Besides this, he applied himself with extreme diligence to collect not only all books which were excellent in their kind, and already published, but also all sayings and discourses of wise men, which he had heard in conversation, or which he had received from others by tradition; as likewise the records and public instruments preserved in cities which he had visited in his travels, and which he afterwards scattered through his works. To which purpose he took a particular journey to Sparta, to search the archives of that famous commonwealth, to understand thoroughly the model of their ancient government, their legislators, their kings, and their Ephori; digesting all their memorable deeds and sayings with so much care, that he has not omitted those even of their women, or their private soldiers; together with their customs, their decrees, their ceremonies, and the manner of their public and private living, both in peace and war. The same methods he also took in divers other commonwealths, as his Lives, and his Greek and Roman Questions, sufficiently testify. Without these helps, it had been impossible for him to leave in writing so many particular observations of men and manners, and as impossible to have gathered them without conversation and commerce with the learned antiquaries of his time. To these he added a curious collection of ancient statues, medals, inscriptions, and paintings, as also of proverbial sayings, epigrams, epitaphs, apophthegms, and other ornaments of history, that he might leave nothing unswept behind him. And as he was continually in company with men of learning, in all professions, so his memory was always on the stretch to receive and lodge their discourses; and his judgment perpetually employed in separating his notions, and distinguishing which were fit to be preserved, and which to be rejected.