ilt, of the same fashion and bigness as those
carried before his majestie, to be borne before our president on
meeting-days." This mace is still used.]

[Footnote 278: It was revived in 1707, by Wanley, the librarian to the
Earl of Oxford, who composed its rules; he was joined by Bagford,
Elstob, Holmes (keeper of the Tower records), Maddox, Stukely, and
Vertue the engraver. They met at the Devil Tavern, Fleet-street, and
afterwards in rooms of their own in Chancery-lane. They ultimately
removed to apartments granted them in Somerset House by George III.,
where they still remain.]

[Footnote 279: It was said of Prynne, and his custom of quoting
authorities by hundreds in the margins of his books to corroborate what
he said in the text, that "he always had his wits beside him in the
margin, to be beside his wits in the text." This jest is Milton's.]

[Footnote 280: Southey says--"A quotation may be likened to a text on
which a sermon is preached."]

[Footnote 281: Hone had this faculty in a large degree, and one of his
best political satires, the "Political Showman at Home," is entirely
made out of quotations from older authors applicable to the real or
fancied characteristics of the politicians he satirized.]

[Footnote 282: In MS. Bib. Reg. inter lat. No. 2447, p. 134.]

[Footnote 283: In the recent edition of Dante, by Romanis, in four
volumes, quarto, the last preserves the "Vision of Alberico," and a
strange correspondence on its publication; the resemblances in numerous
passages are pointed out. It is curious to observe that the good
Catholic _Abbate Cancellieri_, at _first_ maintained the _authenticity
of the Vision_, by alleging that _similar revelations_ have not been
unusual!--the Cavaliere _Gherardi Rossi_ attacked the whole as the crude
legend of a boy who was only made the instrument of the monks, and was
either a liar or a parrot! We may express our astonishment that, at the
present day, a subject of mere literary inquiry should have been
involved with "the faith of the Roman church." Cancellieri becomes at
length submissive to the lively attacks of Rossi; and the editor gravely
adds his "conclusion," which had nearly concluded nothing! He discovers
pictures, sculptures, and a mystery acted, as well as Visions in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from which he imagines the Inferno,
the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso owe their first conception. The
originality of Dante, however, is maintained on a ri