If you find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester, blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or peradventure a stray ash of tobacco wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend upon it, it contains good matter.--C. LAMB (Letter to S. T. Coleridge). WRITING AT MEAL TIMES ... Albeit, when I did dictate [these Chronicles], I thought thereof no more than you, who possibly were drinking the whilst, as I was. For in the composing of this lordly book I never lost nor bestowed any more, nor any other time, than what was appointed to serve me for taking of my bodily refection, that is, whilst I was eating and drinking. And, indeed, that is the fittest and most proper hour, wherein to write these high matters and deep sentences: as Homer knew very well, the paragon of all philologues, and Ennius, the father of the Latin poets, as Horace calls him, although a certain sneaking jobbernol alleged that his verses smelled more of the wine than oil.--F. RABELAIS. _The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Author's Prologue._ OUT-OF-DOORS READING I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner's-street _was not_), between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread basket, would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points.--C. LAMB. _Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading._ O FOR A BOOKE O for a Booke and a shadie nooke, Eyther in-a-doore or out, With the greene leaves whisp'ring overhede, Or the Streete cryes all about, Where I may Reade all at my ease, Both of the Newe and Olde, For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke, Is better to me than golde. J. WILSON. FAREWELL TO BOOKS IN SPRINGTIME