[11] While Tyrwhit was busied on the "Canterbury Tales" his attention was excited by the old cataloguer of the Cottonian manuscripts to a _Chaucer exemplar emendate scriptum_. On a spare leaf the name of Richard Chawfer had been scrawled, which might have been that of some former possessor. There are two fatalities which hang over the pen of a slumbering cataloguer--ignorance and indolence. Our present one caught an immortal name and never travelled onwards; and, struck by the fairness of the writing, inferred that it was a copy of Chaucer critically accurate. It turned out to be the compositions of an unknown poet who not willingly relinquished his claim on posterity, for he has subscribed his name, LAURENCE MINOT. [The manuscript is marked Galba, E. IX.; specimens were first published from it by Tyrwhit and Warton, and the entire series ultimately by Ritson.] [12] Ritson's first edition (1795) of Minot having become very difficult to procure, an elegant re-impression, and apparently a correct one, was published in 1825. [13] "Philobiblion, sive de Amore Librorum et Institutione Bibliothecæ," ascribed to Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham; but Fabricius says it was written by Robert Holcot, a learned friar, at his desire.--Fab. "Bib. Med. Ævi," vol. i. It is the bishop, however, who was the collector, and always speaks in his own person. It has been recently translated by Mr. Inglis. [14] Barrington on the Statutes. In Blackstone's "Commentaries," book iii. chap. 21, we find much curious information, and some philosophical reflections. The use of the technical law-Latin is adroitly defended. Under Cromwell the records were turned into English; at the Restoration the practisers declared they could not express themselves so significantly in English, and they returned to their Latin. In 1730, a statute ordered that the proceedings at law should be done into English, that the common people might understand the process, &c. But after many years' experience the people are as ignorant in matters of law as before, and suffer the inconveniences of increasing _the expense of all legal proceedings_ by being bound by the stamp-duties to write only a stated number of words in a sheet, _and the English language, through the multitude of its particles, is so much more verbose than the Latin, that the number of sheets is much augmented_. Two years subsequently it was necessary to make a new act to allow all technical terms to continue Latin, which were too ridiculous to be translated, such as _nisi prius, fieri facias, habeas corpus_. This last act, in 1732, has defeated every beneficial purpose intended by the preceding statute of 1730.