W. COOKE TAYLOR, ESQ. LL.D. M.R.A.S.

OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.

VOL. I.

HOMO SUM: HUMANI NIHIL A ME ALIENUM PUTO.-TERENCE.

LONDON:

LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS.

1840.

ΤΟ

THE MOST REVEREND FATHER IN GO D,

RICHARD,

LORD ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN,

AND

PRIMATE OF IRELAND.

MY LORD,

THIS book is yours; you suggested, encouraged, and to a great degree directed it, you may therefore claim its patronage as matter of right. Were the case otherwise, I should scarcely have ventured to obtrude my homage, because I should fear my power to control my feelings. To your Grace's friendship I owe incentives to exertion, motives for confidence, and fresh grounds of hope, inexpressibly precious to the labourer in the field of literature, who must pass through many dark and stormy days before he can expect the seed he has sown to produce even a scanty harvest. The language of gratitude, if warm, would savour of adulation, and be rejected by you; if cold, it would too closely resemble ingratitude to be adopted by me. I