OR,

TITLES,

EXTRACTS, AND CHARACTERS

OF

Old Books

IN ENGLISH LITERATURE,

REVIVED.

BY

SIR EGERTON BRYDGES, BART. K. J. M. P.

LÖNGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,

PATERNOSTER ROW.

1816.

PREFACE TO VOL. IV.

THE HE completion of this fourth volume of RESTITUTA brings the work to a conclusion. The Editor at length ceases his labours, on the voluminous subject which furnishes its contents, without regret. Yet a proud consciousness of having contributed copious and important materials for the illustration of old English literature, more especially its poetry, sets him above the painful feeling of toil thrown away, or days idly spent. It is nothing to him if the superficial or the ignorant, the jester or the man of daily common-place knowledge, pushes aside in scorn pages so apparently uncouth, and values only the flimsy yet artful relation of some modern traveller, or the poignant malignity of some political lie, or some subtle and misleading criticism of the day! Such things are calculated to excite interest as short in its duration as it is intense in its degree.

It is probable that the passion for the literary antiquities of our country may have been on the b

VOL. IV.

wane for the last year. It is easy to suggest a variety of causes for this; but some of them it would be difficult to hint at, without an infringement of delicacy. The promoters and leaders of this pursuit are a very small circle; and, as in greater States, Time serves but to bring into action the seeds of intrigue, jealousy, and division. A collector is not always a lover of literature for its own sake; and though it may gratify him to fan in some degree the first flame, it is not always desirable to see too broad a light thrown on the arcana!

The present Editor has worked for no selfish ends: he has laboured for no collector; he has written to feed the vanity of no individual! His has been the honest ambition, not of engrossing, but of communicating, that of which, when he desired to know it, he himself had found a difficulty in attaining the knowledge! It cost Canel, Steevens, Malone, Reed, and Farmer, a long life to arrive at this kind of knowledge it gave the principal value to all their commentaries on Shakespeare: and then at last how much of it died with them! A catalogue of Mr. Heber's stupendous library, with a few notes from his capacious and unequalled mind, might do all that is wanted. But when will he have leisure for it?