Since the middle of the eighteenth century, many editions of the text of John’s Great Charter have been published, either alone or along with the text of the various re-issues of the reign of Henry III.; but it seems unnecessary to mention more than four of these. (1) In 1759 appeared Sir William Blackstone’s scholarly work entitled _The Great Charter and The Charter of the Forest_, containing accurate texts of all the important issues of the Charters of Liberties carefully prepared from the original manuscripts so far as these were known to him.[312] ----- Footnote 312: The substance of this admirable edition, now unhappily scarce, has been reproduced in the same author’s _Tracts_ (1762). ----- (2) In some respects the Record Commissioners have improved even on Blackstone’s work in their edition of the _Statutes of the Realm_, published in 1810. A special section of the volume is devoted to Charters of Liberties, where not only the grants of John and Henry III., but also the charters which led up to them, and their subsequent confirmations, have received exhaustive treatment. (3) A carefully revised text, _Magna Carta regis Johannis_, was published by Dr. Stubbs in 1868; and the various charters are also to be found, arranged in chronological order, in his well-known volume, first published in 1870, entitled _Select Charters and other illustrations of_ _English Constitutional History_, a convenient collection easily accessible to all students of law and history. (4) For the continuous study of the sequence of charters, the best book of reference is _Chartes de Libertés Anglaises_ by M. Charles Bémont published in 1892, in the pages of which the various editions of John’s and Henry’s charters will be found in a form convenient for comparison with each other, and with previous and succeeding documents. II. _Commentaries and Treatises._ It is doubtful whether any good purpose would be served by the preparation of a list of all the books which contain casual references to Magna Carta or to its provisions; and it is clear that the task would be an extremely burdensome one. There is no difficulty, however, in naming the few treatises of outstanding merit which have been exclusively or mainly devoted to the exposition of the Great Charter. Of these only nine require special mention.