Too much philosophy makes men mad.

I hear better with a pen in my hand.

Brings [O'Brian's] achievement to a new height....Such is O'Brian's power to possess the imagination that I found I was living in his world as much as my own, wanting to know what happens next. That is the real test. Any contemporary novelist should recognize in Patrick O'Brian a Master of the Art.

Sublime Philosophy! Thou art the patriarch's ladder, reaching heaven And bright with beckoning angels—but alas! We see thee, like the patriarch, but in dreams, By the first step, dull slumbering on the earth.