De Bure." It would have been a most instructive, as well as interesting work. Meanwhile I am reluctant totally to withhold the continued application of that helping hand, which for nine years I have given to these subjects. We know how soon small particles of information, where there is no immediate motive or storehouse to preserve them, are lost; and we know also by what sure, though imperceptible, progress these sinall particles accumulate into large and useful volumes. Thus an hour in a day, given to this occupation, which might otherwise be idle, leaves at the end of the year a substantia. and profitable mark of its passage. I will not anticipate objections, nor defend myself before I am censured. Let those who delight to find fault, have their own way; let them blame the ardour of my bibliographical love, and the imprudence of thus involving myself in new and unprofitable labours, when it inay be said, that I have already more on my hands than I can grasp: Let it pass! I amuse myself at least; and when I am gone, shall have left some trace of my existence behind me. If I can command the time, (to which amidst all my other avocations I look,) I will * In the Censura Literária, ten vols. 8vo. and British Bib liographer, four vols. 8vo. endeavour to mix in the matter of my future pages something which will either entertain or instruct the general reader, as well as inform him whose pursuit is merely bibliography. Mere rarity shall seldom, procure a place for an article, without the aid of something intrinsically curious in the subject, nor will I preclude myself from any excursions into literature, which the spur of the occasion may prompt. To speak indeed with confidence of the fu-ture is neither wise, nor delicate; but if I shall be so fortunate as to accomplish my wishes and my hopes, I trust that long experience in these pursuits, and the array of materials which I see ready to my hands, will enable me, by an happy selection of subjects, extracts, and remarks, to rescue the Bibliographer from the charge of dulness. My principal aim shall be to revive those forgotten works which the most enlightened minds will admit to be among the due apparatus of a curious library; and I will endeavour to collect opinions on the characters of those works from the best authorities. One thing which would be thought too obvious to require repetition, did not experience prove that it cannot be too often repeated, I must here observe:--that to fill up the extended purposes of literature, there is opportunity and every even demand for the toils of minds of every various talent, and of cultivation combined in various way. That the same mind should unite every opposite excellence is the expectation of absolute folly! The expansive intellect which has wings to mount with the flights of fancy, and the heart which is tremblingly alive to moral pathos, will not suffer the being whom they inhabit to be too long detained by the technical minutiæ of Bibliography. Let not therefore the mere collector of curiosities be too fastidious in his judgment of the present publication. It is not for him alone that it is designed, but for the general purposes of extended information and solid literature. He, who is so ill-informed or so rash as to represent a subject already exhausted, which another half century would not exhaust, deserves no reply. Feb. 4, 1814. S. E. B. RESTITUTA. De Antiquitate 1 Britannica Ecclesia et Privilegiis Ecclesia Cantuariensis, cum Archiepiscopis ejusdem 70. Anno Domini 1572. Absentem qui rodit amicum, Qui non defendit, alio culpante, solutos Fingere qui non visa potest, commissa tacere Qui nequit, hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane caveto: Folio.* This is on a richly illuminated title on vellum, with the initials of the artist, J. B. F. 2 The life off the 70 Archbishopp◊ off Canterbury, presentlye set-tinge Englished, and to be added ❖ to the 69 lately sett forth in Latin. It was afterwards printed abroad, at the beginning of the 17th Century, and a new, and splendid edition by the Rev. Samuel Drake, S.T.P. Rector of Treeston, in Yorkshire, London, printed by Bowyer, 1729, Fol. This number off seuen ty is so compleat a number as it is great pitie ther shold be one more: but that as Augustin was the first, so Mathew might be the last. Imprinted Small Dctavo. Sig. F. iii. Both these volumes are of uncommon rarity, and also of singular interest. The Archbishop himself mentions (as hereafter will be seen) having circulated only FOUR COPIES of his own work. Mr. Dibdin has justly remarked that no name deserves to stand more conspicuous amongst the lovers of books, than that of ARCHBISHOP PARKER. He kept printers, engravers, and illuminators in his own Palace at Lambeth, and by these means printed only a few copies (perhaps not more than four or five) for private distribution, of his very learned and valuable work De Antiquitate Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ. ̧ When a feeble spirit, when ill success, or overwhelming oppression, drives men into retirement, they may soothe the solitude which they cannot avoid with the cheering occupation of literature. But he, who, while he has luxury, splendor, distinction amid the enlivening concourse of society, at his command, still prefers the pure recesses of solitary study, and who busies his mind with the past and the future while the present offers seduction for all his senses, proves himself to be an intellectual being of the highest class, on whose grave flowers never fading ought to be scattered, and |