est."*

Barrington, says, "I submit to you whether it might not be offered to his (Manning's) revisal from the press. I dare say he would think it no trouble, and it might easil be transmitted to him in covers, and returned by the same method. I do not by this decline the office of corrector myself, but as Mr. Manning is so very conversant in Saxon matters, I think his corrections will ensure more exactness to a publication in which you take so much inter"Subsequently we find Barrington acknowledging to Gough the obligation he had conferred for having obtained Manning's corrections, who had "prepared the MS. more thoroughly for the press." In the Preface we learn, that "he could not, unfortunately, procure a copy of Lye's Dictionary till he had finished some part of his translation." In his letters to Gough we find his anxiety to procure the Dictionary, or the Grammar, or any portion of the work that was printed, and stating, that it need only be known to himself, Gough, and Manning, lest the other subscribers should complain; and this, with his double subscription, to obtain the earliest copy, and his particular wish expressed to Gough, that Manning should correct the proof sheets, satisfactorily shows to us, that, in editing the Anglo-Saxon Orosius, he had undertaken a task for which his ignorance of the language totally unfitted him.†

The voyages of Ohthere and Wulstan, inserted in, and forming a portion of, Barrington's publication, had been published by Bussæus, at Copenhagen, in the year 1733. They were this year reprinted in the second volume of Langebeke's "Scriptores Rerum Danicarum Medii Ævi, Copenhagen, 1770," (which contains also the genealogies of the Anglo-Saxon kings,) and a few years afterwards at Paris, in a French translation of J. Reinhold Foster's History of Northern Discoveries.

In the year 1775, Ibbetson published a "Dissertation on the Folclande and Boclande of the Saxons;" to which, in a

Gough to Barrington, Oct. 30, 1771. Nichols's Illustrations, v. 592. † See the Correspondence in Nichols's Illustrations, vol. v. The impression was probably 250. Barrington says, "Bowyer talks of 250, but I think if they much exceed 100 the greatest part will rot in his warehouse."

second edition in 1782, were added, under the title of "Three Dissertations," &c., a second, "On the Judicial Customs of the Saxon and Norman Ages," and a third, "On the National Assemblies under the Saxon and Norman Government." In 1776, M. Houard published at Rouen a Treatise on the Anglo-Norman Laws from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the first volume of which contains a dissertation, in which an abstract of the laws made by the kings under the Heptarchy is given, and compared with the capitulary of the laws of the first race of French monarchs.

The original germ of the "Diversions of Purley" issued from the press in 1778, in the shape of " A Letter to J. Dunning by John Horne Tooke." If we may credit the opinion of Coleridge, "all that is worth anything (and that is but little) in the Diversions of Purley, is to be met with in this pamphlet."* The opinions of others are much more favourable, and his system has been adopted by several distinguished scholars. The first part of the "Diversions of Purley" was published in octavo, 1786. It was subsequently enlarged to two volumes quarto, the first published in 1798, and the second in 1805. The recent editions of 1829 and 1839 will be noticed in their proper place.

Warton's History of English Poetry, published in successive volumes between 1774 and 1806, was another valuable accession to our native literature, and one which met with great encouragement. The first volume was reprinted with additions. The work was printed at Oxford, as we learn from a letter of Prince the bookseller to Nichols : "As Warton's History of English Poetry says, 'London, printed,' &c., you might think it was done there. The impression is 1500, of which 1300 go off directly of each volume." In Henry's History of Great Britain, the first edition of which appeared in 1774, versions of the Lord's Prayer in the Saxon, and other kindred languages derived from the ancient Gothic or Teutonic, were inserted, and an extract from the Saxon Chronicle with an English translation. The valuable but expensive publi

cations of Strutt are worthy the notice of the student of the history, customs, manners, and language of the Anglo-Saxons. In the "Horda Angel-cynna" are several engravings from Saxon MSS. In the second volume of his "Chronicle of England, 2 vols. folio, 1775, embracing the period from the accession of Egbert to the Norman Conquest," will be found the Lord's Prayer; part of the first chapter of St. John's Gospel; part of the first chapter of Genesis; the Belief; and the Exordium of the poem of Cadmon; all of which are given in Saxon with interlinear translations, followed by the Lord's Prayer paraphrased in Anglo-Danish, with an English version. The "Will of King Alfred," from a MS. in the possession of Mr. Astle, was printed in the year 1788. Manning undertook the part of editor, illustrating it with notes and an introduction, and accompanying it with English and Latin translations. The Rev. Herbert Croft superintended the publication of the work. It was printed at the Clarendon press, Oxford. Of this work Henshall, who intended to print an edition of Alfred's Will himself, remarks:-" It is wonderful, I will not say disgraceful, to the world of scholars, that in Alfred's Will by Lye, Manning, and Croft, the introduction, which empowered Alfred to dispose of his demesnes, &c., is confounded with the Will itself, and fills one page. When I manifested this to Mr. Astle from his original, he exclaimed, • What blockheads!"* Manning had been solicited by Gough to give an English translation of Cadmon, who promised to be at the expense of printing it, together with the original text; but either from Manning's inability for the task, or his modesty, it was never proceeded with.†

