Note 1 — LETTER XXXV.
Reading edition
I have long since expressed these facts in my ‘Ethics of the Dust,’ but too metaphorically. “The way in which common people read their Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said) over and over, where the grapes lay on the ground: what fruit stuck to their spines, they carried off and ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture, and that nothing else is.” ↑