Erasmus.Colloquies: The Notable Art.
Erasmus.Colloquies: The Notable Art.
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason;—they made no such demand on those who wrote them. Those works therefore are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation.—C. C. Colton.Lacon.
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgement and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgement wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend:Abeunt studia in mores; nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises; bowling is good for the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking forthe stomach, riding for the head and the like; so if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find difference, let him study the schoolmen, for they areCymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.—F. Bacon, Lord Verulam.Essays.
After some while meditation, I walk up to my masters and companions, my books: and, sitting down amongst them, with the best contentment, I dare not reach forth my hand to salute any of them till I have first looked up to heaven, and craved favour of Him to whom all my studies are duly referred, without whom I can neither profit nor labour. After this, out of no over-great variety, I call forth those which may best fit my occasions; wherein I am not too scrupulous of age: sometimes I put myself to school, to one of those ancients, whom the Church hath honoured with the name of Fathers, whose volumes I confess not to open without a secret reverence of their holiness and gravity: sometimes to those latter doctors, which want nothing but age to make them classical: always to God's Book. That day is lost whereof some hours are not improved in those divine monuments: others I turn over out of choice; these out of duty.—Joseph Hall.(Letter to Lord Denny.)
In study there must be an expulsive virtue to shun all that is erroneous; and there is no science but is full of such stuff, which by direction of tutor and choice of good books must be excerned. Do not confound yourself with multiplicity of authors; two is enough upon any science, provided they be plenary and orthodox;Philosophyshould be your substantial food,Poetryyour banqueting stuff;Philosophyhath more of reality in it than any Knowledge, thePhilosophercan fathom the deep, measure mountains, reach the stars with a staff, and bless heaven with a girdle.
But among these Studies you must not forget theunicum necessarium; on Sundays and Holidays letDivinitybe the sole object of your speculation, in comparison whereof all other knowledge is but cobweb-learning.—J. Howell.Familiar Letters.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again they will not give us strength and nourishment.... The memory may be stored, but the judgement is little better, and the stock of knowledge not increased, by being able to repeat what others have said or produce the arguments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by hearsay, and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be found in books is not built upon true foundations, nor always rightly deduced from the principles it is pretended to be built on.... The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to its original, and to see upon what basis it stands, and how firmly; but yet it is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in reading. The mind should, by severe rules, be tied down to this at first uneasy task; use and exercise will give it facility. So that those who are accustomed to it, readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the argument, and presently, in most cases, see where it bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books, and the clue to lead them through the mizmaze of variety of opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This young beginners should be entered in, and showed the use of, that they might profit by their reading.... This way of thinking on and profiting by what we read will be a clog and rub to any one only in the beginning; when custom and exercise has made it familiar, it will be dispatched in most occasions, without resting or interruption in the course of our reading.—J. Locke.Conduct of the Understanding.
Read Homer once, and you can read no more;For all books else appear so mean, so poor,Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,And Homer will be all the books you need.J. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham.Essay on Poetry.
Read Homer once, and you can read no more;For all books else appear so mean, so poor,Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,And Homer will be all the books you need.
J. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham.Essay on Poetry.
Be Homer's works your study and delight,Read them by day, and meditate by night;Thence form your judgement, thence your maxims bring,And trace the Muses upward to their spring.Still with itself compared, his text peruse;And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.When first young Maro in his boundless mindA work to outlast immortal Rome designed,Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law,And but from Nature's fountains scorned to draw:But when to examine every part he came,Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design;And rules as strict his laboured work confine,As if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line.Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem:To copy nature is to copy them.A. Pope.Essay on Criticism.
Be Homer's works your study and delight,Read them by day, and meditate by night;Thence form your judgement, thence your maxims bring,And trace the Muses upward to their spring.Still with itself compared, his text peruse;And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.When first young Maro in his boundless mindA work to outlast immortal Rome designed,Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law,And but from Nature's fountains scorned to draw:But when to examine every part he came,Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design;And rules as strict his laboured work confine,As if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line.Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem:To copy nature is to copy them.
