Volume 1

British topography. Or, an historical account of what has been done for illustrating the topographical antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland / By R.G. i.e. R. Gough.

  • Gough, Richard, 1735-1809.
Date:
1780
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: British topography. Or, an historical account of what has been done for illustrating the topographical antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland / By R.G. i.e. R. Gough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/1030 (page 3)
    4 [ m .] catalogue. Leland fpeaks of a defcription of England written in Saxon by Colman, furnamed ’The Wifey whofeage he has fixed to the reign of John ; fo that he was contemporary with Gyraldus. It is pity that diligent man did not make fome extracts from this book, which he read in St. Paul’s library, and which fo few of his contem- poraries were acquainted with. It might in its way have been as va- luable as the Saxon Chronicle. Stephanides or Fitz-Stephen wrote his fhort defcription of London a little before Gyraldus. William of Worceder took his tour three centuries after both ; and Hearne, who laments the indolence and ignorance of our monks in this article, grudged the world a printed copy of it. Mr. Nafmith, however, has publithed it together with the travels of Simon Symeonis an Irilh minorite, with friar Hugh, furnamed Illuminator, from Ireland to the Holy Land 1322, in which is a fhort account of a few places in England. The rays that difpelled the gloom of religion illuminated every branch of fcience. It was not till the monks were turned adrift, and the invention of printing had given circulation to every improvement the mind enlarged could make, that we began to be acquainted with the face of our own country. The fird that undertook to open the way was Leland, at the mod; critical period, when our antiquities were on the point of being involved in the ruins of our religious founda- tions. Not content with tranfcribing and extracting hidorical matter from innumerable regiders foon after dedroyed or difperfed, he made a particular and regular defcription of the places he vihted, marked thecourfe of rivers, minuted the date of cities, towns, and villages, defcribed the cadles, palaces, churches, with their monuments, and every other building that came in his way. His Itinerary, though in many indances it only fupplies the ufeof maps, maybe faid to have formed our Britifh Paufanias in the fucceeding century. It will be no reproach to Camden if he borrowed from him more than it can be proved he did. Leland’s principal works are but the outlines and materials of a greater plan, which he enjoyed neither life nor reafon to fini(h. Perhaps he undertook too much for the imperfect date of antiquarian knowledge in that age ; or the fatigue he had dif- fered and apprehended in the courfe of this defign was too much for a 2 his