Canterbury Tales

There are people in the world who think their lives well employed in collecting shells; there are others not less satisfied to spend theirs in classing butterflies. For my own part, I always preferred animate to inanimate nature; and would rather post to the antipodes to mark a new character, or develope a singular incident, than become a fellow of the Royal Society, by enriching museums with nondescripts. From this account, you, my gentle reader, may, without any extraordinary penetration, have discovered that I am among the eccentric part of mankind, by the courtesy of each other, and themselves, ycleped poets : — a title, which, however mean or contemptible it may sound to those not honored with it, never yet was rejected by a single mortal on whom the suffrage of mankind conferred it ; — no, though the laurel-wreath of Apollo, barren in its nature, was twined by the frozen fingers of Poverty, and shed upon the brow it crowned her chilling influence. But when did it so? — Too often destined to deprive its graced owner of every real good, by an enchantment which we know not how to define, it comprehends in itself such a variety of pleasures and possessions, that well may one of us cry — "Thy lavish charter, taste, appropriates all we see!" Happily, too, we are not like virtuosi in general, encumbered with the treasures gathered in our peregrinations. Compact in their nature, they lie all in the small cavities of our brain: which are indeed often so small as to render it doubtful whether we have any at all. The few discoveries I have made in that richest of mines, the human soul, I have not been churl enough to keep to myself; nor, to say truth, unless I can find out some other means of supporting my corporeal existence than animal food, do I think I shall ever be able to afford that sullen affectation of superiority. Traveling, I have already said, is -my taste; and, to make my Journeys pay for themselves, my object. Much against my good liking, some troublesome fellows, a few months ago, took the liberty of making a little home of mine their own; nor, till I had coined a small portion of my brain in the mint of my worthy friend, George Robinson, could I induce them to depart. I gave a proof of my politeness, however, in leaving my house to them; and retired to the coast of Kent, where I fell to work very busily. Gay with the hope of shutting my door on these unwelcome visitants, I walked in a severe frost from Deal to Dover, to secure a seat in the stage-coach to London. One only was vacant; and, having engaged it, "manger the freezing of the bitter sky," I wandered forth to note the memorabilia of Dover, and was soon lost in one of my fits of exquisite abstraction. Read more