There is perhaps nothing that has a greater tendency to decide favourably or unfavourably respecting a man's future intellect, than the queftion whether or not he be impreffed with an early tafte for reading. Books are the depofitary of every thing that is moft honourable to man. Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms. He that loves reading, has every thing within his reach. He has but to defire; and he may poffefs himself of every species of wifdom to judge, and power to perform. The chief point of difference between the man of talent and the man without, confifts in the different ways in which their minds are employed during the fame interval. They are obliged, let us fuppofe, to walk from TempleBar to Hyde-Park-Corner. The dull man goes ftraight forward; he has fo many furlongs to traverse. He obferves if he meets any of his acquaintance; he enquires refpecting their health and their family. He glances perhaps the fhops as he paffes; he admires the fashion of a buckle, and the metal of a tea-urn. If he experience any flights of fancy, they are of a fhort extent; of the fame nature as the flights of a foreft-bird, clipped of his wings, and life in a and condemned to pafs the reft of his farm-yard. On the other hand the man of talent gives full fcope to his imagination. He laughs and cries. Unindebted to the fuggeftions of furrounding objects, his whole foul is employed. He enters into nice calculations; he digefts fagacious reafonings. In imagination he declaims or describes, impreffed with the deepest. fympathy, or elevated to the loftiest rapture. He makes a thousand new and admirable combinations. He paffes through a thousand imaginary feenes, tries his courage, tasks his ingenuity, and thus becomes gradually prepared to meet almoft any of the many-coloured events of human life. He confults by the aid of me-. mory the books he has read, and projects others. for the future inftruction and delight of mankind. If he obferve the paffengers, he reads their countenances, conjectures their past hif tory, and forms a fuperficial notion of their wifdom or folly, their virtue or vice, their fatiffaction or mifery. If he obferve the scenes that occur, it is with the eye of a connoiffeur or сус an artist. Every object is capable of fuggefting, to him a volume of reflections. The time of these two perfons in one refpect refembles; it, has brought them both to Hyde-Park-Corner,. In almost every other refpect it is diffimilar, What is it that tends to generate thefe very oppofite habits of mind? Probably nothing has contributed more than an early taste for reading. Books gratify and excite our curiofity in innumerable ways. They force us to reflect. They hurry us from point to point. They prefent direct ideas of various kinds, and they fuggeft indirect ones. In a well-written book we are prefented with the matureft reflections, or the happieft flights, of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impoffible that we can be much accustomed to fuch companions, without attaining fome resemblance of them. When I read Thomfon, I become Thomson; when I read Milton, I become Mil ton. I find myself a fort of intellectual camelion, affuming the colour of the fubftances on which I reft. He that revels in a well-chofen library, has innumerable difhes, and all of admirable flavour. His tafte is rendered fo acute, as eafily to diftinguish the niceft fhades of difference. His mind becomes ductile, fufceptible to every impreffion, and gaining new refinement from them all. His varieties of thinking baffle calculation, and his powers, whether; of reafon or fancy, become eminently vigorous. Much feems to depend in this cafe upon the period at which the tafte for reading has comD menced menced. If it be late, the mind feems frequently to have acquired à previous obftinacy and untractablenefs. The late reader makes a fuperficial acquaintance with his author, but is never admitted into the familiarity of a friend, Stiffnefs and formality are always visible be tween them. He does not become the creature of his author; neither bends with all his caprices, nor fympathifes with all his fenfations. This mode of reading, upon which we depend for the confummation of our improvement, can fcarcely be acquired, unless we begin to read with pleasure at a period too early for memory to record, lifp the numbers of the poet, and in our unpractifed imagination adhere to the letter of the moralifing allegorift. In that cafe we shall foon be induced ourselves to "build" the unpolifhed "rhyme," and fhall act over in fond imitation the scenes we have reviewed. An early tafte for reading, though a most promifing indication, muft not be exclufively depended on. It must be aided by favourable circumstances, or the early reader may degenerate into an unproductive pedant, or a literary idler. It feemed to appear in a preceding effay, that genius, when ripened to the birth, may yet be extinguished. Much more may the ma Milton. terials terials of genius fuffer an untimely blight and terminate in an abortion. But what is most to be feared, is that some adverse gale should hurry, the adventurer a thousand miles athwart into the chaos of laborious flavery, removing him from the genial influence of a tranquil leifure, or transporting him to a dreary climate where the half-formed bloffoms of hope fhall be irremediably deftroyed *. That the mind may expatiate in its true element, it is neceffary that it should become neither the victim of labour, nor the flave of terror, difcouragement and difguft. This is the true danger; as to pedantry, it may be queftioned whether it is the offspring of early reading, or not rather of a tafte for reading taken up at a late and inaufpicious period. * The canker galls the infants of the spring, |