[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.
CHAPTER III
BOOKS WHICH FORM THE LIBRARY.
'He that walketh with wise men shall be wise.'—
Proverbs xiii. 20.