A. Pope.Essay on Criticism.
Read boldly, and unprejudiced peruseEach favourite modern, e'en each ancient Muse.With all the comic salt and tragic rage,The great stupendous genius of our stage,Boast of our island, pride of humankind,Had faults to which the boxes are not blind;His frailties are to every gossip known,Yet Milton's pedantries not shock the town.Ne'er be the dupe of names, however high,For some outlive good parts, some misapply.Each elegantSpectatoryou admire,But must you therefore swear by Cato's fire?Masks for the court, and oft a clumsy jestDisgraced the Muse that wrought theAlchemist.'But to the ancients'—Faith! I am not clear,For all the smooth round type of Elzevir,That every work which lasts in prose or songTwo thousand years deserves to last so long:For—not to mention some eternal bladesKnown only now in academic shades,(Those sacred groves where raptured spirits stray,And in word-hunting waste the livelong day)Ancients whom none but curious critics scan,—Do read Messala's praises if you can.Ah! who but feels the sweet contagious smartWhile soft Tibullus pours his tender heart?With him the Loves and Muses melt in tears,But not a word of some hexameters!'You grow so squeamish and so devilish dryYou'll call Lucretius vapid next.' Not I:Some find him tedious, others think him lame,But if he lags his subject is to blame.Rough weary roads through barren wilds he tried,Yet still he marches with true Roman pride;Sometimes a meteor, gorgeous, rapid, bright,He streams athwart the philosophic night.Find you in Horace no insipid odes?—He dared to tell us Homer sometimes nods;And but for such a critic's hardy skillHomer might slumber unsuspected still.J. Armstrong.Taste.
Read boldly, and unprejudiced peruseEach favourite modern, e'en each ancient Muse.With all the comic salt and tragic rage,The great stupendous genius of our stage,Boast of our island, pride of humankind,Had faults to which the boxes are not blind;His frailties are to every gossip known,Yet Milton's pedantries not shock the town.Ne'er be the dupe of names, however high,For some outlive good parts, some misapply.Each elegantSpectatoryou admire,But must you therefore swear by Cato's fire?Masks for the court, and oft a clumsy jestDisgraced the Muse that wrought theAlchemist.'But to the ancients'—Faith! I am not clear,For all the smooth round type of Elzevir,That every work which lasts in prose or songTwo thousand years deserves to last so long:For—not to mention some eternal bladesKnown only now in academic shades,(Those sacred groves where raptured spirits stray,And in word-hunting waste the livelong day)Ancients whom none but curious critics scan,—Do read Messala's praises if you can.Ah! who but feels the sweet contagious smartWhile soft Tibullus pours his tender heart?With him the Loves and Muses melt in tears,But not a word of some hexameters!'You grow so squeamish and so devilish dryYou'll call Lucretius vapid next.' Not I:Some find him tedious, others think him lame,But if he lags his subject is to blame.Rough weary roads through barren wilds he tried,Yet still he marches with true Roman pride;Sometimes a meteor, gorgeous, rapid, bright,He streams athwart the philosophic night.Find you in Horace no insipid odes?—He dared to tell us Homer sometimes nods;And but for such a critic's hardy skillHomer might slumber unsuspected still.
J. Armstrong.Taste.
He [Dr. Johnson] said, that for general improvement, a man should read whatever his immediate inclination prompts him to; though, to be sure, if a man has a science to learn, he must regularly and resolutely advance. He added, 'what we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there isbut one half to be employed on what we read.' He told us, he read Fielding'sAmeliathrough without stopping. He said, 'If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it, to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.'
Dr. Johnson advised me to-day, to have as many books about me as I could; that I might read upon any subject upon which I had a desire for instruction at the time. 'What you readthen(said he) you will remember; but if you have not a book immediately ready, and the subject moulds in your mind, it is a chance if you again have a desire to study it.' He added, 'If a man never has an eager desire for instruction, he should prescribe a task for himself. But it is better when a man reads from immediate inclination.'
Another admonition of his was, never to go out without some little book or other in the pocket. 'Much time,' added he, 'is lost by waiting, by travelling, &c., and this may be prevented, by making use of every possible opportunity for improvement.'—J. Boswell.Life of Johnson.
Read few books well. We forget names and dates; and reproach our memory. They are of little consequence. We feel our limbs enlarge and strengthen; yet cannot tell the dinner or the dish that caused the alteration. Our minds improve though we cannot name the author and have forgotten the particulars.
Read all books through; and bad books most carefully, lest you should lose one good thought, being determined never to look into them again. A man may read a great deal too much.—J. Horne Tooke.Recollections of S. Rogers.
