“There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never contemplate without affection–the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls–the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they ‘snatch a fearful joy.’
“Martin B., in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no circumstances in his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches.”
Charles Lamb, “Thoughts on Books and Reading” (1822)