I could cite more, but will only add that, of all the writers of dedications, by far the most amusing is the man who wrote none! This ingenious person called himself Adam Moses Emanuel Cooke, but his sole Christian name was simply Thomas. He was a Northumbrian by birth, an Oxonian by education, and a beneficed clergyman who drove all his parishioners mad by his superstitious practices, his mystical enthusiasm, and his turn for unintelligible mysteries. He took all the loving promises to the Jews so much to heart as to believe that the more nearly he approached them in all their old observances, the more true he should be to the Christian dispensation. Accordingly, he practised them all, did not hesitate at the most painful and characteristic, and was very much astonished that other men declined to follow his example. Cooke was mad, in this one matter, no doubt; but considering that episcopal patience bore with the theatre-haunting Rev. Dr. Dodd, I think Cooke's bishop treated him a little harshly by procuring his deprivation, and driving him out to starve. To starvation, however, the poor man had reasonable objections; and to obviate such an end, he turned dramatic author, as if to justify those who called him mad. It was then that he showed that there was method in his madness. Having nothing, he denounced the rights of property. Possessing nothing he could throw in to the common lot, he preached communism. At Will's, or Tom's, or Button's, at the Grecian, or any other well-frequented coffee-house, the hungry author of two unrepresented and unrepresentable plays who might have thanked heaven that he was not worth a ducat, would coolly enter and seat himself at the first table which he saw ready furnished with a meal for which he longed, and thought not of paying. The rightful owner, if ignorant of the ways of Adam Moses Emanuel, would blandly smile at the absent man, thinking sighingly of the mighty labours which had brought him to such a pass, and quietly move off. If the gentleman whose chocolate, toast, and eggs Cooke appropriated, knew of the mystic's ways, he would smilingly submit to them, and await the moment which should bring the _Gastronome sans argent_ and mine host into collision.