A Taylor who has no objection to wear motley, may make himself a great coat with half a yard of his own stuff, by eking it out with cabbage from every piece that comes in his way.
ROBERT SOUTHEY.
But here two questions arise:
Ought Dr. Dove, or ought he not, to have been an author?
Was he, or was he not, the happier, for not being one?
“Not to leave the reader,” as Lightfoot says, “in a bivium of irresolutions,” I will examine each of these questions, escriviendo algunos breves reglones, sobre lo mucho que dezir y escrivir se podria en esto;—moviendo me principalmente a ello la grande ignorancia que sobre esta matheria veo manifiestamente entre las gentes de nuestro siglo.1
1 GARIBAY.
“I am and have been,” says Robert Wilmot, “(if there be in me any soundness of judgment) of this opinion, that whatsoever is committed to the press is commended to eternity; and it shall stand a lively witness with our conscience, to our comfort or confusion, in the reckoning of that great day. Advisedly therefore was that proverb used of our elder Philosopher, Manum a Tabulâ; withhold thy hand from the paper, and thy papers from the print, or light of the world.”