Spurgeon

'His power of reading was perhaps never equalled... He took in the contents almost at a glance and his memory never failed him as to what he read. He made a point of reading half-a-dozen of the hardest books every week. I several times had an opportunity of testing the thoroughness of his reading and I never found him at fault.' (Dr. Wright, quoted in Spurgeon's Autobiography 4, 273.) At the time of his death Spurgeon had a library of 12,000 books and it is said 'he could have fetched almost any one of them in the dark.' Similarly, we read that 'Mr. Spurgeon at one time as he sat on his platform, could name every one of his five thousand members'. Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon, p. 33