Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/13

vi ketched it but to himelf ix or even years ago, at his firt accidental diverion into the walk of antiquities. And he has had the patient reolution to work upon it ever ince. Had he foreeen the full extent of his cheme at firt, he hould never have had the hardines to form it. Had he foreeen in any part of the execution the time and the labour which the ret would have cot him, he had certainly hrunk back from the attempt, and had cloed the whole work immediately. He proceeded on the model before him, ever flattering himelf to the lat, that a few months more would dimis him from the employ, and remit him again to thoe profeional tudies which he had very unwittingly deerted. He once deigned to have deduced the hitory only to the Conquet. He afterwards deigned to have folded up the hitory below it in a few general and comprehenive notices. And he is not orry to have been thus inenibly led on in the execution, till he had actually gone too far to recede; till he had a jut claim upon himelf for the completion of the mall remainder. The whole is divided into four Books, containing as many periods, the Britih and Roman-Britih, the Saxon,, the Danih and Norman-Danih, and the Modern. Three are already completed. And one is here preented to the public.

The reader mut not expect in this work merely the private unintereting hitory of a ingle town. He may expect whatever curious particulars can with any propriety be connected with it. Whatever erves to illutrate the general antiquities of the kingdom or the county, whatever erves to mark the general polity of our towns, whatever erves to lay open the caues and the circumtances of any momentous events that affect the interets of Mancheter, all thee the author propoes to examine, to acertain the doubtful, to retrench the fale, and to clear up the obcure in them. He will endeavour clearly to fix the poition of all the Britih tribes and accurately to define the extent of all the Roman provinces in the iland, which has been hitherto the philoopher's tone of antiquities. By a new tet that eems to be abolutely deciive, he will endeavor