utility of attempting to assign originality to any man,
you will come to agree with the young lady of fifteen who, priding
herself on the possession of a literary _flair_, once remarked to the
writer: 'In fact there is little doubt that Junius never wrote the
letters attributed to him at all!'

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Usually the precentor was also archivist and librarian.

[15] In one monastery, however, they were allowed to speak 'passing
soft.' We know that 'passing soft!'

[16] 'Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus.' Alfonso d'Este (born 1476) had
it carved on the mantelpiece of his study at Belvedere.

[17] Dr. E. J. L. Scott of Westminster Abbey, sometime Egerton Librarian
of the British Museum. He calendared no less than 57,000 documents at the
Abbey, but alas! a long life was insufficient to enable him to complete
his task. The whole working portion of his latter years was spent in the
muniment room, and it was there that he was seized with the illness which
ended his life the same day (1918). The work which he accomplished (now
being ably continued, on the lines which he laid down, by his successor,
the present Custodian of the Abbey) has been utilized by scholars from
universities all over the world. However busily employed, he was always
ready instantly to lay aside his work in order to assist a student over
some difficult point, whether of history or palaeography.

[18] Edition of 1651, 12mo, page 52. 'To a close shorne sheep, God gives
wind by measure.' First printed in _Witts Recreations_, 1640. Sterne
might have reflected that it is not usually the custom to shear _lambs_.

Since the above was written, a correspondent has brought to the writer's
notice a sixteenth century French version:--_Au brebis tondue, dieu donne
le vent par mesure._

[19] It is curious to note how some of these famous sayings have been
wrongly assigned. A recently published _Dictionary of Quotations_,
assigns Scipio's famous dictum, 'A man is never less alone than when he
is alone,' to Swift--a slight error of some nineteen centuries. W. C.
Hazlitt in his _Book-Collector_ makes an even more delightful howler,
tracing the well-known verse in Ecclesiastes (xii. 12): 'Of making many
books there is no end . . .' etc., 'back at least to the reign of
Elizabeth' (_sic_), assigning it to a preacher at Paul's Cross in 1594.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III

BOOKS WHICH FORM THE LIBRARY.

'He that walketh with wise men shall be wis