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The Life and Works of Charles Lamb: The last essays of Elia.
The Life and Works of Charles Lamb The last essays of Elia Author:Charles Lamb Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the course of the evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills me now as I writ... more »e it—" Woman, you are superannuated !" John Billet did not survive long, after the digesting of this affront; but he survived long enough to assure me that peace was actually restored ! and if I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint (anno 1781) where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence ; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found in his escritoir after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was—a Poor Relation. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product 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.—Lord Foppington, in " The Relapse." An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, tothe 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. ...« less