Out of the old fieldes, as men saithe,

Cometh all this newe corn fro yere to yere;
And out of olde bookes, in good faithe,
Cometh all this newe science that men lere.

CHAUCER.

BOSTON PRESS, WATER STREET.

SHRIGRAD BJ 1520 F96 1831

They shall teach my people the difference betwixt the
Holy and the Profane.

EZEKIEL xliv. 23.

The present volume is published as a speci. men of a proposed Library of the Old English Prose Writers. It has been thought, that the productions of these our literary forefathers, have, in this country at least, been suffered to remain too long neglected. Whilst the mutilated fragments of classical antiquity are gathered up and cherished with a religious zeal, and are made the subjects of a constant and careful study, it seems neither creditable nor grateful, that the beautiful and venerable remains of our own ancestral literature should repose on the shelves of public libraries, deposited in cumbrous volumes, in undisturbed security. In this age of books, when everybody is sipping of the shallow and ofttimes poisoned fountains of an ephemeral literature, how few are there that draw from the deep and healthful “wells of English undefiled." The