INTERCHAPTER V.
WHEREIN THE AUTHOR MAKES KNOWN HIS GOOD INTENTIONS TO ALL READERS, AND OFFERS GOOD ADVICE TO SOME OF THEM.
I can write, and talk too, as soft as other men, with submission to better judgements,—and I leave it to you Gentlemen. I am but one, and I always distrust myself. I only hint my thoughts: You'll please to consider whether you will not think that it may seem to deserve your consideration.—This is a taking way of speaking. But much good may do them that use it!
ASGILL.
Reader, my compliments to you!
This is a form of courtesy which the Turks use in their compositions, and being so courteous a form, I have here adopted it. Why not? Turks though they are, we learnt inoculation from them, and the use of coffee; and hitherto we have taught them nothing but the use of tobacco in return.
Reader, my compliments to you!
Why is it that we hear no more of Gentle Readers? Is it that having become critical in this age of Magazines and Reviews, they have ceased to be gentle? But all are not critical;
The baleful dregs
Of these late ages,—that Circæan draught
Of servitude and folly, have not yet,—
Yet have not so dishonour'd, so deform'd
The native judgement of the human soul.1
1 AKENSIDE.
In thus applying these lines I mean the servitude to which any rational man degrades his intellect when he submits to receive an opinion from the dictation of another, upon a point whereon he is just as capable of judging for himself;—the intellectual servitude of being told by Mr. A. B. or C. whether he is to like a book or not,—or why he is to like it: and the folly of supposing that the man who writes anonymously, is on that very account entitled to more credit for judgement, erudition and integrity, than the author who comes forward in his own person, and stakes his character upon what he advances.
All Readers however,—thank Heaven, and what is left among us of that best and rarest of all senses called Common Sense,—all Readers however are not critical. There are still some who are willing to be pleased, and thankful for being pleased; and who do not think it necessary that they should be able to parse their pleasure, like a lesson, and give a rule or a reason why they are pleased, or why they ought not to be pleased. There are still readers who have never read an Essay upon Taste;—and if they take my advice they never will; for they can no more improve their taste by so doing, than they could improve their appetite or their digestion by studying a cookery book.
I have something to say to all classes of Readers: and therefore having thus begun to speak of one, with that class I will proceed. It is to the youthful part of my lectors—(why not lectors as well as auditors?) it is virginibus puerisque that I now address myself. Young Readers, you whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor encrusted by the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you!
Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous? Has it tended to make you dissatisfied and impatient under the controul of others; and disposed you to relax in that self government, without which both the laws of God and man tell us there can be no virtue—and consequently no happiness? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you the love of your country and your fellow creatures? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfishness, or any other of your evil propensities? Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous? Has it disturbed the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul? If so—if you are conscious of all or any of these effects,—or if having escaped from all, you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce, throw the book in the fire whatever name it may bear in the title page! Throw it in the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend!—young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture of a rose-wood book case!
