acteristic of the essays of Elia. It illustrates the writer's
happiest style, and indicates his taste. In its opening passages are
words and phrases which have become quotations "familiar in the mouth
as household words" to all book-lovers. Lamb takes as his text a
remark made by Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh's "Relapse": "To mind the
inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced products
of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may
be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own."

An ingenious acquaintance was so much struck with this
bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading
altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At
the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must
confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time
to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others'
speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think.
Books think for me.

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for
me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I
call a _book_. There are things in that shape which I cannot
allow for such.

In this catalogue of _books which are no books_--_biblia
a-biblia_--I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket
Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back,
Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large; the
works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns,
and, generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's
library should be without"; the Histories of Flavius
Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's "Moral Philosophy."
With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless
my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these _things in
books' clothing_ perched upon shelves, like false saints,
usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary,
thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a
well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some
kind-hearted playbook; then, opening what "seem its
leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To
expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find--Adam Smith; to
view a well-arranged assortment of block-headed
Encyclopaedias (Angli