, were all to be found
here, forming the largest and most varied collection of Shakspeare's
works, and the English and foreign literature illustrating them, which
has ever been made, and the greatest literary memorial which any author
has ever yet received. So highly was the library valued that its
contents were consulted from Berlin and Paris, and even from the United
States, and similar libraries have been founded in other places. Only
500 of the books were preserved, and many of them were much damaged. The
loss of the famed Staunton or Warwickshire collection was even worse
than that of the Shakespearean, rich and rare as that was, for it
included the results of more than two centuries' patient work, from the
days of Sir William Dugdale down to the beginning of the present
century. The manuscript collections of Sir Simon Archer, fellow-labourer
of Dugdale, the records of the Berkeley, Digby, and Ferrers families,
the valued and patient gatherings of Thomas Sharpe, the Coventry
antiquarian, of William Hamper, the Birmingham collector, and of William
Staunton himself, were all here, forming the most wonderful county
collection ever yet formed, and which a hundred years' work will never
replace.
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