Even when books came into existence, an art of study would be at first very simple.  The whole extent of book literature among the Jews before Christ would be soon read; and, when once read, there was nothing left but to re-read it in whole or in part, with a view of committal to memory, whether for meditative reflection, or for awakening the emotions.  We see, in the Psalms of David, the emphasis attached to mental dwelling on the particulars of the Mosaic Law, as the nourishment of the feelings of devotion.

The Greek Literature about 350 B.C., when Aristotle and Demosthenes had reached manhood (being then 34), had attained a considerable mass; as one may see at a glance from Jebb’s chronology attached to his Primer.  There was a splendid poetical library, including all the great tragedians, with the older and the middle Comedy.  There were the three great historians—­Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; and the orators—–­ Lysias, Isocrates, and Isaeus; there were the precursors of Socrates in Philosophy; and, finally, the Platonic Dialogues.  To overtake all these would employ several years of learned leisure; and to imbibe their substance would be a rich and varied culture, especially of the poetic and rhetorical kind.  To make the most of the field, a judicious procedure would be very helpful; there was evident scope for an art of study.  The fertile intellect of the Greeks produced the first systematic guides to high culture; the Rhetorical art for Oratory and Poetry, the Logical art for Reasoning, and the Eristic art for Disputation.  There was nothing precisely corresponding to an Art of Study, but there were examples of the self-culture of celebrated men.  The most notorious of these is Demosthenes; of whom we know that, while he took special lessons in the art of oratory, he also bestowed extraordinary pains upon the general cultivation of his intellectual powers.  His application to Thucydides in particular is recounted in terms of obvious mythical exaggeration; showing, nevertheless, his idea of fixing upon a special book with a view to extracting from it every particle of intellectual nourishment that it could yield:  in which we have an example of the art of study as I have defined it.  Then, it is said that, in his anxiety to master his author, he copied the entire work eight times, with his own hand, and had it by heart verbatim, so as to be able to re-write it when the manuscripts were accidentally destroyed.  Both points enter into the art of study, and will come under review in the sequel.

We do not possess from the genius of Aristotle—­the originator or improver of so many practical departments—­an Art of Study.  The omission was not supplied by any other Greek writer known to us.  The oratorical art was a prominent part of education both in Greece and in Rome; and was discussed by many authors—­notably by Cicero himself; but the exhaustive treatment is found in Quintilian.  The very wide scope of the