READING, the art of delivering written language with propriety, force, and elegance.

“We must not judge so unfavourably of eloquence or good reading,” says Fénélon, “as to reckon it only a frivolous art, that a declaimer uses to impose upon the weak imagination of the multitude, and to serve his own ends. It is a very serious art, designed to instruct people; to suppress their passions and reform their manners; to support the laws, direct public councils, and to make men good and happy.”

Reason and experience equally demonstrate, that delivery in reading ought to be less animated than in interested speaking. In every exercise of the faculty of speech, and those expressions of countenance and gesture with which it is generally attended, we may be considered as being always in one of the two following situations: First, delivering our bosom sentiments on circumstances which relate to ourselves or others; or, secondly, repeating something that was spoken on a certain occasion for the amusement or information of an auditor. Now, if we observe the deliveries natural to these two situations, we shall find, that the first may be accompanied with every degree of expression which can manifest itself in us, from the lowest of sympathy to the most violent and energetic of the superior passions; whilst the latter, from the speaker’s chief business being to repeat what he heard with accuracy, discovers only a faint imitation of those signs of the emotions which we suppose agitated him from whom the words were first borrowed. The use and necessity of this difference of manner is evident; and if we are attentive to these natural signs of expression, we shall find them conforming with the greatest nicety to the slightest and most minute movements of the breast.

This repetition of another’s words might be supposed to pass through the mouth of a second or third person; and in these cases, since they were not ear and eye witnesses of him who first spoke them, their manner of delivery would want the advantage necessarily arising from an immediate idea of the original one; hence, for the reason stated, this would be of still less lively representation than that of the first ' repeater. But as, from a daily observation of every variety of speech and its associated signs of emotion, mankind soon become pretty well acquainted with them, and this in different degrees, according to their discernment, sensibility, &c. experience shows us that these latter repeaters, as we call them, might conceive and employ a manner of delivery which, though less characteristic perhaps, would on the whole be noways inferior to the first, as to the common natural expression proper for their situation. It appears, therefore, that repeaters of every degree may be esteemed upon a level as to animation, and that our twofold distinction above specified contains accurately enough the whole variety of ordinary delivery. We say ordinary, because there is another very peculiar kind of delivery sometimes used in the person of a repeater, and of which it will in this place be necessary to take some notice. What we mean here is mimicry; an accomplishment which, when perfectly and properly displayed, never fails of yielding a high degree of pleasure. But since this pleasure chiefly results from the principle of imitation respecting manner, and not from the purport of the matter communicated; and since, comparatively speaking, it is only attainable by few persons, and practised only on j>articular occasions; upon these accounts it must be refused a place amongst the modes of useful delivery taught us by nature, and must be esteemed a qualification purely anomalous.

These distinctions with regard to a speaker’s situation of mind being premised, let us see to which of them an author and his reader may mest properly be referred, and how they are circumstanced with regard to one another.

The matter of all books is, either what the author says in his own person, or an acknowledged recital of the words of others; and hence an author may be esteemed both an original speaker and a repeater, according as what he writes is of the first or second kind. Now a reader must be supposed either actually to personate the author, or one whose office is barely to communicate what he has said to an auditor. But in the first of these suppositions he would, in the delivery of what was the author’s own, evidently commence mimic; which being, as above observed, a character not generally acknowledged in this department, ought to be rejected as on the whole improper. The other supposition therefore must be accounted right; and then, as to the whole matter of the book, the reader is found to be exactly in the situation of a repeater, save that he takes what he delivers from the page before him instead of his memory. It follows, then, in proof of our initial proposition, that if we are directed by nature and propriety, the manner of our delivery in reading ought to be inferior in warmth and energy to what we should use, were the language the spontaneous effusion of our own hearts in the circumstances of those out of whose mouths it is supposed to proceed.

Evident as the purport of this reasoning is, it has not so much as been glanced at by the writers on the subject we are now entered upon, or any of its kindred ones; which has occasioned a manifest want of accuracy in several of their rules and observations. Amongst the rest, this precept has long been reverberated from author to author as a perfect standard for propriety in reading: “Deliver yourselves in the same manner you would do, were the matter your own original sentiments uttered directly from the heart.” As all kinds of delivery must have many things in common, the rule will in many articles be undoubtedly right; but, from what has been said above, it must as certainly be faulty in respect to several others; as it is evident nature never confounds by like signs two tilings so very different as a copy and an original, an emanation darted immediately from the sun, and its weaker appearance in the lunar reflection.

Reading, a borough and market town of Berkshire,
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in the hundred of its own name, thirty-eight miles fan London, on the high road to Bath and Bristol. It is situated on the right bank of the Thames, where it is joined by the Kennet, in a fine situation rising gradually from the river, and is one of the most cheerful and well-built towns of its size in England. It has three parish churches, and various chapels for dissenters. The county sessions are held at it, and there is a house of correction. The chief trade is what is carried on by the rivers, which unite here, and into which several canals lead. There are some manufactures of silk ribbons, of sail-cloth, and blanketing; and some barge-building. It has a corporation, consisting of a mayor, three aldermen, and seventeen councillors, and returns two members to the House of Commons. There are markets on Wednesday and on Saturday, which are well supplied , and the place is well situated for the flour trade. The population amounted in 1801 to 9742, in 1811 to 10,788, in 1821 to 12,867, and in 1831 to 15,595.