Of Samuel Henshall little that is commendatory can be said. In 1798, he published "The Saxon and English Languages reciprocally illustrative of each other; the Impracticability of acquiring an accurate Knowledge of Saxon Literature, through the Medium of Latin Phraseology, exemplified in

* Henshall's Etymological Organic Reasoner, 1807, p. 64.

† A copy of Junius's Cadmon, interlined with a Latin translation by Lye, and some notes by him and Manning, is in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries. Gent. Mag. 1835, p. 197.

the errors of Hickes, Wilkins, Gibson, and other Scholars, and a new mode suggested of radically studying the Saxon and English Languages, by Samuel Henshall, M.A., Fellow of Brazen-nose College, Oxford, and Author of Specimens and parts of the History of South Britain. London, printed for the Author, and sold by Nicol, Pall-Mall. M.DCC.XCVIII.” The title of this work I have inserted at length, not from any intrinsic value that it possesses, but as affording some clue to that persecution which followed the author ever afterwards, and in which several individuals who then stood high in the literary world partook, and by their unceasing hostility attempted to hunt him down. In this they eventually succeeded, and it is doubtless to this cause that we must attribute that aberration of mind which his subsequent works display.

A work relating to Ælfric, left in manuscript by Edward Rowe-Mores, and which he intended for publication, was in the year 1789 edited, with the addition of a preface, and published by Grimus J. Thorkelin, under the following title: “De Ælfrico Archiepiscopo Dorobernensi Commentarius,” from the autograph in the library of Thomas Astle. At the end is a large collection of Saxon charters, with Latin translations. The same year we find a correspondent in the Gentleman's Magazine, under the signature of Bristoliensis, inquiring "What writings in our ancient Anglo-Saxon tongue are still in being in print and MS.? What dictionaries, grammars, glossaries, and the like, have at any time been put forth, for the better understanding of the same?"* In 1798, Dr. Willich, to his translation of Kant's Elements of Critical Philosophy, added “Three Philological Essays," from the German of Adelung. In the first of these, containing a concise history of the English language, we have the often quoted fragment of Cadmon from the texts of Hickes and Wanley, accompanied by English and German prose translations. In the same sketch are given the voyages of Ohthere and Wulstan; and a short poem on the Topography of Durham in the Anglo-Saxon texts, followed by versions in English and German. The

* Gent. Mag. March 1789, p. 254.

remaining part of the Essay, chiefly from Warton's History of English Poetry, it is not requisite farther to notice here.

In the year 1795, a Saxon professor was elected in the University of Oxford. From some unexplained cause or other the design of Rawlinson was not carried into effect before this period. Daniel Price, in a letter to Gough, thus alludes to the subject: "Dr. Richard Rawlinson's Saxon professorship takes place at Michaelmas next. St. John's is to furnish the first professor, as that college was Rawlinson's. After this the colleges are to give professors according to antiquity, as University, Baliol, Merton, &c."* Four years afterwards, Richard Gough bequeathed a most valuable collection of books on Saxon and Northern literature to Oxford University, expressly for the use of the Saxon professor. Some of these works are illustrated with the notes of various Saxon scholars, and others with his own. Amongst them will be found an interleaved copy of Gibson's Saxon Chronicle, with notes and an English translation of Gough's. The above valuable collection, together with his extensive library of British topography, he at first offered to the trustees of the British Museum on certain conditions, which not being accepted by them, they were deposited in the Bodleian Library. A catalogue of them was published in 1814 by the Rev. Bulkeley Bandinel.

From certain particulars of Rawlinson's will, under date of 1750, printed in the second appendix to "Ingram's Inaugural Lecture on the Utility of Anglo-Saxon Literature,” it appears that the trustees for carrying into effect Rawlinson's bequest were the vice-chancellor and two proctors of the University of Oxford, and the president of St. John's college, for the time being; to whom was subsequently added the regius professor of divinity, &c. By a codicil to the will, added in June 1752, the election was vested in the convocation; the chair to be vacated every ten years, the several colleges, in succession, enjoying the right of election; St. John's to have the first and every fifth turn. The professor, to be duly quali

* Price to Gough, Oxford, March 18, 1795.