In error obstinate, in wrangling loud, For trifles eager, positive, and proud, Forth steps at last the self-applauding wight, Of points and letters, chaff and straws, to write: Sagely resolved to swell each bulky piece With venerable toys from Rome and Greece; How oft, in Homer, Paris curled his hair; If Aristotle's cap were round or square; If in the cave, where Dido first was sped, To Tyre she turned her heels, to Troy her head. Hence Plato quoted or the Stagyrite, To prove that flame ascends and snow is white: Hence much hard study, without sense or breeding, And all the grave impertinence of reading. If Shakespeare says, the noon-day sun is bright, His scholiast will remark, it then was light; Turn Caxton, Wynkyn, each old Goth and Hun, To rectify the reading of a pun. Thus, nicely trifling, accurately dull, How one may toil, and toil--to be a fool!--D. MALLET. READING TO KILL TIME As to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare not compliment their _pass-time_, or rather _kill-time_, with the name of _reading_. Call it rather a sort of beggarly daydreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes for itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibility; while the whole _material_ and imagery of the doze is supplied _ab extra_ by a sort of mental _camera obscura_ manufactured at the printing office, which _pro tempore_ fixes, reflects and transmits the moving phantasms of one man's delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. We should therefore transfer this species of _amusement_ (if indeed those can be said to retire _a musis_, who were never in their company, or relaxation be attributable to those whose bows are never bent) from the genus _reading_ to the comprehensive class characterized by the power of reconciling the two contrary yet co-existing propensities of human nature, namely, indulgence of sloth and hatred of vacancy. In addition to novels and tales of chivalry in prose or rhyme (by which last I mean neither rhythm nor metre) this genus comprises as its species gaming, swinging, or swaying on a chair or gate; spitting over a bridge; smoking; snuff-taking; _tête à tête_ quarrels after dinner between husband and wife; conning word by word all the advertisements of the daily advertizers in a public-house on a rainy day, &c., &c., &c.--S. T. COLERIDGE. _Biographia Literaria._ TALKING FROM BOOKS Dr. Johnson this day, when we were by ourselves [on the journey to the Hebrides] observed, how common it was for people to talk from books; to retail the sentiments of others, and not their own; in short, to converse without any originality of thinking. He was pleased to say, 'You and I do not talk from books.'--J. BOSWELL. _Life of Johnson._