Sir: In quoting the famous remark 'None of us are
infallible' etc. I was on this occasion obeying the famous counsel of President Routh of Magdalen College, Oxford, and verifying my quotations, which I do not always do. I did believe that this famous piece of academic wis- dom was an invention of Montague Butler since I heard it. from the Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow, F. 0. Bower, who quoted it as coming 'from the Master of my old college.' I thought then (and for a long time) that Bower meant the master while he was an undergraduate, but having recently had occasion to look up something in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, I found that it is there attributed to Butler's predecessor, William Hepworth Thompson. The Oxford Dictionary is not as accurate as it should be; but the same attribu- tion is given in the admirable dictionary of quotations edited by my old friend David Browning and published by J. M. Dent. For once, I seem to have been right.
- Denis Brogan 1 Hedgerley Close, Cambridge
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