Note 24 — Chapter IX
Reading edition · Edition 2
In a letter to a friend, along with an early copy of this book, Browning stated that "the title is taken from the work of Melander (Schwartzmann), reviewed, by a curious coincidence, in the Blackwood of this month. I referred to it in a note to 'Paracelsus.' The two Hebrew quotations (put in to give a grave look to what is mere fun and invention) being translated amount to (1) 'A Collection of Many Lies': and (2), an old saying, 'From Moses to Moses arose none like Moses'......"