Believe them not O Reader! I never executed works in any material more durable than brass, I never built any thing like a pyramid, _Absurdo de tamaña grandeza no se ha escrito en letras de molde._ And as for the alledged proofs which depriving me of my individuality and divesting me even of entity, would consubstantiate me with the most prolific of living writers, _no son mas que ayre ó menos que ayre, una sombra ó menos que sombra, pues son nada, y nada es lo que nunca ha tenido ser verdadero._[1] It is in vain, as Mr. Carlyle says when apostrophizing Mirabeau the father upon his persevering endeavours to make his son resemble him in all points of character, and be as it were his second self, it is in vain. He will not be Thou, but must and will be himself, another than Thou. In like manner, It is in vain say I: I am not, and will not and can not be any body but myself; nor is it of any consequence to any human being who or what I am, though perhaps those persons may think otherwise who say that “they delight more in the shadow of something than to converse with a nothing in substance.”[2] [Footnote 1: NICOLAS PERES.] [Footnote 2: HURLOTHRUMBO.] Lord Shaftesbury has said that “of all the artificial relations formed between mankind, the most capricious and variable is that of Author and Reader.” He may be right in this; but when he says 'tis evident that an Author's art and labour are for his Reader's sake alone, I cannot assent to the position. For though I have a great and proper regard for my readers, and entertain all due respect for them, it is not for their sake alone that my art and labour have been thus employed,—not for their benefit alone, still less for their amusement that this Opus has been edified. Of the parties concerned in it, the Readers, sooth to say, are not those who have been either first or second in my consideration. The first and paramount object was to preserve the Doctor's memory; the second to gratify myself by so doing; for what higher gratification can there be than in the performance of a debt of gratitude, one of those debts truly to be called immense, which A grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and discharged.[3] That there are some readers who would think themselves beholden, though in far less degree, to me, as I am to the revered subject of these memorials, was an after consideration. [Footnote 3: MILTON.]