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EPISTOLA.] A letter from 2. Mr. Locke to Mr. Toignard, containing a new and easy method of a common-placebook, to which an index of two pages is fufficient.

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Tlength, fir, in obedience to you, I publish-my "method "ofa common-place-book." Iam ashamed that I deferred fo long complying with your request; but I efteemed it fo mean a thing, as not to deserve publishing, in an age fo full of useful inventions, as ours is. You may remember, that I freely communicated it to you, and feveral others, to whom I imagined it would not be unacceptable: fo that it was not to referve the fole use of it to myself, that I declined publishing it. But the regard I had to the publick difcouraged me from prefenting it with fuch a trifle. Yet my obligations to you, and the friendship between us, compel me now to follow your advice. Your laft letter has perfectly determined me to it, and I am convinced that I ought not to delay publishing it, when tell me, you me, that an experience of feveral years has fhewed

3. its usefulness, and feveral of your friends, to whom you have communicated it. There is no need I should tell you, how ufeful it has been to me, after five and twenty years experience, as I told you, eight years fince, when I had the honour to wait on you at Paris, and when I might have been instructed, by your learned and agreeable difcourse. What I aim at now, by this letter, is to teftify publickly the esteem and respect I have for you, and to convince you how much I am, fir, your, &c.

BEFORE I enter on my fubject,. it is fit to acquaint the reader, that this tract is difpofed in the fame manner that the commonplace-book ought to be difpofed. It will be understood by reading what follows, what is the meaning of the Latin titles on the top. of the backfide of each leaf, and at the bottom of this page. EBIONITA.] In eorum evangelio, quod fecundum Hebræos dicebatur, hiftoria quæ habetur Matth. xix. 16. et alia quædam, erat interpolata in hunc modum "Dixit ad eum alter divitum, magifter, quid bonum faciens vivam? Dixit ei Dominus, legem & prophetas, fac. Refpondit ad eum, feci. Dixit ei:

V. 14.

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ADVERSARIORUM METHODUS.]

04. I take a paper of what fize

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The Ipleafe. divide the two first pages that face one another by parallel lines into five and twenty equal parts, every fifth dine black, the other red. then cut them perpendicularly by other lines that I draw from the top to the bottom of the page, as you may fee in the table prefixed. I put about the middle of each five fpaces one of the twenty letters I defign to make use of, and, a little forward in each fpace, the five vowels, one below another, in their natural order. This is the index to the whole volume, how big foever it may be.

THE index being made after this manner, I leave a margin, inall the other pages of the book, of about the largeness of an inch, 00 in a volume in folio, or a little larger; and, in a lefs volume, fmaller in proportion.

If I would put any thing in my Common - Place - Book, I find out a head to which I may refer it. Each head ought to be fome important and effential word to the matter in hand,

and

5. and in that word regard is to be had to the first letter, and the vowel that follows it; for upon these two letters depends all the ufe of the index.

I omit three letters of the alphabet as of no ufe to me, viz. K. Y. W. which are fupplied by C. I. U. that are equivalent to them. I put the letter Q that is always followed with an U. in the fifth fpace of Z. By throwing Q. laft in my index, I preferve the regularity of my index, and diminish not in the leaft its extent; for it feldom happens that there is any head begins with Z. U. I have found none in the five and twenty years I have ufed this method. If nevertheless it be neceffary, nothing hinders but that one may make a reference after Q. U. provided it be done with any kind of diftinction; but for more exactnefs a place may be affigned for Q. U. below the index, as I have formerly done. When I meet meet with any thing, that I think fit to put into my Common-placebook, I firft find a proper head. Suppose, for example, that the head be EPISTOLA, I look unto the index for the V. firft

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ADVERSARIORUM METHODUS.] V. first letter and the following 6. vowel, which in this inftance are E. I. if in the fpace marked E. I. there is any number that directs me to the page defigned for words that begin with an E. and whofe firft vowel, after the initial letter, is I; I must then write under the word Epiftola, in that page, what I have to remark. I write the head in large letters, and begin a little way out into the margin, and I continue on the line, in writing what I have to say. I obferve constantly this rule, that only the head appears in the margin, and that it be continued on, without ever doubling the line in the margin, by which means the heads will be obvious at first fight.

IF I find no number in the index, in the space E. I. I look into my book for the first backfide of a leaf that is not written in, which, in a book where there is yet nothing but the index, must be p. 2. I write then, in my index after E. I. the number 2. and the head Epiftola at the top of the margin of the fecond page, and all that I put under that head, in the fame page, as you fee I have done in the fecond page of this method. From that time the clafs E I. is wholly in poffeffion

of the fecond and third pages. THEY

THEY are to be employed only on words that begin with an E, and whofe nearest vowel is an I, as Ebionita (fee the bottom of the third page) Epifcopus, Echinus, Edictum, Efficacia, &c. The reason, why I begin always at the top of the back-fide of a leaf, and affign to one clafs two. pages, that face one another, rather than an entire leaf, is, because the heads of the clafs appear all at once, without the trouble of turning over a leaf.

EVERY time, that I would write a new head, I look firft in my index for the characteristick letters of the words, and I fee, by the number that follows, what the page is that is affigned to the clafs of that head. If there is no number, I must look. for the first back-fide of a page that is blank. I then fet down the number in the index, and defign that page, with that of the right fide of the following leaf, to this new clafs. Let it be, for example, the word Adverfaria; if I fee no number in the space A. E. I feek for the first backfide of a leaf, which being at P. 4. I fet down in the space A. E. the number4. and in the fourth page the head ADVERSARIA, with all that I write under it, as I have already informed you. From this time the fourth page V. with