I shall now offer a plan of Historical Study, and a calculation of the
necessary time it will occupy, without specifying the authors; as I only
propose to animate a young student, who feels he has not to number the
days of a patriarch, that he should not be alarmed at the vast labyrinth
historical researches present to his eye. If we look into public
libraries, more than thirty thousand volumes of history may be found.
Lenglet du Fresnoy, one of the greatest readers, calculated that he
could not read, with satisfaction, more than ten hours a day, and ten
pages in folio an hour; which makes one hundred pages every day.
Supposing each volume to contain one thousand pages, every month would
amount to three volumes, which make thirty-six volumes in folio in the
year. In fifty years a student could only read eighteen hundred volumes
in folio. All this, too, supposing uninterrupted health, and an
intelligence as rapid as the eyes of the laborious researcher. A man can
hardly study to advantage till past twenty, and at fifty his eyes will
be dimmed, and his head stuffed with much reading that should never be
read. His fifty years for eighteen hundred volumes are reduced to thirty
years, and one thousand volumes! And, after all, the universal historian
must resolutely face thirty thousand volumes!
But to cheer the historiographer, he shows, that a public library is
only necessary to be consulted; it is in our private closet where should
be found those few writers who direct us to their rivals, without
jealousy, and mark, in the vast career of time, those who are worthy to
instruct posterity.
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