Many books, Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgement, equal or superior, (And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep-versed in books, and shallow in himself; Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge; As children gathering pebbles on the shore. J. MILTON. _Paradise Regained._ SWALLOWING THE HUSKS The heart May give an useful lesson to the head, And learning wiser grow without his books. Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have oft-times no connexion. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, The mere materials with which Wisdom builds, Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. Books are not seldom talismans and spells, By which the magic art of shrewder wits Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled. Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgement, hood-winked. Some the style Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds Of error leads them by a tune entranced. While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear The insupportable fatigue of thought, And swallowing, therefore, without pause or choice, The total grist unsifted, husks and all. But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes in which the primrose ere her time Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, Not shy, as in the world, and to be won By slow solicitation, seize at once The roving thought, and fix it on themselves. W. COWPER. _The Winter Walk at Noon._ Much reading is like much eating, wholly useless without digestion.--R. SOUTH. If I had read as much as other men, I should have been as ignorant as they.--T. HOBBES. READING AND ILLITERACY You might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly 'illiterate', uneducated person; but ... if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter,--that is to say, with real accuracy,--you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.--J. RUSKIN. _Sesame and Lilies._ READING AS INTELLECTUAL INDOLENCE