Darlaston, I should think."

[Picture: Decorative design]

XXIX.--Bibliography.

From the merely allusive in literature, we proceed to the bibliography of
Willenhall, which, though not extensive, is of fair average interest.

Recently (June, 1907) was put up for auction in London a First Folio
Shakespeare of some local interest. It was the property of Mr. Abel
Buckley, Ryecroft Hall, near Manchester. This folio appears to have been
purchased about 1660 by Colonel John Lane, of Bentley Hall, Staffs, the
protector of Charles II. after the Battle of Worcester. It remained in
the possession of the family till 1856, when, at the dispersal of the
library of Colonel John Lane, of King's Bromley, whose book-plate,
designed by Hogarth, is inserted, it was bought by the third Earl of
Gosford for 157 guineas.

The son of the third Earl of Gosford disposed of it to James Toovey, the
famous London bookseller, for 470 pounds in 1884; and soon afterwards Mr.
Buckley obtained the folio. It measures 12.875in. by 8.25in., is
throughout clean, but the fly-leaf and title are mounted and two leaves
repaired. This is the volume's interesting history, according to Mr.
Sidney Lee.

In 1795, Stephen Chatterton, a Willenhall schoolmaster, published a book
of poems of a humorous cast. One is "An epistle to my friend Mr. Thomas
S--, who was married in July, 1783, to his third wife, on his fiftieth
birthday."

The bibliography of the Rev. Samuel Cozens, at one time minister of the
Peculiar Baptists' Chapel at Little London, Willenhall, is rather
extensive if not very interesting. A full list of his pamphlets and
other works will be found in G. T. Lawley's "Bibliography of
Wolverhampton," and also in Simms' "Bibliotheca Staffordiensis." His
first work, which appeared in the "Gospel Standard," 1844, was "A short
account of the Lord's Gracious Dealings with One of the Elect Vessels of
Mercy," and is autobiographical.

From this title, and that of the second part of his life, which appeared
in 1857, "Reminiscences: or Footsteps of Providence," the attitude of
mind assumed by the writer may be easily guessed. His was a dogmatic
creed, of stern unyielding Calvinism, which left him always
self-satisfied, and often made him aggressive. He moved from
Wolverhampton to Willenhall in 1848, where his first book was written, a
scholarly volume in the form of "A Biblical Lexicon."

Presently his combative n