Ancillon never read a book
throughout without reading in his progress many others of an exegetic
nature; so that 'his library table was always covered with a number of
books for the most part open.'[31] An excellent habit, provided that we
can resist the temptation to be side-tracked. The list of books by this
industrious student, however, shows by their curious variety that he at
least was not sufficiently strong-minded to resist wandering, during the
compilation of his historical works, in the byways of literature.

If we read the good solid books at all, let us at least read them with
the aim of acquiring the maximum amount of information they afford. To
read sketchily and diversely is not only a most painful waste of time,
but it abuses our brains. Suppose now that our bookman has decided to
'read up' the French Revolution, a subject to which we all turn at some
period of our lives. He has been led thereto, perhaps, by having lighted
upon a translation of someone's memoirs, the recollections of some
insignificant valet-de-chambre or dissolute cure (for such memoirs
abound), more interesting by reason of its piquancy than its historical
accuracy. He reads of persons and events that he recollects vaguely to
have heard of before, and so he goes on and on.

At the end, he has an ambiguous and temporary knowledge of names and
events. He has become acquainted with certain facts that he may possibly
remember; such as that the name of the French King was Louis and that his
Queen was Marie Antoinette, that they tried to escape and got as far as
Varennes (_wherever that may be_), but were brought back and executed;
that there were various politicians named Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre,
Desmoulins, and a curious party called the Girondins, et cetera. As to
the causes which led up to the Revolution, the condition of the country
and people, the ministry of Turgot, the characters of the King and Queen,
Necker's policy, the Abbe Sieyes, the Tennis Court, the composition of
the Assembly, and the host of essential facts, his knowledge is precisely
_nil_. The terms Right Centre, Extreme Left, the Jacobins, the White
Terror, Assignats, Hebertists and Dantonists, the Montagnards, the Old
Cordelier, are so much 'Hebrew-Greek' to him. At the end of six months he
will not be at all sure whether it was Louis XIV., XV., or XVI. who was
beheaded.

Surely his reading of these dubious memoirs has been a most mistaken
course and a lamentabl