Books and Study. LUTHER has said in one of his books, concern ing the art of printing, which had then been in use about one hundred years, Brevi tempore, multitudo non optimorum librorum obruet paucitatem optimorum! Pliny in his Epistle to Fuscus, says, (Lib. vii. Ep. 9.) Tu memineris sui cujusque generis auctores diligenter eligere. Aiunt enim, multum legendum esse, non multa. In reading many books (as Sir William Temple has observed) this inconvenience may attend, That from the weight and number of so many other mens' thoughts and notions, our own may be suppressed; and the motion or agitation of them (from which all invention ariseth) hindered. As heaping on wood, or too many sticks or too close together, suppresses and sometimes quite extinguishes a little spark, that would otherwise have grown up to a noble flame. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Crafty men contemn them, simple men admire them, and wise men use them. 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. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.-Bacon's Essays. [In consonancy with these maxims it may be added, that the appetite for books is naturally most keen in youth, when reading, properly di. rected, is of the greatest benefit to us: that it declines in middle age, when the man (if he be fit for any thing) is called into action, and leaves his studies for long intervals of business : and that in mature age, he is generally more inclined to feed on the hidden stores of memory and experience; which reading, reflection, and "conference," or continual application to the affairs of life, have made so completely his own, that for the most part he is no longer able to recur to the source from whence J each particular fact or sentiment has derived to him.-Ed.] Et gaudium mihi et solatium in literis: nihilque tam lætum quod his lætius; nihil tam triste, quod non per has sit minus triste. Republicæ negotia curare et disceptare inter amicos, laude dignissimum est. Ut in vitâ sic in studiis, pulcherrimum et humanissimum æstimo severitatem comitatemque miscere.-Plinii Epist. It is said of Pliny the elder, that besides all the works which he published, he left his nephew an hundred and sixty volumes of extracts of what he had read. For he laid every author he met with under contribution, and would often say, there was no book so badly written but that something might be gleaned from it. The writings which please many, especially the youth of the present time, are amusing fictions; where a perpetual succession of events surprises by variety, without improving the -understanding or ennobling the heart. 1798. It is not improperly said of Novels, that they used to be chiefly mischievous in one respect [by promoting romantic notions of love and gallantry] but are now in many respects become |