Library Collections: Document: Full Text

"On buying books Lorenzo long was bent;
But found at length that it reduced his rent.
His were flown -- when lo, a sale comes on,
A choice collection. What is to be done?
He sells his last; for he the whole will buy --
Sells e'en his house; nay, wants whereon to lie;
So high the generous ardor of the man,
For Romans, Greeks, and Orientals ran.
When terms were drawn and brought him by the clerk,
Lorenzo signed the bargain with his mark."

How shall this great evil be remedied? -- It does not exist in other countries. In them, books, on account of their high price, are not so attainable by the mass of the people, perhaps a happy and enviable condition of things. "0," said a most faithful and learned Clergyman to us, "0, that I had a congregation that could not read." This wish, however, cannot be gratified. We are, nationally, readers. Our only alternative is to begin in the school -- cultivate the common sense love for beauty and moral sentiments of our children; and in after life, we may hope, that the nonsense, bad taste and bad morality, which issue from our presses, will be rejected; and that the authors who obtain their livelihood through them, will have to learn something themselves, and acquire a proper way of communicating what they know to others.

We have been led or forced into this train of remark by looking through (we should blush to feel or own that we had read) the book, the title of which we give above. It is sent to us, as we suppose, that our opinion of it might be obtained. This we feel bound freely and plainly to express on every principle of courtesy and duty.

Dr. Johnson's mutton was, he said, as bad as bad could be. It was badly killed, badly dressed, badly cooked and badly served. -- Macauley says of some book that it is as bad as the mutton -- badly conceived, badly written and badly printed. But he never saw such a book as this. The man has undertaken, as we suppose, either to inform his reader -- or to amuse him by a description of the whims of a sick man -- or to touch his heart by placing before him some of the circumstances of disease and pain, which sooner or later must be ours in our pilgrimage through this weary world. To assure the reader that he is utterly unfit to accomplish either of these objects, or perhaps, to him that he had got to encounter a genius as inventive and original as to venture on a subject of which he is wholly ignorant, he prefixes to his book an advertisement ("preface to the second edition" it is called) which contains the following humorous avowal --

"The writer must plead guilty to some little disingenuousness, in assuming a part that does not belong to him. Had he really been the poor, miserable dog of an Invalid that personates, he never would have presumed to inflict his sentiments upon the Public. On the contrary, he is so fortunate in this regard, (and he speaks, he trusts, with becoming gratitude,) that the Bowl of an, Acorn would hold all the medicine, be it in the shape of Pill, Potion, or Powder, that has darkened the doors of his Stomach for the last five years."

But it is unfair to judge without a hearing. Let us give a sample of his "musings." -- On page 16, he muses thus --

"Better today -- I find it a relief to record my sensations, and to give my thoughts and whims an occasional airing -- yes, I am worth full ten such poor devils as I was yesterday, and almost begin to think I may yet live to be called venerable. How would a course of sparring lessons suit me? Rough sport for an invalid -- no, I have hardly physical capital enough for that line of business -- and yet there is something very fascinating about it -- so dignified, so heroic, too! I have a sneaking kind of admiration for prize-fighters -- I took, I fear, an inexcusable degree of interest in the great Hyer and Sullivan encounter."

The following morsel is intended, doubtless for an instance of the facile, natural pliant association, which is so charming in books designed to amuse readers -- a sample of the style of Sterne or Mackenzie.

"OH LORD -- I begin the day, as usual, with a grunt -- not the comfortable grunt, alas, which the hog gives, while discussing him plenteous meal of swill -- oh, no, no -- far different are my demonstrations -- no such good luck as that for me. -- Ought I to blush when I say that I often envy my four-footed brother his many privileges? His sound sleep, for instance -- his unfailing appetite, his princely digestion, his freedom from care, his exemption from all the servile labors of the toilet -- no boots pinch his toes -- no hat chafes his brow -- no coat cuts him to the quick -- his life is short, to he sure -- his death violent; his exit is a noisy undignified one, I admit -- but then it is soon over -- and after death, there is the consoling thought that he confers pleasure on the man that eats him -- while I enjoy nothing here, nor shall be enjoyed after I am gone. -- Oh, dear -- pretty language this, is it not, for a rational and accountable being -- a pretty proposition truly -- to exchange radiant, all-glorious manhood, for vile, abominable pighood! And yet, is there not, after all, full as much of the porcine as of of -sic- the seraphic about poor human nature?"