these ef fects. They rather abstract the mind, and absorb those minute attentions to surrounding trifles, which are momentarily necessary for one, who would obtain the credit of the mob, for possessing what they are pleased to denominate "good common sense."

There have been various definitions of

common sense. It appears to me, to mean

nothing more than an uneducated judgment, arising from a plain and coarse understanding, exercised upon common concerns, and rendered effective rather by experience, than by any regular process of the intellectual powers. If this be the proper meaning of that quality, we cannot wonder that books are little fitted for its cultivation. Nor is the deficiency at all discreditable to them.

The persons, who thus censure them, have but very superficially estimated the capacities, or the purposes of our mental endowments. They little conceive the compli cated duties of society, and indescribable variety of stations, for which the human faculties require to be adapted. If the most numerous portion of mankind, are only called on to move in a narrow circle, and to perform their limited part with (what I shall venture to call) a selfish propriety, there are others, to whom higher tasks are assigned; whose lot it is to teach rather than to act; and to contribute to that acuteness, enlargement, and elevation of intellect, by which morals and legislation are improved, and the manners and habits of a kingdom refined and exalted.

It will surely be unnecessary to use any arguments in favour of a truth so obvious, as A 4

that

1

that these purposes must be principally effected by books. In books, the powers of the mind are carried farthest, and exhibited to most advantage. How indigested, how tautologous, how imperfect, but above all how fugitive, is oral information! The same luminous arrangement, the same rejection of superfluities, the same cohesion of parts, nay the same depth of thought, the same extent of comprehension, and richness and perspicuity of detail, is impossible.

Through books we converse with the dead; bring remote ages to communicate with each other; and impel the selected wisdom of distant periods into collision. Through books, we preserve memorials of the progress of language, the gradual refinements of sentiment, and the changes of time. If it would gratify us to call up those who have slept for centuries in the cold tomb, that we might listen to their opinions, and be instructed by their information, do not old books produce to us much of the same effect? By a recovered volume of ancient date we often draw back the veil of oblivion, and unfold the secrets of the grave. find the record of some name, that has long been buried; some proof of intellectual vigour; some animated touch of the heart;

We

and

and thus we seem to repeople the world with some of its departed inhabitants.

But among books how immeasurable is the variety and distance, between the good and the bad; between the heavy masses of the laborious compiler, or the dull narrator of facts, and the inspired sentiment, and living imagery of the great poet! The latter indeed lives too much "in the blaze of his own flame" to require the aid of collateral light to draw attention to him. Yet there are many intermediate degrees of excellence, that need to be rescued from among the forgotten spoils of age.

I believe Mr. Malone somewhere calls Churchyard a poetaster; but surely he had some merits above those of a poetaster. It is true that his poverty seems to have urged him to write a great deal too much; and sometimes too meanly; and whoever has an opportunity of inspecting the greater part of his very rare publications will probably find many trifles, and much contemptible trash among them; but the writer of The Legend of Jane Shore was certainly not deficient in genius, and amongst his other pamphlets I have no doubt that there will at least be found many curious notices of the times. The same remarks may be made on Wither,

who

who lived half a century after him; but Wither's pretensions to genius are still less, doubtful. His writings were equally multifarious; and many of them still more objec-. tionable, because they were dictated by party. virulence and sectarian cant; but amongst his numerous verses, which he seems to have scribbled with endless profusion, and with a total disregard to the art of blotting, there are entire compositions, which could not have proceeded, but from one, who was endowed with a strong poetical spirit. In those instances he is generally characterized by an easy elegance, and a copiousness of unaffected sentiment. A man of real taste, who has an opportunity of comparing all his publications, many of which can now seldom be met with, would do an acceptable service to the literary world, by giving a judicious selection from them.

Many pages of this volume, and some will think too many, have been occupied in a digested Catalogue of early books on English Agriculture. But the subject is

both interesting and useful: and I suspect that an accurate examination of these works, will prove that the presént age has not all the claims to discovery in this science, to which it has made pretensions. It is true

that