Mental events, it is said, are not passive happenings but the acts of a subject. - Hermann Ebbinghaus

The relation of repetitions for learning and for repeating English stanzas needs no amplification. These were learned by heart on the first day with less than half of the repetitions necessary for the shortest of the syllable series.

A poem is learned by heart and then not again repeated. We will suppose that after a half year it has been forgotten: no effort of recollection is able to call it back again into consciousness.

The schoolboy doesn't force himself to learn his vocabularies and rules altogether at night, but knows that he must impress them again in the morning.