In truth, I bought it for you, which
is almost confessing a robbery. Edward Livingston and Richard Harrison
have each a good set, and either would cheerfully oblige you.
To render any reading really amusing or in any degree instructive, you
should never pass a word you do not understand, or the name of a
person or place of which you have not some knowledge. You will say
that attention to such matters is too great an interruption. If so, do
but note them down on paper, and devote an hour particularly to them
when you have finished a chapter or come to a proper pause. After an
experiment of this mode, you will never abandon it. Lempriere's
Dictionary is that of which I spoke to you. Purchase also Macbeau's;
this last is appropriated to ancient theocracy, fiction, and
geography; both of them will be useful in reading Gibbon, and still
more so in reading ancient authors, or of any period of ancient
history.
If you have never read Plutarch's Lives (or even if you have), you
will read them with much pleasure. They are in the City Library, and
probably in many private ones. Beloe's Herodotus will amuse you.
Bartow has it. You had better read the text without the notes; they
are diffuse, and tend to distract the attention. Now and then they
contain some useful explanation. After you have read the author, you
will, I think, with more pleasure read the notes and remarks in course
by themselves.
You expressed a curiosity to peruse Paley's Philosophy of Natural
History.
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