Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, to the End of the Reign of Henry VII, Vol. 1: From the Roman Period to the Norman Invasion, Part I
After many years of patient and conscientious la bour, protracted at one time by the loss of a large portion of the manuscript, and repeatedly interrupted by failing health and other causes, I am at length enabled to present the first portion of my work to the public. Of its imperfections no one is more sensible than myself. More than once during its progress I have been tempted to abandon it, in despair of making it as complete and accurate as the subject seemed to require and, whenever it was resumed, it was resumed solely from the conviction that perseverance was a duty. It has demanded careful study and diligent research. The mere collection of materials employed many years the reduction of them into order and uniformity occupied many more afterwards, on more minute and particular examination, omissions and defects were discovered which could only be supplied by lengthened search among original authorities. Many of these defects it has been found impossible to remedy; some of them arose almost of necessity from the comprehensive nature of the work. The materials, moreover, are scattered and dispersed over various countries and in distant libraries. To many of these it was not easy to obtain access; to a great majority of them no satisfactory catalogues exist and even where catalogues or descriptions of their con tents had been drawn up by previous inquirers, such descriptions had to be verified by fresh investigations. In nearly every instance it was necessary to modify, correct, or extend their labours, and reduce the whole to a uniform and systematic arrangement.
Besides to make the work as complete as possible, I had decided to give - how wisely my readers must de termine not only some account of the writers to whom we are indebted for the materials of our early English his tory, but, so far as I could, a critical summary of the value of these materials. That task had never been attempted before, and was attended with considerable difficulties; for, to say nothing of the great number of the works being found only in manuscript, thus rendering the task of mastering their contents unusually irksome, I had to prosecute many researches, without a guide, in books, manuscripts, and libraries widely dispersed, and in some cases accessible only under vexatious restrictions, which added much to my labour. Besides, the line I had adopted was comparatively new; I could obtain but little assis tance from the labours of my predecessors in this field of historical criticism, nor did I think it fair to adopt their conclusions without going over the same ground in every instance myself.
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