16 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
the first volume, either now or when you can better spare it; with 
liberty, if you please, to extract such entries of ballads as Her¬ 
bert has not already printed. 52) 
I am. Dear Sir, 
Very respectfully & sincerely yours 
J. Ritson. 
Gray VInn, 
15th. Dec. 98. 
George Chalmers esquire, 
Green-street. 
Ms. Montagu d. 15, fol. 220. 
Grays-inn, 20th Decern. 1798. 
Dear Sir, 
I return your first volume, with a thousand thanks, and 
flatter myself it has not been detained beyond your expectation. 
As you appear not to have finished your examination of the 
second, perhaps you could part with it more conveniently at a 
future time, for which I should wait with pleasure. If, how¬ 
ever, the present be equally agreeable, you may rely on the ut¬ 
most dispatch from. 
Dear Sir, 
Very sincerely yours, 
J. Ritson, 
P. S. ^‘The Clarkes book”, I perceive, wch contained the 
entrys from 22d July 1571 to 1576, is still missing; nor now 
likely, I conclude, ever to be found. Another book, with a 
white cover, occasionally refer’d to, is, doubtless, in the same 
predicament. 
George Chalmers esquire. Green-street. 
Add. Mss. 22901. fol. 13. 
Dear Sir, 
I return to you the concludeing volumes of Mr. Herberts 
transcript, & shall ever retain the most grateful sense of so 
considerable a favour. 
Upon Mr. Steevens’s application to I know not what members 
of the stationers company, they agreed to let me have the use 
of these books in their own hall, but had determined, it seems. 
“ In his edition of Ames. 
