I hold that no man can have any just conception of the history of
England who has not often read, and meditated, and learnt to love the
great poets of England. The greatest of them, such as Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Massinger, George Herbert, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, Pope,
and Burns, often throw more rich and brilliant colours, and sometimes
even more clear and steady lights, on the times and doings of our
forefathers, than are to be gathered out of all the chroniclers
together, from the Venerable Bede to the philosophical Hume. They are at
least the greatest and best commentators on those chroniclers.--SIR
JAMES STEPHEN. _Desultory and Systematic Reading._