Epitome is good privately for himself that doth work it, but ill
commonly for all other that use other men's labour therein: a silly poor
kind of study, not unlike to the doing of those poor folk, which neither
till nor sow nor reap themselves, but glean by stealth upon other men's
grounds. Such have empty barns for dear years.... Epitome hurteth most
of all in divinity itself. Indeed books of commonplaces be very
necessary to induce a man into an orderly general knowledge, how to
refer orderly all that he readeth, _ad certa rerum capita_, and not
wander in study.... But to dwell in epitomes, and books of commonplaces,
and not to bind himself daily by orderly study, to read with all
diligence, principally the holiest Scripture, and withal the best
doctors, and so to learn to make true difference betwixt the authority
of the one and the counsel of the other, maketh so many seeming and
sunburnt ministers as we have; whose learning is gotten in a summer
heat, and washed away with a Christmas snow again.--R. ASCHAM. _The
Schoolmaster._