Loveday, to whom the author expresses, at the conclusion of his preface, such high obligations. Had that preface been carried on further, he would no doubt have signified the same regard to his son, Dr. John Loveday (now also deceased), whose attentions appear sufficiently evident amongst the loose papers of the work. My friend the rev. Ralph Churton of Middleton Cheney, is also entitled to (and had to my own knowledge) the gratitude of the author, for various communications; which as he has omitted to express, I desire to do in his name. I am indebted to the society of Magdalen college, Oxford, for the plates of the bishop's monument, the school-house at Waynflete, and the portrait which forms the frontispiece to the work. The latter is engraved from a drawing and mask, taken from Waynflete's statue within the monument at Winchester, to which place an artist was sent by the society for this express purpose. The mask has been principally attended to in forming the likeness, which, although it may differ from A 2 from other portraits of their great founder, conveys, it may be presumed, a correct idea of his features, being copied from what he himself no doubt approved in his lifetime. The full length figure is shown in the vignette plate. The etching of Magdalen college is from a drawing with which I was favoured by Mr. Buckler. Had the author revised the work at his leisure, he would probably have cleared some sentences from a little obscurity under which they appear to labour; but although I have to lament this, in common with what has been said of the preface and notes, I could not consider myself at liberty to make any alteration, except where an evident error of the pen had occurred. Some few corrections, that were thought necessary after the work was printed off, will be found in the Additional Notes at the end. Inner Temple, CHARLES LAMBERT. THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. HE prelate who is the subject of the fol THE lowing work, has long been deservedly ranked among the most eminent promoters of religion and learning, which this country has produced; and the benefits derived from his judicious and exalted munificence, during more than three centuries, and which it is hoped will ever continue to flow from the same source, give him a just claim to an ample share of public gratitude and vene ration. The renown of a person studious of doing good without ostentation, who provides no panegyrist, nor is his own biographer, soon decays; and after a few years, only a general and indistinct knowledge remains, even of such as have been most famous in their generation, who have performed bril liant actions, or (which confers an higher title to regard) have been the benefactors of mankind. Distinguished as Waynflete was, when living, in the latter class of worthies, the common fate attended his posthumous reputation; though we are told, as a proof of its former greatness, that a period of an hundred and fourteen years had been scarcely able to extinguish it. When Waynflete had been dead about the time specified, it became the pious care of the society of Magdalen college, Oxford, not to suffer his renown to perish, but to rescue him from oblivion, and recall him into celebrity, as a tribute due from them to so generous a founder; and at their desire a Life of him was undertaken by Dr. Budden, which he printed in quarto in 1602, dedicated to the president Dr. Nicholas Bond and his other employers. The Life of Waynflete by Budden, or his New New Birth (ayy) as it has been called, is written in Latin; and it appears, as he has asserted, with fidelity and industry. He had struggled as it were with time, he tells us, had dug in the mines of antiquity, and searched among recondite authors for genuine and untouched information; but his style is declamatory, and his performance an oration rather than a narrative. It is particularly defective in dates; the natural order of events, as they happened, is not observed; and from their transposition, and the frequent introduction of extraneous matter, an indistinct and unsatisfactory idea only, is conveyed of the great prelate, whose history it was intended to deliver from the oppression of that silence, under which it had been so long concealed. The reception from the public was favourable, the author has had his encomiast, and his work was reprinted at London in 1681. An |