“Institutes of Oratory” comprises a chapter upon the orator’s reading, in which the author reviews the principal Greek and Roman classics from Homer to Seneca, with remarks upon the value of each for the mental cultivation of the oratorical pupil.  Something of this sort might be legitimately included in the art of study, but might also be withheld, as being provided in the critical estimates already formed respecting all writers of note.

[MODERN GUIDES TO STUDY.]

After Ouintilian, it is little use to search for an art of study, either among the later Latin classics, or among the mediaeval authors generally.  I proceed at once to remark upon the well-known essay of Bacon, which shows his characteristic subtlety, judiciousness, and weight; yet is too short for practical guidance.  He hits the point, as I conceive it, when he identifies study with reading, and brings in, but only by way of contrast and complement, conference or conversation and composition.  He endeavours to indicate the worth of book learning, as an essential addition to the actual practice of business, and the experience, of life.  He marks a difference between books that we are merely to dip into (books to be tasted) and such as are to be mastered; without, however, stating examples.  He ventures also to settle the respective kinds of culture assignable to different departments of knowledge—­history, poetry, mathematics, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, logic and rhetoric; a very useful attempt in its own way, and one that may well enough enter into a comprehensive art of study, if not provided for in the still wider theory of Education at large.

Bacon’s illustrious friend, Hobbes, did not write on studies, but made a notable remark bearing on one topic connected with the art,—­namely, that if he had read as much as other men, he should have remained still as ignorant as other men.  This must not be interpreted too literally.  Hobbes was really a great reader of the ancients, and must have studied with care some of the philosophers immediately preceding himself.  Still, it indicates an important point for discussion in the art of study, in which great men have gone to opposite extremes—­I mean in reference to the amount of attention to be given to previous writers, in taking up new ground.

To come down to another great name, we have Milton’s ideal of Education, given in his short Tractate.  Here, with many protestations of knowing things, rather than words, we find an enormous prescription of book reading, including, in fact, every known author on every one of a wide circle of subjects.  This was characteristic of the man:  he was a voracious reader himself, and an example to show, in opposition to Hobbes, that original genius is not necessarily quenched by great or even excessive erudition.  As bearing on the art of study, especially for striplings under twenty, Milton’s scheme is open to two criticisms:  first, that the amount of reading on the whole is too great; second, that in subjects handled by several authors of repute, one should have been selected as the leading text-book and got up thoroughly; the others being taken in due time as enlarging or correcting the knowledge thus laid in.  Think of a boy learning Rhetoric upon six authors taken together!