Under a strong persuasion that little of real value is derived by persons in general from a wide and various reading; but still more deeply convinced as to the actual mischief of unconnected and promiscuous reading, and that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to enervate even where it does not likewise inflate; I hope to satisfy manyan ingenious mind, seriously interested in its own development and cultivation, how moderate a number of volumes, if only they be judiciously chosen, will suffice for the attainment of every wise and desirable purpose; that is, in addition to those which he studies for specific and professional purposes. It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit-tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite.—S. T. Coleridge.Prospectus to a Course of Lectures.
The advice I would give to any one who is disposed really to read for the sake of knowledge is, that he should have two or three books in course of reading at the same time. He will read a great deal more in that time and with much greater profit. All travels are worth reading, as subsidiary to reading, and in fact essential parts of it: old or new, it matters not—something is to be learnt from all. And the custom of making brief notes of reference to everything of interest or importance would be exceedingly useful.—R. Southey(Letter to Henry Taylor).
Much depends uponwhenandwhereyou read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up theFairy Queenfor a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons?
Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears.
Winter evenings—the world shut out—with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a season, theTempest, or his ownWinter's Tale.—
These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud—to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one—and it degenerates into an audience.
Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.
A newspaper, read out, is intolerable.—C. Lamb.Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.
It is dangerous to have any intercourse or dealing with small authors. They are as troublesome to handle, as easy to discompose, as difficult to pacify, and leave as unpleasant marks on you, as small children. Cultivate on the other hand the society and friendship of the higher; first that you may learn to reverence them, which of itself is both a pleasure and a virtue, and then that on proper occasions you may defend them against the malevolent, which is a duty. And this duty cannot be well and satisfactorily performed with an imperfect knowledge, or with an inadequate esteem.—W. S. Landor.Imaginary Conversations: Barrow and Newton.
It is wholesome and bracing for the mind, to have its faculties kept on the stretch. It is like the effect of a walk in Switzerland upon the body. Reading an Essay of Bacon's, for instance, or a chapter of Aristotle or of Butler, if it be well and thoughtfully read, is much like climbing up a hill, and may do one the same sort of good.... For my own part, I have ever gained the most profit and the most pleasure also, from the books which have made me think the most: and, when the difficulties have once been overcome, these are the books which have struck the deepest root, not only in my memory and understanding, but likewise in my affections. For this point too should be taken into account. We are wont to think slightly of that, which it costs us a slight effort to win. When a maiden istoo forward, her admirer deems it time to draw back. Whereas whatever has associated itself with the arousal and activity of our better nature, with the important and memorable epochs in our lives, whether moral or intellectual, is,—to cull a sprig from the beautiful passage in which Wordsworth describes the growth of Michael's love for his native hills—
Our living being, even moreThan our own blood,—and could it less?—retainsStrong hold on our affections, is to usA pleasurable feeling of blind love,The pleasure which there is in life itself.
Our living being, even moreThan our own blood,—and could it less?—retainsStrong hold on our affections, is to usA pleasurable feeling of blind love,The pleasure which there is in life itself.
If you would fertilize the mind, the plough must be driven over and through it. The gliding of wheels is easier and rapider, but only makes it harder and more barren. Above all, in the present age of light reading, that is, of reading hastily, thoughtlessly, indiscriminately, unfruitfully, when most books are forgotten as soon as they are finished, and very many sooner, it is well if something heavier is cast now and then into the midst of the literary public. This may scare and repel the weak: it will rouse and attract the stronger, and increase their strength by making them exert it. In the sweat of the brow is the mind as well as the body to eat its bread.—A. W.andJ. C. Hare.Guesses at Truth.
The best rule of reading will be a method from nature, and not a mechanical one of hours and pages. It holds each student to a pursuit of his native aim, instead of a desultory miscellany. Let him read what is proper to him, and not waste his memory on a crowd of mediocrities. As whole nations have derived their culture from a single book,—as the Bible has been the literature as well as the religion of large portions of Europe,—as Hafiz was the eminent genius of the Persians, Confucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of the Spaniards; so, perhaps, the human mind would be a gainer, if all the secondary writers were lost—say, in England, all but Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon—through the profounder study so drawn to those wonderfulminds. With this pilot of his own genius, let the student read one, or let him read many, he will read advantageously....
