"To this work, and to the Life of Richard Baxter," he says, "I was used to resort whenever sickness and languor made me feel the want of an old friend of whose company I could never be tired.

How many and many an hour of self-oblivion do I owe to this Life of Wesley; and how often have I argued with it, questioned, remonstrated, been peevish, and asked pardon; then again listened, and cried, 'Right! Excellent!' and in yet heavier hours entreated it, as it were, to continue talking to me; for that I heard and listened, and was soothed, though I could make no reply!" [1913] Soumet had only a very few hooks in his library, but they were of the best--Homer, Virgil, Dante, Camoens, Tasso, and Milton.

De Quincey's favourite few were Donne, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, South, Barrow, and Sir Thomas Browne.

He described these writers as "a pleiad or constellation of seven golden stars, such as in their class no literature can match," and from whose works he would undertake "to build up an entire body of philosophy." Frederick the Great of Prussia manifested his strong French leanings in his choice of books; his principal favourites being Bayle, Rousseau, Voltaire, Rollin, Fleury, Malebranche, and one English author--Locke.
His especial favourite was Bayle's Dictionary, which was the first book that laid hold of his mind; and he thought so highly of it, that he himself made an abridgment and translation of it into German, which was published.

It was a saying of Frederick's, that "books make up no small part of true happiness." In his old age he said, "My latest passion will be for literature." It seems odd that Marshal Blucher's favourite book should have been Klopstock's 'Messiah,' and Napoleon Buonaparte's favourites, Ossian's 'Poems' and the 'Sorrows of Werther.' But Napoleon's range of reading was very extensive.