Why this attempt to secure privacy in establishments where 
     the inmates as a rule spent most of their time among their 
     fellows? For the same reason that the reading-room of the 
     British Museum is not divided into sound-proof 
     compartments. The habit of silent reading has made such 
     an arrangement unnecessary; but fill the reading-room with 
     medieval readers and the buzz of whispering and muttering 
     would be intolerable.
          These facts deserve greater attention from the editors of 
     medieval texts. When the eye of a modern copyist leaves the 
     manuscript before him in order to write, he carries in his 
     mind a visual reminiscence of what he has seen. What the 
     medieval scribe carried was an auditory memory, and 
     probably in many cases, a memory of one word at a
     time. (22)