First, the Scaligers, both father and son, were the two most impudent men that ever walked the planet. I should be loath to say so ill-natured a thing as that their impudence was equal to their learning, because that forces every man to say, 'Ah, then, what impudent fellows they must have been!' It is kinder and juster to say that their learning was at least equal to their impudence, for _that_ will force every man to exclaim, 'Ah, if so, what prodigies of learning they must have been!' Yes, they were--absolute monsters of learning, learned monsters. But as much learning often makes men mad, still more frequently it makes them furious for assault and battery; to use the American phrase, they grow 'wolfy about the shoulders,' from a periodical itchiness for fighting. Other men being shy of attacking the Scaligers, it was no fault of theirs, you know, but a necessity, to attack other men--unless you expected them to have no fighting at all. It was always a reason with _them_ for trying a fall with a writer, if they doubted much whether they had any excuse for hanging a quarrel on.
Secondly, all _ana_ whatever are bad authorities. Supposing the thing really said, we are to remember the huge privilege of conversation, how immeasurable is that! You yourself, reader, I presume, when talking, will say more in an hour than you will stand to in a month. I'm sure _I_ do. When the reins are put into my hands I stick at nothing--headlong I drive like a lunatic, until the very room in which we are talking, with all that it inherits, seems to spin round with absolute vertigo at the extravagances I utter.
Thirdly, but again, was the thing really said? For, as another censure upon the whole library of _ana_, I can assert--that, if the license of conversation is enormous, to that people who inhale that gas of colloquial fermentation seldom mean much above one part in sixty of what they say, on the other hand the license of reporters is far greater. To forget the circumstances under which a thing was said is to alter the thing, to have lost the context, the particular remark in which your own originated, the mitigations of a harsh sentiment from playfulness of manner; in short, to drop the _setting_ of the thoughts is oftentimes to falsify the tendency and value of those thoughts.