Adventures Among Books

In an age of reminiscences, is there room for the confessions of a veteran, whoremembers a great deal about books and very little about people?

I have oftenwondered that a Biographia Literaria has so seldom been attempted-a biographyor autobiography of a man in his relations with other minds.

Coleridge, to be sure,gave this name to a work of his, but he wandered from his apparent purpose into aworld of alien disquisitions.

The following pages are frankly bookish, and to thebookish only do they appeal.

The habit of reading has been praised as a virtue, andhas been denounced as a vice.

In no case, if we except the perpetual study ofnewspapers (which cannot fairly be called reading), is the vice, or the virtue,common.

It is more innocent than opium-eating, though, like opium-eating, itunlocks to us artificial paradises.

I try to say what I have found in books, whatdistractions from the world, what teaching (not much), and what consolations.