4. This chapter, which has extended beyond the usual limits, cannot close better than with a word on books, a matter intimately connected with its subject. The Fathers of 1586 set down some principles with regard to the proper supply and use of books, as well as the expurgation of the classical standard works;[310] and accordingly the _Ratio_ of 1599 ordains that "the students are neither to be without useful books, nor to abound in useless ones."[311] A multitude is considered useless, because "it oppresses the mind, and interferes with the convenient preparation of the lesson. Of books by more recent authors few are to be allowed, and those very carefully selected." Yet, "a variety of authors gives a richer vein to the boys, and makes imitation easier."[312] Here the Fathers proceed to give directions for the composition of an entirely new kind of work, which would be of great use in the colleges. It is exactly the species so well known in our days under the various titles of "Precepts of Rhetoric," "Art of Composition," etc. As the development of pedagogical literature, which we took note of in a former chapter,[313] had already made some progress, the critics say: "Some one most versed in all these matters should be deputed to gather whatever is best in this line, and to compile in one treatise, written in an elegant style, all that he has selected, about the art of writing epigrams, elegies, odes, eclogues, _sylvæ_ (that is, materials, "objects"), comedies, tragedies, epopoeiæ, a brief method of chronology; explaining also what is the historical (or narrative) style, the poetic, the epistolary, the different kinds of speaking, and other such matters, all to be illustrated by examples."[314] Elsewhere they call for a similar work of a higher order, on the Art of Oratory. The sources which they designate for such a compilation are "the numerous publications of our Professors of Rhetoric, as well on the art itself, as on classical orations."[315] These _compendia_, or text-books, were a new idea in education. CHAPTER XVI. THE CLASSICAL LITERATURES. SCHOOL MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL. The subject of Literary Exercises and School Management is treated in such a manner by the critics of 1586, that justice could be done to it, only by transcribing, word for word, the several chapters of the preliminary _Ratio_. As that is impossible, within the limits of space remaining, I shall endeavor to trace the outline.