Our better mind Is as a Sunday's garment, then put on When we have nought to do; but at our work We wear a worse for thrift! It was not so with him: his better mind was not as a garment to be put on and off at pleasure; it was like its plumage to a bird, its beauty and its fragrance to a flower, except that it was not liable to be ruffled, nor to fade, nor to exhale and pass away. His mind was like a peacock always in full attire; it was only at times indeed, (to pursue the similitude,) that he expanded and displayed it; but its richness and variety never could be concealed from those who had eyes to see them. —His sweetest mind 'Twixt mildness tempered and low courtesy, Could leave as soon to be, as not be kind. Churlish despite ne'er looked from his calm eye, Much less commanded in his gentle heart; To baser men fair looks he would impart; Nor could he cloak ill thoughts in complimental art.[2] What he was in boyhood has been seen, and something also of his manlier years; but as yet little of the ripe fruits of his intellectual autumn have been set before the readers. No such banquet was promised them as that with which they are to be regaled. “The booksellers,” says Somner the antiquary, in an unpublished letter to Dugdale, “affect a great deal of title as advantageous for the sale; but judicious men dislike it, as savouring of too much ostentation, and suspecting the wine is not good where so much bush is hung out.” Somebody, I forget who, wrote a book upon the titles of books, regarding the title as a most important part of the composition. The bookseller's fashion of which Somner speaks has long been obsolete; mine is a brief title promising little, but intending much. It specifies only the Doctor; but his gravities and his levities, his opinions of men and things, his speculations moral and political, physical and spiritual, his philosophy and his religion, each blending with each, and all with all, these are comprised in the &c. of my title page,—these and his Pantagruelism to boot. When I meditate upon these I may exclaim with the poet:— Mnemosyne hath kiss'd the kingly Jove, And entertained a feast within my brain.[3] These I shall produce for the entertainment of the idle reader, and for the recreation of the busy one; for the amusement of the young, and the contentment of the old; for the pleasure of the wise, and the approbation of the good; and these when produced will be the monument of Daniel Dove. Of such a man it may indeed be said that he Is his own marble; and his merit can Cut him to any figure, and express More art than Death's Cathedral palaces, Where royal ashes keep their court![4]