Our modern wits are not to reckon upon the infinity of matter for a
constant supply. What remains, therefore, but that our last recourse
must be had to large indexes and little compendiums? Quotations must be
plentifully gathered, and booked in alphabet; to this end, though
authors need to be little consulted, yet critics, and commentators, and
lexicons carefully must. But, above all, those judicious collectors of
bright parts, and flowers, and _observandas_, are to be nicely dwelt on;
by some called the sieves and coulters of learning, though it is left
undetermined whether they dealt in pearls or meal, and consequently,
whether we are more to value that which passed through, or what stayed
behind. By these methods, in a few weeks, there starts up many a writer
capable of managing the profoundest and most universal subjects. For
what though his head be empty, provided his commonplace book be full?
And if you will bate him but the circumstances of method, and style, and
grammar, and invention; allow him but the common privileges of
transcribing from others, and digressing from himself, as often as he
shall see occasion; he will desire no more ingredients towards fitting
up a treatise that shall make a very comely figure on a bookseller's
shelf; there to be preserved neat and clean for a long eternity, adorned
with the heraldry of its title fairly inscribed on a label; never to be
thumbed or greased by students, nor bound to everlasting chains of
darkness in a library.--J. SWIFT. _A Tale of a Tub._
His Invention is no more than the finding out of his papers, and his few
gleanings there, and his disposition of them is just as the
book-binder's, a setting or glueing of them together.--J. EARLE.
_Microcosmographie._
Good God! how many dungboats full of fruitless works do they yearly
foist on his Majesty's subjects; how many hundred reams of foolish,
profane, and senseless ballads do they quarterly disperse abroad.--G.
WITHER (1632).