In this essay, Hazlitt contrasts the joys of reading old books, by which he means familiar books he has read many times before, with reading a brand new book. He expresses some anxiety over new books, saying that he picks at them as one might a new dish, not sure if he will like them.

Old books, in contrast, are known quantities. He is always delighted to open up Smollett's Peregrine Pickle or Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, he says, because he knows he likes these very familiar stories. The same is true of Cervantes's Don Quixote. Not only does he derive great pleasure from the stories themselves, he also finds that they bring him back to a happy, youthful period of his life, allowing him to relive old memories of how delighted reading these books once made him feel.

However, he notes that when he reread a once beloved book, Rousseau's The New Eloise, it didn't give him the same satisfaction as it had in an early time in his life, when he pored over every detail of it.

A few exceptions aside, for Hazlitt, old books are like old friends: they are comfortable because they are familiar and pleasurable because they bring reminders with them of former days. They are predictable and, for that reason, not to be feared.