3 and 5, stuck to these pretty closely.
4.e. Read as far as Henry III in Hume.
a. Evolution and involution.
b. Refraction of light—Polarisation partly.
c. Laws of combination—must read them over again.
d. Nothing.
f. Nothing.
I must get on faster than this. I MUST adopt a fixed plan of studies, for unless this is done I find time slips away without knowing it—and let me remember this—that it is better to read a little and thoroughly, than cram a crude undigested mass into my head, though it be great in quantity.
(This is about the only resolution I have ever stuck to—1845.)
(Well do I remember how in that little narrow surgery I used to work morning after morning and evening after evening at that insufferably dry and profitless book, Hume's "History," how I worked against hope through the series of thefts, robberies, and throat-cutting in those three first volumes, and how at length I gave up the task in utter disgust and despair.