Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/262

 254 LETTERS CONCERNING April material Is for a future common place book & for this you must collect your materials out of the books you read & reduce them under apt heads & lay them up in store as the painfull bees doe the honey they gather of several! flowers in their proper cells to which they by instinct of nature know when to goe upon occasion. And herein observe the former directions I sent you & your brother in a letter which I did write unto you the first yeare of yom* studdy, better then which I can not now think of or send unto you. Secondlie whether in reading of (ff 7) you should make an index or abridgn of principal! causes & for this you are to reduce your cases under apt & fit heads for it is already abridged to your handes. The table to the second parte of ff 6 was in my time held the most exact table & the best which was done to any books of law. And it was done by one Barnewall OTir country man, fac tu similiter but as that was but to the one booke let yours be to the whole. And as to the obstacle you meet with yt. in reading ff 7 you must sometimes with one case reduceable to two or more titles, which you say you find troublesome in one common place booke let not that be a trouble unto you for you have this benefit by it that the oftner you write the cases the more impression they will take in you & when you come to make use of them you may I hope forget some heads & remember the others so as when you come to make use of them ' decies repetita placebunt ' & as to your last I can say no more namelie that in reading the reports you reduce several! cases under apt & fit heads which may be a very great help to your memory as for example under the title of warrantie Buckhurst case & the several! cases which fall under that title especially the cases which are not ordinary nor comon for be sure in your reading to observe and take special notice of such, for the comon cases will be ordinary comon & obvious to every one. You see by this time how that Lord Cooke brings the whole volume of the Law upon the matter under these general & useful heads of Littleton & if you take out of Littleton Parkins & both the abridgements the principal! & most useful heads to which they reduce all the particular cases in the law observing what I did write heretofore unto you it may be a good path to tread in. The common & high rode will bring a man to his journeys end though it be sometime the longer about when by seeking a bypath & a shorter way a man is many times out of the way. But besides observe what course others eminent in the profession will advise & out of all (for you will find few of one mind) follow that to which your own genius will lead you. But all will agree in this that ' Labor improbus omnia vincit ' which as it is true most thinges soe especially in the studdy of the law * Cuius radices sunt amarae fructus vero dulciores '. Do not trouble Mr Ansley for any mony how hardly so ever you or your brother be put to for if please God to enable me I will keepe my dayes with you as long as I am Able though I much feare these times, & when I am not deus providebit if that you serve him & so praying God to blesse you & your studdyes I committ you to Grod & rest Your very loving unkle Mau. E. 23 Nov. 1659. Let me know by your next the certeynty of means which my nephew hath by his Lady, you can learne.