Here was the number 761 found in fair addition, without any arbitrary change of letters, or licentious innovation in orthography. And herein was mystery. The number 761 is a prime number; from hence the Doctor inferred that as the number was indivisible, there could be no division between himself and Mrs. Dove; an inference which the harmony of their lives fully warranted. And this alone would have amply rewarded his researches. But a richer discovery flashed upon him. The year 1761 was the year of his marriage, and to make up the deficient thousand there was M for marriage and matrimony. These things he would say must never be too explicit; their mysterious character would be lost if they lay upon the surface; like precious metals and precious stones you must dig to find them. He had bestowed equal attention and even more diligence in anagrammatizing the names. His own indeed furnished him at first with a startling and by no means agreeable result; for upon transposing the component letters of Daniel Dove, there appeared the words _Leaden void!_ Nor was he more fortunate in a Latin attempt, which gave him _Dan vile Deo_. _Vel dona Dei_ as far as it bore a semblance of meaning was better; but when after repeated dislocations and juxta positions there came forth the words _Dead in love_, Joshua Sylvester was not more delighted at finding that Jacobus Stuart made _justa scrutabo_, and James Stuart _A just Master_, than the Doctor,—for it was in the May days of his courtship. In the course of these anagrammatical experiments he had a glimpse of success which made him feel for a moment like a man whose lottery ticket is next in number to the £20,000 prize. Dove failed only in one letter of being Ovid. In old times they did not stand upon trifles in these things, and John Bunyan was perfectly satisfied with extracting from his name the words _Nu hony in a B_,—a sentence of which the orthography and the import are worthy of each other. But although the Doctor was contented with a very small sufficit of meaning, he could not depart so violently from the letters here. The disappointment was severe though momentary: it was, as we before observed, in the days of his courtship; and could he thus have made out his claim to be called Ovid, he had as clear a right to add Naso as the Poet of Sulmo himself, or any of the Nasonic race, for he had been at the promontory, “and why indeed Naso,” as Holofernes has said?—Why not merely for that reason ‘looking toward Damascus’ which may be found in the second volume of this work in the sixty-third chapter and at the two hundred and thirtieth page, but also “for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention?”[3] [Footnote 3: Love's Labour Lost, Act iv. Sc. ii.]