The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are,—1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read any but what you like; or, in Shakespeare's phrase,
No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en:In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en:In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Montaigne says, 'Books are a languid pleasure;' but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was: he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any others than such.—R. W. Emerson.Books.
I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know, that, as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have existed, who had almost no other information than by the printed page. I only would say, that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb says, 'He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies.' There is, then, creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labour and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always true, that, as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakespeare, only that least part,—only the authentic utterances of the oracle; all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's and Shakespeare's.—R. W. Emerson.The American Scholar.
Let us turn our attention to the intellectual advantages accompanying the pursuit, since the proper function of books is in the general case associated with intellectual culture and occupation. It would seem that, according to a received prejudice or opinion, there is one exception to this general connexion, in the case of the possessors of libraries, who are under a vehement suspicion of not reading their books. Well, perhaps it is true in the sense in which those who utter the taunt understand the reading of a book. That one should possess no books beyond his power of perusal—that he should buy no faster than as he can read straight through what he has already bought—is a supposition alike preposterous and unreasonable. 'Surely you have far more books than you can read,' is sometimes the inane remark of the barbarian who gets his books, volume by volume, from some circulating library or reading club, and reads them all through, one after the other, with a dreary dutifulness, that he may be sure that he has got the value of his money.
It is true that there are some books—as Homer, Virgil, Horace, Milton, Shakespeare, and Scott—which every man should read who has the opportunity—should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.... But is one next to read through the sixty and odd folio volumes of the BollandistLives of the Saints, and the new edition of the Byzantine historians, and the State Trials, and theEncyclopaedia Britannica, and Moreri, and the Statutes at large, and theGentleman's Magazinefrom the beginning, each separately, and in succession? Such a course of reading would certainly do a good deal towards weakening the mind, if it did not create absolute insanity.
But in all these just named, even in the Statutes at large, and in thousands upon thousands of other books, there is precious honey to be gathered by the literary busy bee, who passes on from flower to flower. In fact, 'a course of reading,' as it is sometimes called, is a course of regimen for dwarfing the mind, like the drugs which dog-breeders give to King Charles spaniels to keep them small. Within the span of life allotted to man there is but a certainnumber of books that it is practicable to read through, and it is not possible to make a selection that will not, in a manner, wall in the mind from a free expansion over the republic of letters. The being chained, as it were, to one intellect in the perusal straight on of any large book, is a sort of mental slavery superinducing imbecility. Even Gibbon'sDecline and Fall, luminous and comprehensive as its philosophy is, and rapid and brilliant the narrative, will become deleterious mental food if consumed straight through without variety. It will be well to relieve it occasionally with a little Boston'sFourfold State, or Hervey'sMeditations, or Sturm'sReflections for Every Day in the Year, orDon Juan, or Ward'sHistory of Stoke-Upon-Trent.—J. H. Burton.The Book-Hunter.
Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for hewrote of common life:Nor Scott, for his romances, though fascinating, are yetintelligible:Nor Thackeray, for he is a Hogarth, a photographer whoflattereth not:Nor Kingsley, for he shall teach thee that thou shouldestnot dream, but do.Read incessantly thy Burke; that Burke who, nobler thanhe of old,Treateth of the Peer and Peeress, the truly Sublime andBeautiful:Likewise study the 'creations' of 'the Prince of modernRomance';Sigh over Leonard the Martyr, and smile on Pelham thepuppy:Learn how 'love is the dram-drinking of existence';And how we 'invoke, in the Gadara of our still closets,The beautiful ghost of the Ideal, with the simple wand ofthe pen.'Listen how Maltravers and the orphan 'forgot all butlove',And how Devereux's family chaplain 'made and unmadekings':How Eugene Aram, though a thief, a liar, a murderer,Yet, being intellectual, was amongst the noblest of mankind.So shalt thou live in a world peopled with heroes andmaster-spirits;And if thou canst not realize the Ideal, thou shalt at leastidealize the Real.C. S. Calverley.Proverbial Philosophy.
Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for hewrote of common life:Nor Scott, for his romances, though fascinating, are yetintelligible:Nor Thackeray, for he is a Hogarth, a photographer whoflattereth not:Nor Kingsley, for he shall teach thee that thou shouldestnot dream, but do.Read incessantly thy Burke; that Burke who, nobler thanhe of old,Treateth of the Peer and Peeress, the truly Sublime andBeautiful:Likewise study the 'creations' of 'the Prince of modernRomance';Sigh over Leonard the Martyr, and smile on Pelham thepuppy:Learn how 'love is the dram-drinking of existence';And how we 'invoke, in the Gadara of our still closets,The beautiful ghost of the Ideal, with the simple wand ofthe pen.'Listen how Maltravers and the orphan 'forgot all butlove',And how Devereux's family chaplain 'made and unmadekings':How Eugene Aram, though a thief, a liar, a murderer,Yet, being intellectual, was amongst the noblest of mankind.So shalt thou live in a world peopled with heroes andmaster-spirits;And if thou canst not realize the Ideal, thou shalt at leastidealize the Real.
C. S. Calverley.Proverbial Philosophy.
I hold that no man can have any just conception of the history of England who has not often read, and meditated, and learnt to love the great poets of England. The greatest of them, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Massinger, George Herbert, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, Pope, and Burns, often throw more rich and brilliant colours, and sometimes even more clear and steady lights, on the times and doings of our forefathers, than are to be gathered out of all the chroniclers together, from the Venerable Bede to the philosophical Hume. They are at least the greatest and best commentators on those chroniclers.—Sir James Stephen.Desultory and Systematic Reading.
In perusal of history, first, provide you some writers in chronology and cosmography. For if you be ignorant of the times and places when and where the things you read were done, it cannot choose but breed confusion in your reading, and make you many times grossly to slip and mistake in your discourse. When, therefore, you set to your book, have by you Helvicus, hisChronology, and a map of the country in which you are conversant; and repair unto them to acquaint you with time and place, when and where you are. If you be versing the ancient histories, then provide you Ptolemy's maps, or Ortelius, hisConatus Geographici: if the latter, then some of the modern cards....
Before you come to read the acts of any people, as those that intend to go to bowls will first see and view the ground upon which they are to play, so it shall not be amiss for you first to take a general view of that ground,which you mean more particularly to traverse, by reading some short epitome.... This will give you a general taste of your business, and add light unto particular authors....
From the order of reading and the matters in reading to be observed, we come to the method of observation. What order we are for our best use to keep in entering our notes into our paper-books.
The custom which hath most prevailed hitherto was commonplacing, a thing at the first original very plain and simple; but by after-times much increased, some augmenting the number of the heads, others inventing quainter forms of disposing them: till at length commonplace books became like unto the Roman Breviary or Missal. It was a great part of clerkship to know how to use them. The vastness of the volumes, the multitude of heads, the intricacy of disposition, the pains of committing the heads to memory, and last, of the labour of so often turning the books to enter the observations in their due places, are things so expensive of time and industry, that although at length the work comes to perfection, yet it is but like the silver mines in Wales, the profit will hardly quit the pains. I have often doubted with myself whether or no there were any necessity of being so exactly methodical. First, because there hath not yet been found a method of that latitude, but little reading would furnish you with some things, which would fall without the compass of it. Secondly, because men of confused, dark and cloudy understandings, no beam or light of order and method can ever rectify; whereas men of clear understanding, though but in a mediocrity, if they read good books carefully, and note diligently, it is impossible but they should find incredible profit, though their notes lie never so confusedly. The strength of our natural memory, especially if we help it, by revising our own notes; the nature of things themselves, many times ordering themselves, andtantum non, telling us how to range them; a mediocrity of care to see that matters lie not too chaos-like, will with very small damage save us this great labour of being over-superstitiously methodical. And what though peradventure something be lost,Exilis domus est, &c. It is a sign of great poverty of scholarship, where everything that is lost ismissed; whereas rich and well-accomplished learning is able to lose many things with little or no inconvenience.—J. Hales.Golden Remains.
Epitome is good privately for himself that doth work it, but ill commonly for all other that use other men's labour therein: a silly poor kind of study, not unlike to the doing of those poor folk, which neither till nor sow nor reap themselves, but glean by stealth upon other men's grounds. Such have empty barns for dear years.... Epitome hurteth most of all in divinity itself. Indeed books of commonplaces be very necessary to induce a man into an orderly general knowledge, how to refer orderly all that he readeth,ad certa rerum capita, and not wander in study.... But to dwell in epitomes, and books of commonplaces, and not to bind himself daily by orderly study, to read with all diligence, principally the holiest Scripture, and withal the best doctors, and so to learn to make true difference betwixt the authority of the one and the counsel of the other, maketh so many seeming and sunburnt ministers as we have; whose learning is gotten in a summer heat, and washed away with a Christmas snow again.—R. Ascham.The Schoolmaster.
