Excerpt from Sketches of English Literature, From the Fourteenth to the Present Century Nothing could appear more strange than the rusty iron chains hanging so thickly from the shelves it seemed the prison rather than the home of the books. And this in olden times was the town library I It is probable that Wimborne was honoured above most towns of its size, not only by having its noble Minster, but by its pos sessing a public library of any kind. It is true that even from the early part of the sixteenth century it had a great advantage in its admirable school, which was founded by the illustrious Mar garet Beaufort, the mother of Henry VIL, awoman who was deservedly called the Mother of the Stu dents of the Universities And the probability is, that the townspeople, as books slowly increased, were tolerably competent to understand, and likely to value them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.