When gaining a victory, visions of further successes buoyed me up and refanned my sinking courage ; a well-contested but lost game caused me to apply myself to renewed study, and so engaged I often passed the midnight hours in solitude over the chess-board.

Ever since, I’ve been barraged by counter-claims: Internet pundit Jeff Jarvis says it’s his idea; the leggy lovely commentatrix Ann Coulter, of Politically Incorrect, CNN et al. mentioned it in a November column;

I take goyng thither [to Italy], and liuing there, for a yonge ientleman, that doth not goe vnder the kepe and garde of such a man, as both, by wisedome can, and authoritie dare rewle him, to be meruelous dangerous […] not bicause I do contemne, either the knowledge of strange and diuerse tonges, and namelie the Italian tonge […] or else bicause I do despise, the learning that is gotten […]

[T]he Phariſee faſted twice every weeke, and that never cenſured in him as a peice of Phariſaiſme, or hypocriſie, or fault of any kind; but as commendable, if he had not boaſted of it.