my warm acknowledgments for candidly measuring my Poems
by their pretensions. They have looked at them as they really
were;--as the amusements of the leisure hours of a man
whose fortune will not favour his inclination to devote himself
to poetry; and conceiving a favourable opinion of them in
that character, have kindly expressed it.

_London, December, 1827._

During the progress of these pages through the press, it has
pleased Providence to inflict upon me the severest calamity that
domestic life can sustain. In the private sorrows of the humble
candidate for literary fame, I am aware that the world will feel
no interest, yet humanity will forgive the weakness that struggles
under such a bereavement, and will pardon the tear that falls
upon such a tomb. If, indeed, the Being who is lost to her family
and society were endowed only with those gifts and graces,
which are shared by thousands of her sex, I should have been
silent at this moment. To those who knew her,[1] and to know
her was to esteem and love, this tribute will be superfluous; but
to those who knew her not, I would say, that, superadded to
every natural advantage, to the charms of every polite accomplishment,
and to a cheerful and sincere piety, she was deeply
imbued with the love of literature and of science. In these, her
Lectures on the Physiology of the External Senses exhibit a
splendid proof of her acquirements in their highest walks, and
are an imperishable memorial of her patient and laborious research.
They who were present at the delivery of these Lectures
will not soon forget the effect of her impressive elocution,
chastened as it was by as unaffected modesty as ever adorned