To the first question we answer, that the 'Saxon Chronicle' contains the original and authentic testimony of contemporary writers to the most important transactions of our forefathers, both by sea and land, from their first arrival in this country to the year 1154.

To those who are unacquainted with this monument of our national antiquities, two questions appear requisite to be answered: - 'What does it contain?' and, 'By whom was it written?' The indulgence of the critical antiquary is solicited, whilst we endeavour to answer, in some degree, each of these questions. Indeed, till the editor had made some progress in the work, he could not have imagined that so many original and authentic materials of our history still remained unpublished. may also still remain unnoticed partly because they were considered of little importance, and partly from an apprehension, lest the commentary, as it sometimes happens, should seem an unwieldy burthen, rather than a necessary appendage, to the text.

The text of the present edition, it was found, could not be compressed within a shorter compass than 374 pages, though the editor has suppressed many notes and illustrations, which may be thought necessary to the general reader. The improved edition by Edmund Gibson, afterwards Bishop of London, printed at Oxford in 1692, exhibits nearly four times the quantity of the former but is very far from being the entire (5) chronicle, as the editor considered it. But of the extent of the two former editions, compared with the present, the reader may form some idea, when he is told that Professor Wheloc's 'Chronologia Anglo-Saxonica', which was the first attempt (4) of the kind, published at Cambridge in 1644, is comprised in less than 62 folio pages, exclusive of the Latin appendix. In the first place, it has never been printed entire, from a collation of all the MSS. The other work, though not treated with absolute neglect, has not received that degree of attention which every person who feels an interest in the events and transactions of former times would naturally expect. The former, which is little more than a statistical survey, but contains the most authentic information relative to the descent of property and the comparative importance of the different parts of the kingdom at a very interesting period, the wisdom and liberality of the British Parliament long since deemed worthy of being printed (3) among the Public Records, by Commissioners appointed for that purpose. These are, the Record of Doomsday (1) and the 'Saxon Chronicle' (2). England may boast of two substantial monuments of its early history to either of which it would not be easy to find a parallel in any nation, ancient or modern.

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle by Various