Browsing the Bookshelves

I happened to be cataloguing a collection of William Hazlitt's essays earlier today. This caught my eye in particular:

"I cannot understand the rage manifested by the greater part of the world for reading New Books.  If the public had read all those that had gone before, I can conceive how they should not wish to read the same work twice over; but when I consider the countless volumes that lie unopened, unregarded, unread and unthought-of, I cannot enter into the pathetic complaints that I hear made that Sir Walter writes no more-that the press is idle-that Lord Bryon is dead. If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago."

(from the opening section of William's Hazlitt's essay On Reading New Books)

The same debate, the same sentiments, are still echoed today. Thank you, Mr Hazlitt, for reminding us that some things never change.