Do I boast of my omnivorousness of reading, even apart from romances?
Certainly no!--never, except in joke. It's against my theories and
ratiocinations, which take upon themselves to assert that we all
generally err by _reading too much_, or out of proportion to what we
_think_. I should be wiser, I am persuaded, if I had not read half as
much--should have had stronger and better exercised faculties. The fact
is, that the _ne plus ultra_ of intellectual indolence is this reading
of books. It comes next to what the Americans call 'whittling'.--E. B.
BROWNING (Letter to R. H. Horne).