TEMPORARY INABILITY. CCCclv 



soever a man coramandeth upon himself, let him set hours 

 for it; but whatever is agreeable to his nature, let him 

 take no care for any set hours, for his thoughts will fly to 

 it of themselves.&quot; (a) He so mastered and subdued his 

 mind as to counteract disinclination to study ; (b) and he 



a book immediately ready, and the subject moulds in your mind, it is a 

 chance if you again have a desire to study it. &quot; 



Dr. Johnson said, &quot; If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, 

 and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning; 

 he may perhaps not feel again the inclination.&quot; Boswell s Life, p. 405. 



(a) Bacon, speaking of Queen Elizabeth, says, &quot; This lady was endowed 

 with learning in her sex singular, and rare even amongst masculine princes ; 

 whether we speak of learning, of language, or of science modern or ancient, 

 divinity or humanity ; and unto the very last of her life she accustomed to 

 appoint set hours for reading, scarcely any young student in an university 

 more daily or more duly.&quot; 



But the most effectual expedient employed by Alfred for the encourage 

 ment of learning was his own example, and the constant assiduity with 

 which, notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of his affairs, he em 

 ployed himself in the pursuits of knowledge. He usually divided his 

 time into three equal portions : one was employed in sleep and the refection 

 of his body by diet and exercise ; another in the dispatch of business ; a 

 third in study and devotion : and that he might more exactly measure the 

 hours, he made use of burning tapers of equal length, which he fixed in 

 lanthorns : an expedient suited to that rude age, when the geometry of 

 dialling and the mechanism of clocks and watches was entirely unknown. 

 And by such a regular distribution of his time, though he often laboured 

 under great bodily infirmities, this martial hero, who fought in person fifty- 

 six battles by sea and land, was able during a life of no extraordinary 

 length to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose more books, than 

 most studious men, though blest with the greatest leisure and application, 

 have in more fortunate ages made the object of their uninterrupted 

 industry. Hume. 



Dr. Johnson said, &quot; If a man never has an eager desire for instruction 

 he should prescribe a task for himself; if he has a science to learn he must 

 regularly and resolutely advance.&quot; 



(/&amp;gt;) As in the improvement of the understanding, the mind ought always 

 to be employed on some subject from which it is averse, that it may obtain 

 the mastery over itself: so two seasons are chiefly to be observed; the one 

 when the mind is best disposed to a business, the other when it is worst, 

 that by the one we may be well forwards on our way, by the latter we may 





