"Works of reference are extremely useful; but they resemble Virgil's in that they are easy things to get into and very difficult to escape. Take the Encyclopædia. I imagine that my experience with it is universal. I have only to dip my toe into this tempting morass and down I am sucked, limbs, trunk and all, to remain until sleep or a visitor comes to haul me out. A man will read things in the Encyclopædia that he would never dream of looking at elsewhere—things in which normally he does not take the faintest interest. One may take up a volume after lunch in order to discover the parentage of Thomas Nashe; but one does not put it down when one has satisfied one's curiosity. One turns over a few pages and becomes absorbed in the career of Napoleon. Thence one drifts to the article on , which sends one to that on s in another volume ...."
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Sir John Collings Squire, (quote from p. 11; essays reprinted from ')
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Encyclopedia
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Encyclopedia
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