Quotations

1. • Douay-Rheims Bible. 1 Chronicals Ch.27 v.2

     Over the first company the first month Jesboam, the son of Zabdiel was chief, and under him were four and twenty thousand.

   • 1744, Sing a Song of Sixpence, in Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (earliest known written version)

     Sing a Song of Sixpence, / A bag full of Rye, / Four and twenty Naughty Boys,/ Baked in a Pye.

   • 1851, John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, p 496

     ..., a powder horn, a pound of powder, twelve flints, four-and-twenty balls of lead, a cartridge box, ...

   • 1883, Charles Dickens, The life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, p 44

     When he blew this bugle, four-and-twenty other gentlemen of inferior rank, ..., turned out directly.

   • 1922, A. E. Housman, Last Poems, XII, The Deserter, lines 13, 15-16

     Oh love is rare and trouble plenty

     And daylight dear at four-and-twenty:

     Lie down again and sleep.

   • Monday June 20, 2005, The Guardian newspaper

     Jamba has removed from Marlowe's Doctor Faustus all but the barest of essentials - even half its title, leaving us with an 80-minute hurtle through Faustus's four and twenty borrowed years on earth.