"My indiscriminate appetite subsided by degrees into the historic line, and since philosophy has exploded all innate ideas and natural propensities, I must ascribe the choice to the assiduous perusal of the _Universal History_ as the octavo volumes successively appeared.

This unequal work referred and introduced me to the Greek and Roman historians, to as many at least as were accessible to an English reader.

All that I could find were greedily devoured, from Littlebury's lame _Herodotus_ to Spelman's valuable _Xenophon_, to the pompous folios of Gordon's _Tacitus_, and a ragged _Procopius_ of the beginning of the last century." Referring to an accident which threw the continuation of Echard's _Roman History_ in his way, he says, "To me the reigns of the successors of Constantine were absolutely new, and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube, when the summons of the dinner-bell reluctantly dragged me from my intellectual feast....

I procured the second and third volumes of Howell's _History of the World_, which exhibit the Byzantine period on a larger scale.

Mahomet and his Saracens soon fixed my attention, and some instinct of criticism directed me to the genuine sources.