Commonplaces (or commonplace books) originated as a student innovation in Oxford University in the late 15th century. More akin to modern scrapbooks than to the formal reading-notes of Renaissance academic practice, these were loosely organized personal collections reflecting both the ephemeral and enduring interests of the individual. By the 17th century their use was a formally taught practice.
It is an old and well-worn tradition—Commonplaces have their roots in the pedagogy of Plato’s Academy and the Lyceum of Aristotle, where students were encouraged to record hypomnemata (υπομνηματα) or unstructured compilations of present discourses, memoranda, notes and commentaries—but it remains a vigorous and useful one, the Blog is its latest form.
A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that “great wits have short memories:” and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day’s reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there. For, take this for a rule, when an author is in your books, you have the same demand upon him for his wit, as a merchant has for your money, when you are in his.
Jonathan Swift. A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet (1720).
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