Edmund, and belong to
the middle of the seventeenth century. Hearne himself is sufficient
to give interest to any foundation. He was a great scholar and a
careful editor of the early English Chroniclers in days when learning
was decaying in Oxford; even now his work as an editor is not
altogether superseded. But it is not to this that he owes his fame;
it is rather to the fact that he has high rank among the diarists of
England, and the first place among those of Oxford. For thirty years
(1705-1735) in which latter year he died, he poured into his diary
everything that interested him--scholarly notes, political rumours,
personal scandal, remarks on manners and customs. The 150 volumes
came into the possession of his fellow Jacobite, Richard Rawlinson,
the greatest of the benefactors of the Bodleian, and only now are
they being fully edited; ten volumes have been issued by the Oxford
Historical Society, and still there are a few more years of his life
to cover. As a specimen of Hearne's style may be quoted his remarks,
when the sermon on Christmas Day, 1732, was postponed till 11 a.m.
"The true reason is that people might lie in bed the longer.
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