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Jif, I agree that the 8 you refer to is counter-intuitive, unless you supply the implied "that which have been".

26d? Any tips? How does 80 come into it?

R=80: one of those obscure medieval Roman numerals

1st word is definition
4 letter number, 2 letter synonym for namely,1 letter 80= medieval roman number

Wonderful puzzle, thank you Charybdis.

I must confess to a certain degree of envy. This puzzle has clearly given a great deal of satisfaction to those who have solved it but, so far, it has refused to yield its secrets to me. I got the grid filled and the quotation and thematic example sorted out early doors but, since then, I’ve advanced very little. I’ve spotted three across solutions which could easily attach to the fourth word of the quotation but I can’t figure out what to do with them. The penny has resolutely refused to drop and the light-bulb remains utterly Stygian. Ho-hum! I’ll just have to keep racking my brains intermittently and hope for a sudden Aufklärung or, failing that, wait for the solution to be published in three weeks’ time.

Will37. there are five entries that could have the fourth word of the quote attached to them. Three must be replaced by others to be found in Chambers, though one of those appears as 'X of Y', not 'Y X', where X represents the fourth word. The replacements are found from the sequence of letters defined by the two-word phrase from extra letters in down clues. Once you have made the substitutions you will have a small problem that is resolved by implementing the fourth sentence of the preamble.

Very many thank for that, Murky. With your encouragement I shall press on and see whether I can make progress. In the words of Lawrence Oates, "I ... may be some time."

Will37, Murky's response is a little misleading.

The two-word phrase from extra letters in down clues is another thematic example - look it up in Wiki if it's still a mystery. It should be applied to the words extracted from the across clues to give the replacements.

Jack - and doesn't it? I can replace two answers with two examples but one of them makes 36 a non-word. If 27 is replaced with the third example, 16 becomes a non-word. Help!