Laudator Temporis Acti

The Life of George Crabbe By His Son (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), p. 127:

As the chief characteristic of his heart was benevolence, so that of his mind was a buoyant exuberance of thought and perpetual exercise of intellect. Thus he had an inexhaustible resource within himself, and never for a moment, I may say, suffered under that ennui which drives so many from solitude to the busy search for notoriety. I can safely assert that, from the earliest time I recollect him, down to the fifth or sixth year before his death, I never saw him (unless in company) seated in a chair, enjoying what is called a lounge — that is to say, doing nothing. Out of doors he had always some object in view — a flower, or a pebble, or his note-book, in his hand; and in the house, if he was not writing, he was reading.

"If he was not writing, he was reading" — cf. Sulpicius Severus, Dialogues 1.9.5 (describing Jerome in Bethlehem), in Sulpicii Severi Opera ex rec. C. Halmii (Vienna, 1866 = Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, I), p. 161:

totus semper in lectione, totus in libris est: non die neque nocte requiescit: aut legit aliquid semper aut scribit.