










337 
Che Hiterary Treasures of Pongleat. 
By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A.* 
WAS invited some time ago by your Secretary to contribute 
a paper for your meeting at Frome, and with the invitation 
he suggested a subject on which I was to write. It was a very good 
one, but in one respect too good, inasmuch as it made it necessary 
for me to compress into a very small compass and to put into such 
form as should not weary an audience, halting for half-an-hour on an 
out-door excursion, material which, properly developed, would really 
fill a volume and that not a small one.! The subject was ‘“ The 
Literary Treasures of Longleat.” 
These treasures are of two kinds—printed, or in MS. The printed 
treasures fill two very large rooms: that which is called the Lower 
or modern library on the ground floor; and the upper or Old library 
at the top of the house. The Lower library contains a very fine 
collection of books, formed chiefiy by the grandfather of the present 
owner of Longleat. There are Greek and Latin classical authors of 
superb editions; also many of our rarest county histories, all the 
four earliest editions of Shakespeare,” and a vast number of “rarities” 
* Read in the Hall, at Longleat, before the Somersetshire Archzological Society, on Thursday, 
12th August, 1875. 2 
1A few trifling additions have been made to the paper since it was read, but 
even in its present form, the reader will kindly please to understand that it 
presents a very meagre account of the contents of Longleat Library and Muni- 
ment Room. 
-2On the fly-leaf, at the end of the first edition of Shakespeare, in the library 
_ at Longleat, are the following verses, in an old hand :— 
‘¢ An Epitaph upon Shakespeare. 
Renouned Chaucer, Lie a thought more nigh 
To rare Beaumond; and Learned Beaumond Lie 
A little neerer Spencer, to make roome 
For Shakespeare in your threefold fourefold tombe. 
To lie all foure in one bed make a shift, 
For, untill doomsday hardly will a fift 
Betwixt this day and that [by Fate] bee slaine, 
for whom your Curtaines need be drawn againe ; 
22 2 
