Some famous last words seem too good to be true. “Can we really be sure that, as some collections report, Tasso, Charlemagne, Lady Jane Grey, Christopher Columbus and unspecified others all signed off with the sentiment: ‘Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit’? Or that Beethoven’s very last words, not just words at the very end of his life but his ultimate ones, were ‘I shall hear in heaven’?”