Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/85

into what they call Common-Places, which is a Way of taking an Author to Pieces, and ranging him under proper Heads, that You may readily find what he hath said upon any Point, by consulting an Alphabet. This Practice is of no Use but in Circumstantials of Time and Place, Custom, and Antiquity, and in such Instances where Facts are to be remembred, not where the Brain is to be exercised. In these Cases it is of great Use: It helpeth the Memory, and serveth to keep those Things in a Sort of Order and Succession. But, my Lord, Common Placing the Sense of an Au-