My abstracts of each book were made in the French language: my
observations often branched into particular essays; and I can still
read, without contempt, a dissertation of eight folio pages on eight
lines (287-94) of the fourth _Georgic_ of Virgil....
This various reading, which I now conducted with discretion, was
digested, according to the precept and model of Mr. Locke, into a large
commonplace book; a practice, however, which I do not strenuously
recommend. The action of the pen will doubtless imprint an idea on the
mind as well as on the paper: but I much question whether the benefits
of this laborious method are adequate to the waste of time; and I must
agree with Dr. Johnson (_Idler_, No. 74), 'that what is twice read is
commonly better remembered than what is transcribed'....
I will embrace this occasion of recommending to the young student a
practice which about this time [1759] I myself adopted. After glancing
my eye over the design and order of a new book, I suspended the perusal
till I had finished the task of self-examination, till I had revolved,
in a solitary walk, all that I knew, or believed, or had thought on the
subject of the whole work, or of some particular chapter: I was then
qualified to discern how much the author added to my original stock; and
if I was sometimes satisfied by the agreement, I was sometimes armed by
the opposition of our ideas.--E. GIBBON. _Autobiography._