In the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., one can read a fascinating register of the intellectual interests of an anonymous writer of the first three decades of the eighteenth century who recorded his or her reading and thoughts in 296 hand-numbered pages entitled The Second book of history. 1701–1722. The writer discusses British historians from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Bishop Burnet, declaring Milton a good historian, Cotton a “famous Antiquary” with “a noble library,” and Rushworth a historical writer whose “falshoods” necessitated the “impartial collections” of Nalson. The author of the Second book records information from historians and antiquaries like Clarendon (on “the vile artifices of the Scots Comissioners” who turned Charles I over to his enemies) and Anthony à Wood (on the “ill end” of Samuel Butler), and once even discusses history in theoretical terms, citing Paolo Sarpi in support of the view that “A good historian should not only relate the events of things, but also the causes & motives wch produced them.” If this were all that one found in the Second book, it would seem like little more than a private and personal version of the historiographical criticism in the various Historical Libraries (1696–1724) of William Nicolson or Thomas Hearne's Ductor Historicus (1705). But there is more. Alongside the comments on historians, one also finds accounts of wonders or marvels that are in their own way just as representative of the discourse of history in this period as the discussions of Geoffrey, Buchanan, Bacon, and Selden.