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Not much of this work was done at Leipzig. In the spring of 1882 I removed to Zurich, where I took quarters in a cottage at Eiesbach about a mile out of the town. There I had the advantage of access to two libraries well-equipped for my special purposes. Both were established in disused churches; the town library in the Wasserkirche, close by what was then the uppermost bridge over the Limmat, and the university library in the quire of the Dominican church high up on the Hirschengraben. From these two libraries I enjoyed the privilege of borrowing as many as ten volumes at a time, and I made use of the privilege to the full. The limitations of these libraries were also to my benefit. For example, there was no set of Migne's Patrologia in them, and I had to seek my texts in the Benedictine editions of the fathers, in the Lyons Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum, and in the collections of D'Achery, Mabillon, Baluze, Fez, and others; a process which taught me a great deal on the way.

Reginald Lane Poole, 'Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning', Preface, VII.