"a more general Motive to reading than is commonly imagined"

(Du prologue au théâtre, et des préfaces dans la littérature imprimée :)

Again, the indolent Reader, as well as the Spectator, finds great Advantage from both these; for as they are not obliged either to see the one or read the others, and both the Play and the Book are thus protracted, by the former they have a Quarter of an Hour longer allowed them to sit at Dinner, and by the latter they have the Advantage of beginning to read at the fourth or fifth Page instead of the first; a Matter by no means of trivial Consequence to Persons who read Books with no over View than to say they have read them, a more general Motive to reading than is commonly imagined; and from which not only Law Books, and Good Books, but the Pages of Homer and Virgil, of Swift and Cervantes have been often turned over.

(Fielding, Tom Jones, XVI, 1).