But there must have been something very strong and very great about the personality of the man who could succeed in such an arduous task. For we must not forget that the Minhag or custom in its decay degenerates into a kind of religious fashion, the worst disease to which religion is liable, and the most difficult to cure. It is therefore an irreparable loss both for Jewish literature and for Jewish history, that the greatest part of Maharil’s posthumous writings are no longer extant, so that our knowledge about him is very small. But the little we know of him we owe chiefly to the communicativeness of his servant, the Solomon of St. Goar whom I mentioned above. Solomon not only gave us the “Customs” of his master, but also observed him closely in all his movements, and conscientiously wrote down all that he saw and heard, under the name of _Collectanea_. It seems that the bulk of these _Collectanea_ was also lost. But in the fragments that we still possess we are informed, among other things, how Maharil addressed his wife, how he treated his pupils, how careful he was in the use of his books, and even how clean his linen was. Is this not out‐Boswelling Boswell? The most striking point of agreement between the Boswell of the fifteenth and him of the eighteenth century, is that they both use the same passage from the Talmud to excuse the interest in trifles which their labours of love betrayed. Thus Solomon prefaces his _Collectanea_ with the following words: “It is written, His leaf shall not wither. These words were explained by our Sages to mean that even the idle talk of the disciples of the wise deserves a study. Upon this interpretation I have relied. In my love to R. Jacob the Levite, I collected everything about him. I did not refuse even small things, though many derided me. Everything I wrote down, for such was the desire of my heart.” Thus far Solomon. Now, if we turn to the introduction to Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_, we read the following sentence: “For this almost superstitious reverence, I have found very old and venerable authority quoted by our great modern prelate, Secker, in whose tenth sermon there is the following passage: ‘Rabbi Kimchi, a noted Jewish commentator who lived about five hundred years ago, explains that passage in the first Psalm, “His leaf also shall not wither” from Rabbins yet older than himself, that even the idle talk, so he expressed it, of a good man ought to be regarded.’ ”