WILLIAM CAMDEN.

Published as the Act directs 1813.

WILLIAM CAMDEN.
WILLIAM

CAMDEN, the nourice of Antiquity,
And lanthorn unto late succeeding age,
To see the light of simple verity,

Buried in ruines, through the great outrage,
Of her own people led with warlike rage:
CAMDEN, though time all monuments obscure,
Yet thy just labours ever shall endure.

SPENSER.

THE father of English antiquaries was born in the Old Bailey, in 1551. He received the first tincture of letters in Christ's Hospital, erected the year after his birth, by the incomparable young monarch, Edward the sixth. In 1563, he was removed to Islington, being infected with the plague. On his recovery he was sent to St. Paul's school where he made such a progress in learning, that in 1566, he entered a servitor at Magdalen College, but missing a demy's place there, he removed to Broadgate Hall, now Pembroke College, where he remained two years and a half, under Dr. Thomas Thornton, who being canon of Christ Church, took Camden to that house and provided for him during his stay in the University. In 1570, we find Camden suplicating the congregation

I

gation of Regents, for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, which was refused him; but his request was granted three years afterwards.

In 1575, he became second master of Westminster school, and it was while he filled this laborious situation, that he meditated the great work which has immortalized his name. All the spare

time which he could snatch from the duties of his arduous employment, he devoted to the examination of records, and other remains of antiquity. In 1582, he took a journey through Suffolk into Yorkshire and Lancashire, that he might examine on the spot, and with his own eyes, some of those objects which he intended to illustrate in his book, for the improvement of which he carried on, for many years, a constant correspondence with the most learned and judicious persons at home and abroad; he was fully sensible of all the difficulties of the task he had undertaken, and foresaw to how great envy he should be exposed, by adventuring upon such a picce as must naturally draw the attention of the learned throughout Europe, and therefore he omitted nothing that could render it worthy of that attention, and of the expectation of his friends.

This performance appeared in 1586, in one volume duodecimo, bearing this title, Britanniæ, sice florentissimorum Regnorum Angliæ, Scotia, Hiberniæ, & Insularum adjacentium er intima antiquitate Chorographica descriptio. The year following, a new edition of this work, in the same