He says to himself either that he will reach a given point, or that he will progress at a given speed for a given distance, or that he will remain on his feet for a given time.  He organises his effort, partly in order that he may combine some other advantage with the advantage of walking, but principally in order to be sure that the effort shall be an adequate effort.  The same with reading.  Your paramount aim in poring over literature is to enjoy, but you will not fully achieve that aim unless you have also a subsidiary aim which necessitates the measurement of your energy.  Your subsidiary aim may be aesthetic, moral, political, religious, scientific, erudite; you may devote yourself to a man, a topic, an epoch, a nation, a branch of literature, an idea—­you have the widest latitude in the choice of an objective; but a definite objective you must have.  In my earlier remarks as to method in reading, I advocated, without insisting on, regular hours for study.  But I both advocate and insist on the fixing of a date for the accomplishment of an allotted task.  As an instance, it is not enough to say:  “I will inform myself completely as to the Lake School.”  It is necessary to say:  “I will inform myself completely as to the Lake School before I am a year older.”  Without this precautionary steeling of the resolution the risk of a humiliating collapse into futility is enormously magnified.

My third counsel is:  Buy a library.  It is obvious that you cannot read unless you have books.  I began by urging the constant purchase of books—­any books of approved quality, without reference to their immediate bearing upon your particular case.  The moment has now come to inform you plainly that a bookman is, amongst other things, a man who possesses many books.  A man who does not possess many books is not a bookman.  For years literary authorities have been favouring the literary public with wondrously selected lists of “the best books”—­the best novels, the best histories, the best poems, the best works of philosophy—­or the hundred best or the fifty best of all sorts.  The fatal disadvantage of such lists is that they leave out large quantities of literature which is admittedly first-class.  The bookman cannot content himself with a selected library.  He wants, as a minimum, a library reasonably complete in all departments.  With such a basis acquired, he can afterwards wander into those special byways of book-buying which happen to suit his special predilections.  Every Englishman who is interested in any branch of his native literature, and who respects himself, ought to own a comprehensive and inclusive library of English literature, in comely and adequate editions.  You may suppose that this counsel is a counsel of perfection.  It is not.  Mark Pattison laid down a rule that he who desired the name of book-lover must spend five per cent. of his income on books.  The proposal does not seem extravagant, but even on a smaller percentage than