To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it.  You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it.  But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle?—­knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio:—­what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of thy friend?—­Then, worst cut of all! to transport it with thee to the Gallican land—­

  Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness,
  A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
  Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex’s wonder!

—­hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales?—­Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee.  Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part Englishwoman!—­that she could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook—­of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle! Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude?

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as S.T.C.—­he will return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations, tripling their value.  I have had experience.  Many are these precious MSS. of his—­(in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals)—­in no very clerkly hand—­legible in my Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands.—­I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S.T.C.

NEW YEAR’S EVE

Every man hath two birth-days:  two days, at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration.  The one is that which in an especial manner he termeth his.  In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birth-day hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand any thing in it beyond cake and orange.  But the birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler.  No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.  It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left.  It is the nativity of our common Adam.