ting the impossible. It would be very
severe, and very unjust, to judge any one from the list of his _first_
monographs.

[223] In practice it is proper to give at the beginning a list of the
sources used in the whole of the monograph (with appropriate
bibliographical information as to the printed works, and in the case of
manuscripts, a mention of the nature of the documents and their
shelf-marks); besides, each special statement should be accompanied by
its proof: the exact text of the supporting document should be quoted,
if possible, so that the reader may be in a position to verify the
interpretation; otherwise an analysis of it should be given in a note,
or, at the least, the title of the document, with its shelf-mark, or
with a precise indication of the place where it was published. The
general rule is to put the reader in a position to know the exact
reasons for which such and such conclusions have been adopted at each
stage of the analysis.

Beginners, resembling ancient authors in this respect, naturally do not
observe all these rules. Frequently, instead of quoting the text or the
titles of documents, they refer to these by their shelf-mark, or by the
title of the general collection in which they are printed, from which
the reader can learn nothing as to the nature of the text adduced. The
following is another mistake of the crudest kind, and yet of frequent
occurrence: Beginners, and persons of little experience, do not always
understand why the custom has been introduced of inserting footnotes; at
the bottom of the pages of the books they have they see a fringe of
notes; they think themselves bound to fringe their own books in the same
way, but their notes are adventitious and purely ornamental; they do not
serve either to exhibit the proof or to enable the reader to verify the
statements. All these methods are inadmissible, and should be vigorously
denounced.

[224] Almost all beginners have an unfortunate tendency to wander off
into superfluous digressions, to amass reflections and pieces of
information which have no relevance to the main subject; they would
recognise, if they reflected, that the causes of this tendency are bad
taste, a kind of naive vanity, sometimes mental confusion.

[225] We meet with declarations like the following: "I have been long
familiar with the documents of this period and this class. I have an
impression that such and such conclusions, which I cannot prove, are
true." Of