I am not going to advocate this story, for it is most likely false; and the monk's statement may not be correct; but as it is less improbable, it may be worth recording. Peter Lombard died in 1164. Gratian completed the Decretum about 1151, and probably survived some years, but I have not met with the date of his death. Peter Comestor died in 1198. They may therefore have all been contemporaries, though the last must have lived to a good old age, unless he were considerably younger than the others.
With regard to the mundane era by which the writer computed, it will be found to differ materially, not only from that now in common use among ourselves, but also from all that are mentioned by Sir H. Nicolas in his Chronology of History; for it assumes the Nativity to have occurred in the year of the world 5199. This, however, agrees with what appears to have been recognised as the era of the creation by the western churches from about the beginning of the fifth century (see De Vaine's Dictionnaire Raisonné de Diplomatique, voce Comput), though from some cause it seems to have been almost overlooked by modern writers in this country.
I have not attempted to explain the "q̵" before Ts. Wallwell. It may have meant "quoth," or "quæsit;" but I am not satisfied with anything that has occurred to me. It stands thus:
"Laus Deo. q̵, TsWallwell
Mocs ecc̄le cathedralis dunełm."
"Ts." for Thomas is not usual, but those are clearly the letters: I have tried to read the "s" (which may have been meant for a capital) with the surname, but Swallwell is a stranger cognomen than that I have attributed to the monk. Some correspondent conversant with Durham may possibly recognise the name in one of its forms.
W. S. W.
Temple.
CLASSIFICATION OF LITERARY DIFFICULTIES.
Whatever may be the utility of your publication as a source of information to individuals, each on his own point of difficulty, there is a purpose, and one of its greatest ultimate purposes, which it must one day answer, though not immediately—I mean the furnishing of materials for general conclusions on the difficulties of literature. The queries which are sent to you are those which an author must put to himself in his closet; the manner in which others help him shows the manner in which he ought, if he could, to help himself. Occasionally, the querist betrays a want of power to reduce his own difficulty to its proper category; occasionally, also, the respondent fails to grapple with the real point. All this is instructive, and reconciles those who are instructed by it to the presence of many things which seem trivial or out of place to those who do not consider the nature of the whole undertaking. But the instruction I speak of will be much augmented in quantity and elevated in character, if ever the time should come when the mass of materials collected finds an architect to arrange it. The classification of the obstacles which an inquirer meets with, so treated as to give a view of the causes of difficulty as they arise, both from the state of our books, and of our modes of using them, must surely one day suggest itself as a practicable result of the "NOTES AND QUERIES." The more this result is insisted on the more likely is it to be realised; and though it may need twenty volumes of the work to be completed, or even more, before anything can be done, the mere suggestion may induce some of your readers to keep an eye upon your pages with a view to something beyond current matter.