merous walks of literature. This volume makes no pretension to being exhaustive on any of the subjects treated; nor does it affect to embrace all that an Encyclopedia alone could be expected to cover. It does not by any means indicate even, all the author's reading. It is strictly limited to ENGLISH PROSE LITERATURE. To keep the volume within a reasonable compass, much that is unquestionably included in the word literature, had to be excluded. In Anecdote, Biography, Poetry, History, and Science, its references are very limited. If the present venture should prove a success, these subjects will be fully embraced in separate volumes.

The special design of the present issue is to indicate to the student the best method of storing and utilizing the reading of each passing day. It does not ask to be regarded as a treasure-house so well filled with precious things that there shall be no farther room, or need, for adding to its stores; it rather claims to be a bank of deposit, in which he will have the greater interest who has himself deposited the most. It will be found imperfect, and even valueless so long as it has for its only author the one whose name is on its title page. His industry must be supplemented by the larger and more discriminating labors of those into whose hands it may come. It is intended to invite and impel to a humble kind of authorship students of every age, and of every degree of intellectual culture. It furnishes to the industrious mental weaver, a quill on which a few threads of each distinct color of thought have been already wound, and to these suggestive strands the student will find it a comparatively easy task to add all of the same color that may pass under his eye in the reading of a life-time. Instead of throwing the precious things he may daily meet with, in his converse with books and men of thought, into some common receptacle, and thus accumulate a confused and confusing pile, out of which he can only rescue some dimly remembered, but much desired, gem by infinite toil, and after endless disappointments and perplexities; let him bring his daily gains to this carefully partitioned and distinctly labelled repertoire and then at memory's first bidding, he will be able to command, and give currency to the intellectual riches of the ages.

"Few and precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter: . .

They be chance pearls, flung among the rocks by the sullen waters of Oblivion,
Which Diligence loveth to gather, and hang around the neck of memory."

HENRY J. Fox.

INTRODUCTION.

For out of the old fieldes, as men saithe,
Cometh al this new corne fro yere to yere,
And out of old bookes, in good faithe,
Cometh al this new science that men lere.
CHAUCER.

"BOOKS made out of books," have been held up to undeserved ridicule and contempt.

"Ger

many is thronged (says Menzel) with multitudes who in want of any fixed employment, immediately begin to write books; thus reaping, as soon as possible, the fruits of what they have learned at the universities, and inundating the world with an immense number of crude and boyish works." However true this may be of German literature, there is a large class of English works so created, to which these scornful remarks cannot apply. Prominent among such may be named Southey's Common-Place Book, Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, Cruden's Concordance of the Bible, the Concordances to Shakespeare, Milton, etc., Chambers' Cyclopædia of English Literature, Allibone's Dictionary of Quotations, De Fontaine's Cyclopædia of Dickens' Best Thoughts, and many other less pretentious but equally meritorious works.

An anonymous writer on the vanity and glory of literature, has said, with far more wisdom than can be found in the utterances of any German critic, that "the luxuriant foliage and huge forest growth of science and literature which now overshadow us, are themselves rooted in strata of decaying or decayed mind, and derive their nourishment from them; the very soil we turn is the loose detritus of thought, washed down to us through the long ages. In the world of intellect, as in the world of matter, though 'vanity' is written on all things, and oblivion awaits man and his achievements, yet it is also sublimely true, that in both alike death is itself the germ of life, and new forms of glory and beauty spring from the dust of desolation."

In 1864, Longman and Co. published, “Miscellaneous Remains from the Common-Place Book of Richard Whately, D.D., late Archbishop of Dublin." In the editing and issuing of this volume Miss Whately is said to have erected the best monument possible to her father's memory. It contains the rough-hewn thoughts of the archbishop, and a critic in the Saturday Review says, “it will take its place beside 'Guesses at Truth,' by the brothers Hare, to which work it has a close affinity." In any future re-editing of the work, however, the critic ventures to "request the omis sion of his poetry. It only fills twenty pages (says he) but it afflicts one much as one is afflicted by being shown, at Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott's old coat and trowsers."

"Some books, (taking Thomas Fuller as our authority) are only to be read cursorily—to be tasted of; namely, first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over; secondly,

V

auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them you look through them, and he that peeps through the casement of the index, sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of these cannot be excused, who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence and only trade in their tables of contents. These, like city eaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe that they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourished with skill in those authors they never seriously studied." Much may be said in favor of reading books topically, with pen in hand. The range should not be limited to narrow confines. The "man of one book," is too often the man of "one idea." There is a happy mean, and every man of common sense finds it.

The most distinguished men in literature have either made, or commended in others the making of, Common-Place Books. "I wish (says Dr. Johnson when writing to Richardson) you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it, which at present he cannot do unless he knows in which volume it is told."

66

Reading (says Allibone) is that art by which I am enabled to avail myself of the recorded wisdom of mankind." Horace Binney, in a letter to this most distinguished of all modern compilers says: "One may recollect generally that certain thoughts or facts are to be found in a certain book; but without a good index such a recollection may hardly be more available than that of the cabin-boy, who knew where the ship's tea-kettle was, because he saw it fall overboard; and unless he has good indexes he will never find it again." Disraeli, it is well known, keeps a huge common-place book, in which he jots down from day to day and from year to year, thoughts and expressions which arrest his glance, and from this source constantly draws sparks for the shining text of his discourse.* Wirt, in his recommendations to a student, said, be sure and have at command a collectanea. He affirms that Mr. Jefferson was only sixteen years old when he began to keep regular files of newspapers, and to preserve every pamphlet whether speech or dissertation on any public subject, whether of politics, arts or science, which issued from the press. Southey had a long row of pigeon-holes in which he required his daughters to deposit the copies which they made of all the passages he marked in the course of his reading. This was the magazine to which he resorted for his appendices and wonderfully tesselated essays. A distinguished living novelist has openly acknowledged that he is indebted for most of his thrilling incidents, and his complicated plots, to the careful manner in which he has docketed the pleadings in criminal and civil suits, and even the details of police reports.

No common-place book, however, this, or any other, should be so used as to expose the user to a sarcasm like that with which old Sam Butler castigates the literary thief. These are his bitter words: "He believes it is invention enough to find out other men's wits; and whatsoever he lights upon, either in books or company, he makes bold with as his own. This he puts together so untowardly, that you may perceive that his own wits has the rickets by the swelling disproportion of the joints. . . . He is like an Italian thief who never robs but he murders to prevent discov ery; so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected."

* Golden Age Am. Oratory.

Life of Wirt, vol. ii, 356.

EDITIONS

FROM WHICH THE REFERENCES IN THIS VOLUME HAVE BEEN TAKEN, WITH TITLE OF THE BOOK.