It was an English man, met somewhere in Europe, who startled Mark Twain by saying abruptly, Mr Clemens, I would give ten pounds not to have read your Huckleberry Finn! And when Mark looked up awaiting an explanation of this extraordinary remark, the English man smiled and added
“So that I could have again the great pleasure of reading it for the first time.”

Xxx

‘Life of Johnson’ Book!

Sir John Malcolm once asked Warren Hastings, who was a contemporary and a companion of DrJohnson and Boswell, what was his real estimation of Boswell’s Life of Johnson?

Sir, replied Hastings, ‘it is the dirtiest book in my library’.
Then proceeding he added,
‘’I knew Boswell intimately; and I well remember when his book made its first appearance. Boswell was full of it that he could neither think nor talk of anything else; so much so, that meeting Lord Thurlow hurrying through parliament street to get to the House of Lords, where an important debate was expected, for which he was already too late, Boswell has the temerity to stop and accost him with,
‘Have you read my book?’
‘Yes, damn you! replied Lord Thurlow, ‘every word of it; I could not help myself’.

Xxx

‘Thief’ Coleridge

Coleridge was always a tremendous reader. While he was a student at Christ’s Hospital he used to spend his free time wandering aimlessly about London, shivering in front of the window s of book shops and print shops. Once, while so standing, he got, in his own words, ‘absent mindedly involved with the coat tail pocket of a stranger, who at first took him for a thief, then was so charmed by his conversation that he made him free of a library’ in Cheapside . Thenceforth he would run all risks in skulking out to get the two volumes to which he was entitled daily.

Xxx

Rousseau

When Dr Johnson was told that Rousseau’s ‘Confessions’ would contain every motive that had induced him to act in every situation— ‘Then’, replied he, ‘if he was an honest man, his book will not be worth a farthing’.

Xxx Subham xxx