The topography and natural history of Hampstead, in the County of Middlesex. With an appendix of original records / By John James Park.

  • Park, John James, 1795-1833.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The topography and natural history of Hampstead, in the County of Middlesex. With an appendix of original records / By John James Park. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    TO THE READER. THE nature and design of a book of this kind is so obvious, and it is, therefore, so little in need of an Introduction, that / am far from willing to afford an opportunity for comments upon the vanity of authorship, by consuming a page or two upon what more immediately relates to myself. Feeling, however, a pardonable anxiety that the imperfections of the following compilation should be imputed to their real source, rather than to my own indolence and inactivity, and being unconscious that these reproaches justly appertain to me, I am called upon to state, though with reluctance, that the antiquarian and documentary portions of the present volume, are by no means so complete as I had hoped to make them, in consequence of an unlooked-for refusal to permit some ancient records, belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, to be consulted jor that purpose. I make this statement, not only with reluctance, but I wish to make it with the utmost caution ; for I am fully sensible, that what I soli¬ cited was an indulgence — an indulgence to which I had not the shadow of a right, — and jor which I could have no other claim than on the general libe¬ rality which it is one of the characteristics oj the present age to dispense to persons engaged in literary undertakings *. * When I say, therefore, that this indulgence was refused, let me not for a moment be supposed to cast an imputation upon any