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 judgment till he was thoroughly satisfied that it was correct on every point, and in no part assailable. But the readers and contributors of 'N. & Q.' do not require to be told of the rare qualities which distinguished Mr. Dilke as a critic. They will be glad to possess the papers which his grandson has collected, and which prove that he stood unrivalled as a great master of the art of criticism. They who had the honour of possessing his friendship have a loving and undying memory of what Mr. Dilke was as a man. To those who were strangers to him we heartily recommend a perusal of the memoir, in which his grandson tells the story of a thoroughly honest man's honest and useful life."

Mr. Thoms then gives in full a birthday letter from Mr. Dilke to his son, of which he says :—

"The columns of 'N. & Q.' have contained many beautiful letters written by men who now, as the phrase is, 'belong to history '; but we question if there is one among them all which is so tender and wise."

Mr. Dilke's contributions to Notes and Queries were very large, but as in its pages he had, as he said, "as many aliases as an Old Bailey prisoner," it is difficult to trace some of them. In 'The Papers of a Critic' we are helped to a solution." He nearly always used the initials of the first three words of the heading of his contributions. Suppose, for instance, it was ' The Carylls of Ladyholt,' it would be signed T. C. O." Among the subjects treated upon were Pope, Junius, Wilkes, Burke, 'Hugh Speke and the Forged Declara- tion of the Prince of Orange' (a series of notes in which Mr. Dilke defended one of the leaders of Monmouth's rebellion against Macaulay), centenarianism, and various others. In the memoir which appears of Mr. Dilke in the 'Dictionary of National Biography' it is stated that "the best comments on his character and his literary work were those of his old friend Thoms in Notes and Queries"

I will add only this testimony from myself: no words can express the affection and regard that my father and all of us in our home in Wellington Street had for him.

The number for the 28th of September, 1872, opens with 'A Parting Note' from Mr. Thoms :—

"There is something very solemn in performing any action under the consciousness that it is for the last time.

"Influenced by this feeling, it had been my intention that this the last number of Notes and Queries edited by me should not have contained any intimation that the time had arrived when I felt called upon to husband my strength and faculties for those official duties which form the proper business of my life.

"But the fact having been widely announced, I owe it to myself, and to my sense of what is due to that large body of friends, known and unknown, by whom I have been for three-and-twenty years so ably and