336 tonic : OR, THE RIGHT USE OF REASON, L Recollect every day the things you have seen, or heard, or read, which may have made an addition to your understand -. ing; read the writings of God and men with diligence and per - petual reviews : he not fond of hastening to a new book, or a new chapter, till you have well fixed and established in your minds what was useful in the last: make use of your memory in this manner, and you will sensibly experience a gradual im provement of it, while you take care not to load it to excess. 2. Talk over the things which you have seen, heard, or learnt, with some proper acquaintance. This will make a fresh impression upon your memory ; and if you have no fellow - student at hand, none of equal rank with yourselves, tell it over to any of your acquaintance, where you can do it with propriety and decency ; and whether they learn any thing by it or no, your own repetition of it will be an improvement to yourself : and this practice also will furnish you with a variety of words, and copious language to express your thoughts upon all occasions. 3. Commit to writing some of the most considerable im- provement which you daily make, at least such hints as may reed- them again to your mind, when perhaps they are vanished and lost. And here I think Mr. Locke's method of adversaria, or common-places, which he describes in the end of the first volume of his Posthumous Works, is the best ; using no learned method at . all, setting down things as they occur, leaving a distinct page for each subject, and making an index to the pages. At the end of every week, or month, or year, you may re- view your remarks for these reasons ; first, to judge of your own improvement ; when you shall find that many of your young- er collections are either weak and trifling : or if they are just and proper, yet they are grown now so familiar to you, that you will thereby see your own advancement in knowledge. And in the;next place, what remarks you find there worthy of your riper observation, you may note them with a marginal star, instead of transcribing them, as being worthy of your second year's review, when the others are neglected. To shorten something of this labour, if the books which you read are your own, mark with a pen or pencil the most conside- rable things in them which you desire to remember. Thus you may read that book the second time over with half the trouble,. by your eye running over the paragraphs which your pencil has noted. It is but a very weak objection against this practice to say, I shall spoil my book ; for I persuade myself, that you did not buy it as a bookseller to sell it again for gain, but as a scholar to improve your mind by it ; and if the mind be improved, your
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