The Dr Farmer Chetham MS Author:Alexander Balloch Grosart Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. EVERY Searcher into the treasures of our early Literature is familiar with the Manuscript Commonplace-Books of the sixteenth to the seventeenth ... more »century (say 1580-1680); but I am not aware that a single example has hitherto been published, or even printed privately. Quotations and Selections from them abound, but no Complete Specimen seems to have been put to press. It must be conceded that in many cases their contents are sufficiently " commonplace" (in its deteriorated sense) to justify the usual name given to them. But there are happily brilliant exceptions; and I shall be disappointed if any differ from me in regarding the present Chetham MS. as one of these. It is somewhat singular too, that although in the original Prospectus of the Chetham Society it was stated, as an intended feature of its printing and reprinting, that MSS. in the Chetham Library should be given, ours is the first redemption of the promise — not we hope the last, for there are others of rare value' and interest in the Library. I have designated our volume as The Dr. FarmerChatham MS., inasmuch as it is known to have been purchased—along with others—at his celebrated sale (in the catalogue of which it occurs); and I have been careful to prefix "Dr." lest as " The Farmer MS." simply, some innocent agricultural readers might be turning to it in repetition of the blunder of a Society that may be left nameless, in ordering one hundred copies of the Edge- worth treatise on Irish " Bulls." Who placed this MS. in the Chetham Library, and when it was acquired, have not been transmitted. This holds of many Public Libraries as well as the Chetham in the matter of (often) their rarest and richest possessions. Possession is their one title of ownership. As is usual, this MS. consists of different...« less