[7] Hearne, in his preface, exclaims in ecstacy--"This is the _first book_ ever printed in this kingdom, it may be in _the whole world, in the black letter_, with a mixture of _the Saxon characters_, which is the very garb that was in vogue in the author's time, that is, in the thirteenth century." Hearne often claims our gratitude, while his earnest simplicity will extort a smile. On our ancient Bibles he could not refrain from exclaiming--"Though I have taken so much pleasure in perusing the English Bible of the year 1541, yet 'tis nothing equal to that I should take in turning over that of the year 1539." His antiquarianism kindled his piety over Cranmer's Bible. Thomas was haunted by a chimera that whatever was obsolete deserved to be revived. This honest spirit of antiquarianism, working on a most undiscerning intellect, seems to have kindled into a literary bigotry in his sateless delight of "the black-letter of our grandfathers' days." Hearne set this unhappy example of printing ancient writers with all their obsolete repulsiveness in orthography and type. He was closely followed by RITSON, and by WHITAKER in his edition of "Piers Ploughman;" and these editors assuredly have scared away many a neophyte in our vernacular literature. RITSON printed his "Ancient Songs" with the Saxon characters and abbreviations, which render them often unintelligible. This literary antiquary lived to regret this superstitious antiquarianism. He had prepared a new edition entirely cleared of these offences, but which unfortunately he destroyed at the morbid close of his life. [8] Turner's "History of England," v. 217, will furnish the curious reader readily with several of these specimens of the modes of thinking and of acting of the middle ages, when monks only were the preceptors of mankind.