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 palæography.
[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 brébis 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.
