The former advised the students at Glasgow that, next to Demosthenes, the study of Dante was the best preparative for the eloquence of the pulpit or the bar.
Robert Hall sought relief in Dante from the racking pains of spinal disease; and Sydney Smith took to the same poet for comfort and solace in his old age.

It was characteristic of Goethe that his favourite book should have been Spinoza's 'Ethics,' in which he said he had found a peace and consolation such as he had been able to find in no other work.
[1912] Barrow's favourite was St.Chrysostom; Bossuet's was Homer.

Bunyan's was the old legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton, which in all probability gave him the first idea of his 'Pilgrim's Progress.' One of the best prelates that ever sat on the English bench, Dr.John Sharp, said--"Shakspeare and the Bible have made me Archbishop of York." The two books which most impressed John Wesley when a young man, were 'The Imitation of Christ' and Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying.' Yet Wesley was accustomed to caution his young friends against overmuch reading.

"Beware you be not swallowed up in books," he would say to them; "an ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge." Wesley's own Life has been a great favourite with many thoughtful readers.

Coleridge says, in his preface to Southey's 'Life of Wesley,' that it was more often in his hands than any other in his ragged book-regiment.