r eight hundred years.' He quietly made his precis, indexed the
document, and replaced it in the oaken press. There, thanks to his
labours, it will be turned to at some future date to add laurels to the
'researches' of another man.

Perhaps the most innocuous way in which we may digress is by compiling
one of those delectable literary hotch-potches known as 'commonplace
books.' Here, with careful selection, we may garner those delightful
thoughts, those gay conceits or pithy stories, that strike our fancy as
we read. And though perhaps it may be urged that such collections
resemble a casket of loose jewels plucked from their settings, yet they
are jewels none the less. We may store all our collections within one
cover, or we may preserve separately our extracts from the poets, our
biographies, our meditations, or our anecdotes.

The first 'commonplacer' of whom I have seen mention was one Photius, a
colonel in the Life Guards at Constantinople during the ninth century,
or--as he was then called--Protospatharius. Later he became ambassador to
the court of Baghdad, and amused himself by compiling a volume which he
called _Myriobiblon_, a collection of extracts of the authors which he
had read. He was a man, we are told, of extraordinary vigour of mind, and
of encyclopaedical knowledge, and he was so devoted to reading that he
passed whole nights without sleep. Accordingly we are not surprised to
find that the Myriobiblon, with its Latin translation, forms a folio
volume of some 1500 pages. When on an embassy to Assyria, he carried his
library--some 300 rolls--with him, presumably on camels. Thus, we
suppose, he could bestride his dramatic camel, his poetic camel, or his
theological camel as the mood took him. The Myriobiblon was compiled
merely as a handbook for his brother Tarasius, that the latter might
enjoy a brief synopsis of what the ambassador read on his travels.
Several authors are now known only by the extracts in this book; and
among them may be mentioned a writer named Conon, who is said to have
written fifty novels, which Photius condensed to his liking. All this, of
course, was merely _pour passer le temps_; the really important works of
this bookworm being a lexicon and a number of books on theology. Needless
to say in due course he became Patriarch of Constantinople.

Who nowadays keeps a commonplace book? Doubtless a good many readers of
to-day have neither time nor inclination to indulge this pleasing