The rest of the letter merely puts forward the plea of convenience over again, and, like the rest, the writer does not see that neither I nor anybody else have ever questioned the convenience of the practice. I find that some readers of Mr. Ellis’ letter suppose the sentences in inverted commas to be all mine, but that is not the case; several of them are expressions which he supposes (wrongly enough) I should or might use. I have, for instance, nowhere objected to the nasty habit of biting your nails, though Mr. Ellis puts the objection into my mouth. So long as a man merely bites his own nails, I should say nothing, whatever I might think: it would of course be different, if he were to try to bite my nails. Every Member of Convocation has a right to criticise the New Statute, and therefore no apology need be made for the following remarks. For the first time in the history of the Bodleian it is proposed plainly and clearly to invest the Curators with the power to lend books. From the foundation of the library down to 1873 they had no such power, no such right; nevertheless from 1862 they did as a matter of fact lend manuscripts and printed books. It was their custom, their ‘_mos_’ to do so. On February 28, 1873, they resolved that they would ‘proceed _by statute to take power_ to order the lending out of books under certain restrictions.’ Now no sane man resolves to ‘take power’ to do what he already has a right to do. This resolution then was a distinct confession that for years past the Curators had been acting unstatutably, and it is probable, perhaps certain, that the words ‘_sicut mos fuit_’ in the extraordinary statute of 1873 were intended to cover and condone the illegal acts of the previous ten or eleven years, an intention completely frustrated by the unparalleled bad Latin in which that Statute is expressed. Whether a permission ‘to borrow books for learned men’ conveys to the Curators the power to lend them is very doubtful indeed; if it were not so, it is difficult to see why the Curators applied for the Statute now before us. Were any one to maintain that the Curators have now no power to lend books, and that they never have had it since the Library was founded, he would not find much difficulty in proving his case to the satisfaction of all reasonable beings. The present Statute proposes to give them this power, though not in perfectly unobjectionable terms. For it first allows them to lend manuscripts, and then declares that no rare book shall be lent without the consent of Convocation. Now a manuscript is more than rare; it is unique, no two being exactly alike. There is an ambiguity here which will be found in practice to breed endless difficulties. Then, again, who is to judge of the antiquity, rarity, and so forth of any book, printed or manuscript? Either the Curators must decide these questions for themselves, or they must act on the judgment of the Librarian. Knowing what it now knows, is the University