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ever-honoured kind Friends and Fellow-Readers of

that Society."

The first volume of the work commences with Book the Second. The recently-acquired volume is called Book the First, and consists of the Introduction described by Prynne in the first volume

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as not yet completed, swelling to an entire tome," and designed, as stated by the author in the Epistle to the Readers prefixed to the second volume, to embrace the period extending "from Adam till Christ's ascension into heaven; and from thence, in relation to the Roman, Greek, and German emperors, and other Christian kings, in foreign parts, till our modern age." The first four chapters, comprising eighty pages, are occupied with arguments maintaining that the supreme ecclesiastical power and jurisdiction over all persons and causes resides, by divine ordinance, in the civil magistrate, the ministerial or priestly office only belonging to the clergy. The fifth chapter contains a history of the gradual encroachments of the prelacy, from the origin of the papal power till about the middle of the twelfth century, where the volume terminates unfinished, at page 400, with the words: coepiscopi tui et coma-. It is without title-page, but has the same head-line over the pages as the other volumes, viz., "An Exact History of Popes intollerable Usurpations upon the Liberties

of the Kings and Subjects of England and Ireland."

It is supposed that not more than twenty-five sets of the three volumes exist, most of the copies of the first volume, and a great number of the second, together with the INTRODUCTION, having perished at the house of the printer in the Great Fire of London; and it is worthy of remark that this loss occurred to the author whilst he himself was occupied in endeavouring to rescue the public records of the kingdom from destruction. It is probable that the copy of the introductory volume now in the possession of the Society of Lincoln's Inn had been reserved in the author's hands for his own use during the progress of the work through the press; and that, if any other copies were rescued from the flames, not having been issued to the public, they have since perished, from the circumstance of their being unfinished and without titlepage, and having consequently been disregarded by persons into whose hands they may have fallen.

TOPOGRAPHY.

TOPOGRAPHY is another branch of English History, the importance of which to the legal profession is sufficiently obvious, as affording illustrations of the history and antiquities of the country, its man

ners and customs, and exhibiting the pedigrees of families, with the descent of property, &c.; and in this department the Library is especially rich, possessing descriptions of every county in England which can boast of its historian, besides numerous histories of particular towns and parishes, from the Perambulation of Kent by William Lambarde in 1570, the first separate county history that was published, to the recent History of Buckinghamshire by Dr. George Lipscomb.

Among the more splendid topographical works of the present century, all in this Library, are the History of Hertfordshire, by Robert Clutterbuck; that of Cheshire, by George Ormerod; that of Dorsetshire, by John Hutchins; Leicestershire, by John Nichols; Surrey, by the Rev. Owen Manning and William Bray; Sussex, by the Rev. James Dallaway and Edmund Cartwright; Richmondshire, by Thomas Dunham Whitaker; Durham, by Richard Surtees of Mainsforth; and the History of Wiltshire, by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart.

FOREIGN HISTORY.

AMONGST the numerous works on FOREIGN HISTORY in the Library, besides the early Greek and Roman historians, are the great collections of Grævius and Gronovius; that of Muratori; the

"Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France," begun by Dom Martin Bouquet; and the "Monumenta Germaniæ Historica," edited by G. H. Pertz.

De Thou's admirable History of his own Time, the Monumens de la Monarchie Françoise of Montfaucon, and the various "Collections des Mémoires" published in France, find their place here. It may be superfluous to mention that the French histories of Daniel, Hénault, Sismondi, Froissart, and Monstrelet, and the Italian historians, Guicciardini, Giannone, Daru, as well as the more modern works of Gibbon, Niebuhr, Grote, Motley, Prescott, are all also to be found.

In the class of general BIOGRAPHY are the Biographical and Historical Dictionaries of Hoffman, Moréri, Bayle, Collier, Aikin, Chalmers, Rose; and the Biographie Universelle.

GREEK AND LATIN CLASSICS.

THE works of all the Greek and Roman authors, to whom as poets, philosophers, orators, or historians, the name of the CLASSICS has been given

* I heard a man of great learning declare that, whenever he could not recollect his knowledge, he opened Hoffman's Lexicon, where he was sure to find what he had lost. -D'ISRAELI.

by the common consent of the world of letters, are to be found, with few exceptions, in the Library, though the editions are not those remarkable for their rarity or typographical splendour, such as the Jensons and Vindelin de Spiras, but those which are furnished with useful critical commentaries, as Ernesti's Homer, Schweighaeuser's Herodotus and Polybius, Wesseling's Diodorus Siculus, &c.

DICTIONARIES.

How infinitely the world is indebted to the erudition and patient industry of the authors of dictionaries and grammars must be evident upon a few moments' reflection. By the aid of these silent guides the boundless fields of literature and science are opened to the view of the student; and with the best works of this class in the various languages of Europe the Library of Lincoln's Inn is well furnished. It may suffice here to mention for the Greek language, the names of Stephens, Suidas,* Liddell, and Scott; for the Latin, the Glossary of Spelman, that of Du Cange, the invaluable work of

* C'est un trésor d'érudition, sans le secours duquel l'histoire littéraire des Grecs et des Romains auroit offert d'immenses lacunes qu'il n'eut jamais été possible de remplir.-BIOGRAPHIE UNIVERSELLE.

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