erved; nor yet in oviparous
Quadrupeds.' Digressing in this manner is a risky business, and if the
grief were still fresh, it is more than likely that the bereaved one
would exclaim 'A fig for your fishes, Sir.' But Sir Thomas was a wise and
worldly man, and would know from experience precisely when to administer
his soothing draught.

The attractions of digressing are far more insidious than would appear at
first sight. It is so easy, one finds such delightful things, it is all
in the daily task of gathering knowledge, it may be useful to us some
day, and so on. But, unwisely employed, it is a more terrible thief of
time even than Young's 'procrastination.' Worse still, it is a _waster_;
for the scrappy knowledge so often acquired by this means becomes
invariably the 'little learning' which is so dangerous--and useless--a
thing. So that unless we are strongly imbued with the spirit of scholarly
research, determined that we will not deviate one iota from the
particular side-track which we are exploring, we are in grave danger of
becoming lost in the maze of paths. Digressions in conversation and books
can be of immense value, but he must be a man of iron will who can
utilise to permanent advantage his resources in this direction. Constant
and purposeless digressions, in reading no less than in talk, are just as
injurious as interruptions. The mind is switched from one subject to
another, and an entire sequence of reasoning which we may have been
building up by the study of some days is destroyed in a few moments by
the opening up of an unexplored tract of thought.

For many years there was a learned man at work in one of our ancient
abbey libraries, cataloguing the manuscripts and monastic charters of the
ancient foundation. Their number runs into many thousands, and at the
outset the Keeper[17] realised that if this task of providing an index
and precis of the entire collection (which would be of incalculable value
to the historical students who came after him) were to be accomplished in
his lifetime, it would be necessary to adhere rigidly to his plan. Any
deviation, however slight, would mean the loss of valuable time. To the
historian and antiquary such a determination must have cost more than we
can imagine; for every now and again he came across some charter of great
historical interest. 'Ah,' he would sigh, reading it through, 'and now I
suppose you must go back again into the obscurity in which you have lain
fo