ADVICE TO CERTAIN READERS INTENDED TO ASSIST THEIR DIGESTION OF THESE VOLUMES.
Take this in good part, whatsoever thou be,
And wish me no worse than I wish unto thee.
TUSSER.
The wisest of men hath told us that there is a time for every thing. I have been considering what time is fittest for studying this elaborate opus, so as best to profit by its recondite stores of instruction, as the great chronicler of Garagantua says, avec espoir certain d'acquerrir moult prudence et preud 'hommie à la ditte lecture, la quelle vous relevera de tres-hauts sacrements et mysteres horrifiques.
The judicious reader must ere this have perceived that this work, to use the happy expression of the Demoiselle de Gournay, is, edifié de telle sort que les mots et la matière sont consubstantiels. In one sense indeed it is,
Meet for all hours and every mood of man;1
but all hours are not equally meet for it. For it is not like Sir Walter Scott's novels, fit for men, women and children, at morning, noon, or night, summer and winter, and every day, among all sorts of people,—Sundays excepted with the religious public. Equally sweet in the mouth it may be to some; but it will not be found equally light of digestion.
1 DR. BUTT.
Whether it should be taken upon an empty stomach, must depend upon the constitution of the reader. If he is of that happy complexion that he awakes in the morning with his spirits elastic as the air, fresh as the dawn, and joyous as the sky-lark, let him by all means read a chapter before breakfast. It will be a carminative, a cordial for the day. If on the contrary his faculties continue to feel the influence of the leaden sceptre till breakfast has resuscitated them, I advise him not to open the book before the stomach has been propitiated by a morning offering.