Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 03.djvu/352

 ] A Letter from Mr. Locke to Mr. 2. Toignard, containing a new and easy Method of a Common-place-book, to which an Index of two Pages is sufficient.

length, sir, in obedience to you, I publish my "method of a common-place-book." I am ashamed that I deferred so long complying with your request; but I esteemed it so mean a You may thing, as not to deserve publishing, in an age so full of useful inventions as ours is. remember, that I freely communicated it to you and several others, to whom I imagined it would not be unacceptable: so that it was not to reserve the sole use of it to myself that I declined publishing it. But the regard I had to the public discouraged me from presenting it with such a trifle. Yet my obligations to you, and the friendship between us, compel me now to follow your advice. Your last letter has perfectly determined me to it, and I am convinced that I ought not to delay publishing it, when tell me, that an experience of several you years has showed its usefulness, and several of your friends, to whom you have communicated it. There is no need I should tell you how useful it has been to me, after five-and-twenty years' experience, as I told you eight years since, when I had the honour to wait on you at Paris, and when I might have been instructed by your learned and agreeable discourse. What I aim at now, by this letter, is to testify publicly the esteem and respect I have for you, and to convince you how much I am, sir, your, &c.

Before I enter on my subject, it is fit to acquaint the reader, that this Tract is disposed in the same manner that the Common-place-