Commonplace books sanction the selection of passages made significant
by personal experience and conscience. Many commonplace passages urge
contentment and console the reader on the imminence of death, while
also containing traces that indicate the particular character of the
possessor. One book dated ca. 1670, for example, lists under "Precepts
of liveing" thirty-seven short, numbered verses in couplets, seldom
exceeding six lines, that turn the commandments into memorizable
verse.
-- Barbara M. Benedict
Making the Modern Reader
Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies (1996)
http://pup.princeton.edu/books/benedict/chapter_1.html