[REPUDIATION OF METHOD BY MEN OF REPUTE.]

Very intelligent and superior men have wholly repudiated the notion of study by method.  We must not lay too much stress upon these disclaimers, seeing that they are usually cited from those in advanced years, or men whose day of methodical education is passed.  When Johnson said—­“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him,” he was not thinking of beginners, for whom he would probably have dictated a different course.  Still, it is a prevailing tendency of many minds, to read all books equally, provided the interest or enjoyment of them is equal.  Macaulay, Sir William Hamilton, De Quincey, as well as Johnson, and a numerous host besides, were book-gluttons, books in breeches; they imbibed information copiously, and also retained it, but as a matter of chance.  The enjoyment of their life was to read; whereas, to master thoroughly a considerable field of knowledge, can never be all enjoyment.  Gibbon was a book devourer, but he had a plan; he was organizing a vast work of composition.  Macaulay, also, showed himself capable of realizing a scheme of composition; both his History and his Speeches have the stamp of method, even to the pitch of being valuable as models.  Hamilton and De Quincey, each in his way, could form high ideals of work, and in part execute them; but their productiveness suffered from too much bookish intoxication.  While readers generally mix the motive of instruction with stimulation, the class that seek instruction solely is but small; the other extreme is frequent enough.

[DIFFICULTY IN CHOOSING A FIRST TEXT-BOOK.]

In many subjects, the difficulties of fixing upon the proper Text-book are not inconsiderable.  The mere reputation of a book may be great, and well-founded; and yet the merits may not be of the kind that fits it for the commencing student.  Such conditions as the following must be taken into account.  The Form or Method should be of a high order:  this we shall have occasion to illustrate under the next head.  It should be abreast:  of the time, on its own subject.  It should be moderately full, without being necessarily exhaustive in detail.  It is on this point that the cheap primers of the present day are mainly defective.  They state general ideas, and lay down outlines; but they do not provide sufficiently expanded illustration to stamp these on the mind of the learner.  A shilling primer is really a more advanced book than one on a triple scale, that should embrace the same compass of leading ideas.  As a farther condition, the work chosen should not have so much of individuality as to fail in the character of representing the prevailing views.  The greatest authors often err on this point; and, while a work of genius is not to be neglected, it may, for this reason, have to take the second place in the order of study.  Newton’s Principia could never be a work suited for an early stage of mathematical study.  Lyell’s Geology has