My abstracts of each book were made in the French language: my observations often branched into particular essays; and I can still read, without contempt, a dissertation of eight folio pages on eight lines (287-94) of the fourthGeorgicof Virgil....
This various reading, which I now conducted with discretion, was digested, according to the precept and model of Mr. Locke, into a large commonplace book; a practice, however, which I do not strenuously recommend. The action of the pen will doubtless imprint an idea on the mind as well as on the paper: but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious method are adequate to the waste of time; and I must agree with Dr. Johnson (Idler,No. 74), 'that what is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed'....
I will embrace this occasion of recommending to the young student a practice which about this time [1759] I myself adopted. After glancing my eye over the design and order of a new book, I suspended the perusal till I had finished the task of self-examination, till I had revolved, in a solitary walk, all that I knew, or believed, or had thought on the subject of the whole work, or of some particular chapter: I was then qualified to discern how much the author added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied by the agreement, I was sometimes armed by the opposition of our ideas.—E. Gibbon.Autobiography.
Somewhat to aid the weakness of my memory and to assist her great defects; for it hath often been my chance to light upon books which I supposed to be new and never to have read, which I had, not understanding, diligently read and run over many years before, and all bescribbled with my notes: I have a while since accustomed myself to note at the end of my book (I mean such as I purpose to read but once) the time I made an end to read it, and to set down what censure or judgement I gave of it; that so it may at least at another time represent unto my mind the air and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading him.—Montaigne.
If the books which you read are your own, mark with a pen or pencil the most considerable things in them which you desire to remember. Then you may read that book the second time over with half the trouble, by your eye running over the paragraphs which your pencil has noted. It is but a very weak objection against this practice to say, 'I shall spoil my book;' for I persuade myself that you did not buy it as a bookseller, to sell it again for gain, but as a scholar, to improve your mind by it; and if the mind be improved, your advantage is abundant, though your book yields less money to your executors.—I. Watts.Logic.
'On a subsequent evening, when I called by invitation to consult some other volumes, the conversation turned on the practice of underscoring books of study. Sir William spoke highly of the practice, as attended with many advantages, especially in the saving of time and labour. Intelligent underlining gave a kind of abstract of an important work, and by the use of different coloured inks to mark a difference of contents, and discriminate the doctrinal from the historical or illustrative elements of an argument or exposition, the abstract became an analysis very serviceable for ready reference. He mentioned that this principle had been carried to a ludicrous extreme in the publication of a coloured New Testament by an Anglicized German, Wirgmann by name.... In this book, entitledDivarication of the New Testament into Doctrine and History, the pages were all coloured, most of them parti-coloured, the doctrine being throughout visually separated from the history by this device; the doctrine being, if I remember rightly, blue, and the history red. The author expressed his belief that all the sects of Christendom had arisen from a confusion of these elements, and that his grand discovery in the "Divarication" would annihilate sects, establish pure Christianity as a sacred science, and become hereafter a Euclid in Theology.'—Sir William Hamilton.Lifeby J. Veitch.
The Country Parson hath read the Fathers also, and the Schoolmen, and the later writers, or a good proportion of all, out of all which he hath compiled a book, and Body of Divinity, which is the storehouse of his sermons, and which he preacheth all his life; but diversely clothed, illustrated, and enlarged. For though the world is full of such composures, yet every man's own is fittest, readiest, and most savoury to him. Besides, this being to be done in his younger and preparatory times, it is an honest joy ever after to look upon his well-spent hours.—G. Herbert.A Priest to the Temple.
For the disposition and collocation of that knowledge which we preserve in writing, it consisteth in a good digest of commonplaces, wherein I am not ignorant of the prejudice imputed to the rise of commonplace books, as causing a retardation of reading, and some sloth or relaxation of memory. But because it is but a counterfeit thing in knowledges to be forward and pregnant, except a man be deep and full, I hold the entry of commonplaces to be a matter of great use and essence in studying, as that which assureth copy of invention, and contracteth judgement to a strength. But this is true, that of the methods of commonplaces that I have seen, there is none of any sufficient worth: all of them carrying merely the face of a school, and not of a world; and referring to vulgar matters and pedantical divisions, without all life or respect to action.—F. Bacon, Lord Verulam.Of the Advancement of Learning.
