162 APPKNDIX. 



and that, it' 1 did not do it, perhaps ability, oc- 

 casion and inclination to do it would never be 

 joined in one person ; that a fire might destroy 

 those books, or a civil war scatter them, or 

 (which is all one) they might hereafter be con- 

 demned to remain in their dust; I at last under- 

 took the work, and finished it in that collec- 

 tion now in your hands, in which I dare confi- 

 dently pronounce to be contained all passages 

 of the unprinted MSS. which may be of use, 

 either in controversy, philology or history, and 

 all those printed treatises entire which are 

 worth the preserving.* After I had done it, 

 my old lord was very desirous to have a volume 

 published in such a method as Lambecius has 

 described the library at Vienna, subjoining to 

 every book those treatises, passages, or ex- 

 cerpts taken out of them, which may tend to 

 public benefit. This my lord was eagerly bent 

 upon, and would have caused me to do, had 

 himself continued at Lambeth, and I in his ser- 

 vice. But, since that, my circumstances are so 

 much altered, that all designs of that nature are 

 frustrated, and all my zeal for public service 

 must be employed in teaching a few plough-job- 



* He means the portion of the MSS. then in the library, 

 called Codices Lambethani and the Bullae Papales. The col- 

 lection has been greatly enlarged since by Archbishop Gibson, 

 the present Archbishop, and other benefactors. 



