_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
thought and invention never trod till now, and to explore characters
that never met a human eye before--this is a luxury worth sacrificing a
dinner party, or a few hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, when
the work is critical and full of expectation, would venture to dine out,
or to face a _coterie_ of blue stockings in the evening, without having
gone through this ordeal, or at least without, hastily turning over a
few of the first pages while dressing, to be able to say that the
beginning does not promise much, or to tell the name of the heroine?
[2] "Laws are not like women, the worse for being old."--_The
Duke of Buckingham's Speech in the House of Lords, in Charles
the Second's time_.
A new work is something in our power; we mount the bench, and sit in
judgment on it; we can damn or recommend it to others at pleasure, can
decry or extol it to the skies, and can give an answer to those who have
not yet read it, and expect an account of it; and thus show our
shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had
time to form an opinion.
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