recollection of a conversation with him some sixty years ago my
statement may lack in accuracy of detail, but not, I think, in
essential veracity. He selected in the beginning of the year some four
departments of reading, such as Poetry, History, Philosophy, Fiction,
and in each department a specific course, such as Greek Poetry,
Macaulay's History, Spencer's Philosophy, Scott's Novels. Then he read
according to his mood, but generally in the selected course: if poetry,
the Greek poets; if history, Macaulay; if philosophy, Spencer; if
fiction, Scott. This gave at once liberty to his mood and unity to his
reading.

One may read either for acquisition or for inspiration. A gentleman who
has acquired a national reputation as a popular lecturer and preacher,
formed the habit, when in college, of always subjecting himself to a
recitation in all his serious reading. After finishing a chapter he
would close the book and see how much of what he had read he could
recall. One consequence is the development of a quite marvelous memory,
the results of which are seen in frequent and felicitous references in
his public speaking to literature both ancient and modern.

He who reads for inspiration pursues a different course. If as he
reads, a thought expressed by his author starts a train of thought in
his own mind, he lays down his book and follows his thought wherever it
may lead him. He endeavors to remember, not the thought which the
author has recorded, but the unrecorded thought which the author has
stimulated in his own mind. Reading is to him not an acquisition but a
ferment. I imagine from my acquaintance with Phillips Brooks and with
his writings that this was his method.

I have a friend who says that he prefers to select his authors for