I take a paper book of what size I please. I divide the two first pages that face one another by parallel lines into five-and-twenty equal parts, every fifth line black, the other red. I then cut them perpendicularly by other lines that I draw from the top to the bottom of the page. I put about the middle of each five spaces one of the twenty letters I design to make use of, and, a little forward in each space, the five vowels, one below another, in their natural order. This is the index to the whole volume, how big soever it may be.
The index being made after this manner, I leave a margin in all the other pages of the book, of about the largeness of an inch, in a volume in folio, or a little larger; and, in a less volume, smaller in proportion.
If I would put anything in my Commonplace Book, I find out a head to which I may refer it. Each head ought to be some important and essential word to the matter in hand, and in that word regard is to be had to the first letter, and the vowel that follows it; for upon these two letters depends all the use of the index.
I omit three letters of the alphabet as of no use to me,viz. K, Y, W, which are supplied by C, I, U, that are equivalent to them. I put the letter Q that is always followed with an u in the fifth space of Z. By throwing Q last in my index, I preserve the regularity of my index, and diminish not in the least its extent; for it seldom happens that there is any head begins with Zu. I have found none in the five-and-twenty years I have used this method.... When I meet with anything that I think fit to put into my commonplace book, I first find a proper head. Suppose, for example, that the head beEpistola, I look into the index for the first letter and the following vowel, which in this instance are E i; if in the space marked E i there is any number that directs me to the page designed for words that begin with an E, and whose first vowel after the initial letter is I, I must then write under the word Epistola, in that page, what I have to remark. I write the head in large letters and begin a little way out into the margin, and I continue on the line, in writing what I have to say. I observe constantly this rule that only the head appears in the margin, and that it be continued on, without ever doubling the line in the margin, by which means the heads will be obvious at first sight....
If the head is a monosyllable and begins with a vowel, that vowel is at the same time both the first letter of the word and the characteristic vowel. Therefore I write the word Ars in A a and Os in O o....
As to the language in which one ought to express the heads I esteem the Latin tongue most commodious, provided the nominative case be always kept to.... But it is not of much consequence what language is made use of, provided there be no mixture in the heads of different languages.—W. Locke(Letter to Mr. Toignard).
A commonplace book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field on competent warning.—T. Fuller.The Holy and the Profane State.
Reading without thinking may indeed make a rich commonplace, but 'twill never make a clear head.—J. Norris.On the Advantages of Thinking.
It is the practice of many readers to note, in the margin of their books, the most important passages, the strongest arguments, or the brightest sentiments. Thus they load their minds with superfluous attention, repress the vehemence of curiosity by useless deliberation, and by frequent interruption break the current of narration or the chain of reason, and at last close the volume, and forget the passages and marks together.
Others I have found unalterably persuaded that nothing is certainly remembered but what is transcribed; and they have therefore passed weeks and months in transferring large quotations to a commonplace book. Yet, why any part of a book, which can be consulted at pleasure, should be copied, I was never able to discover. The hand has no closer correspondence with the memory than the eye. The act of writing itself distracts the thoughts, and what is read twice is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed. This method therefore consumes time without assisting memory.
The true art of memory is the art of attention. No man will read with much advantage, who is not able, at pleasure, to evacuate his mind, or who brings not to his author an intellect defecated and pure, neither turbid with care, nor agitated by pleasure. If the repositories of thought are already full, what can they receive? If the mind is employed on the past or the future, the book will be held before the eyes in vain. What is read with delight is commonly retained, because pleasure always secures attention: but the books which are consulted by occasional necessity, and perused with impatience, seldom leave any traces on the mind.—S. Johnson.Idler, 74.
More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage flower gives honey to the bee, a king's garden none to the butterfly.—E. G. E. L. Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton.Caxtoniana.
I do not search and toss over books, but for an honester recreation to please, and pastime to delight myself: or if I study, I only endeavour to find out the knowledge that teacheth or handleth the knowledge of myself, and which may instruct me how to die well and how to live well.