The Poems of Philip Freneau, Poet of the American Revolution. Volume 1 (of 3). Freneau Philip Morin

      "My best wishes, Sir, will ever await you, and in particular that your Presidential Career may be equally honourable though less stormy than that of your predecessor."

      "Dear Sir, – I subscribe with pleasure to the publication of your volumes of poems. I anticipate the same pleasure from them which the perusal of those heretofore published has given me. I have not been able to circulate the paper because I have not been from home above once or twice since my return, and because in a country situation like mine, little can be done in that way. The inhabitants of the country are mostly industrious farmers employed in active life and reading little. They rarely buy a book of whose merit they can judge by having it in their hand, and are less disposed to engage for those yet unknown to them. I am becoming like them myself in a preference of the healthy and cheerful employment without doors, to the being immured within four brick walls. But under the shade of a tree one of your volumes will be a pleasant pocket companion.

      "Wishing you all possible success and happiness, I salute you with constant esteem and respect."

      "Sir, – Yesterday your Letter, dated May 22d came to hand. – Perhaps you a little misunderstood me, when I wrote to you from this place in April last, inclosing the Proposal Paper, respecting the Poems. – I only wished your name to be placed at the head of the list, and did not wish you to be at the pains of collecting Subscriptions, further than as any of your neighbours might choose to put down their names – Indeed, the whole Subscription plan was Set a going without my knowledge or approbation, last Winter. But as I found the matter had gone too far to be recalled, I thought it best to submit, in the present Edition, to the course and order of things as they are and must be. – Sir, if there be anything like happiness in this our State of existence, it will be such to me, when these two little Volumes reach you in August ensuing, if the sentiments in them under the poetical Veil, amuse you but for a single hour. – This is the first Edition that I have in reality attended to, the other two having been published, in a strange way, while I was wandering over gloomy Seas, until embargoed by the necessity of the times, and now again, I fear, I am reverting to the folly of scribbling Verses.

      "That your shades of Monticello may afford you complete happiness is the wish and hope of all the worthy part of Mankind, and my own in particular. In such the philosophers of antiquity preferred to pass life, or if that was not allowed, their declining days.

      "Will you be so good as to read the inclosed Verses? They were published early in March last in the Trenton True American Newspaper, and in the Public Advertiser, of New York."

      "Sir, – The two Volumes of Poems that in April last I engaged to have published, are finished, and will be ready for delivery in two or three days. The ten Setts you subscribed for I am rather at a loss how to have safely transmitted to you at your residence in Virginia, where I find by the Newspapers, you mean to Continue until the end of September. Will you on receipt of this, send me a line or two, informing me whether you would prefer having the Books put into the hands of some Confidential person here, to be sent or; that they be sent to the Post Office at Washington; or that they be forwarded directly to yourself in Orange County. The precise direction is not in my power."

      "The Poems, included in these two volumes, were originally written between the years 1768 and 1793; and were partly published in the transient prints of the times, and afterwards collected into two editions of 1786 and 1795. The present is a revision of the whole, and now published agreeable to the terms of the subscription issued in this city, in April last. Such, perhaps, as are not attracted by mere novelty or amusement, will attend more particularly to the Poems originating from the temporary events of the American war. These Poems were intended, in part to expose to vice and treason, their own hideous deformity; to depict virtue, honour and patriotism in their native beauty. Such (says a most distinguished foreign author) was the intention of poetry from the beginning, and here her purpose should end. Whether the following verses have any real claim to the attention of the citizens of the American United States, who may honour them with a reading, is left for the Public to decide.

      "To his Countrymen, the real Patriotic Americans, the Revolutionary Republicans, and the rising generation who are attached to their sentiments and principles, the writer hopes this collection will not prove unacceptable. A more complete edition might have been published, so as to include a great number of miscellaneous Poems and animadversions on public events down to the present year, 1809; but it has been judged most proper, to restrict what is now printed to the date of 1793; with the exception of only a very few pieces of later composition which have been retained, and inserted in the body of the work, but not so as to materially interrupt the general tenor of the Poems that arose from the incidents of the American revolutionary contest.

      "The Author will only add, that to this Edition are prefixed two copper-plate engravings: the one representing St. Tammany, observing a hostile fleet approaching his shores; the other a nocturnal view of Captain Jones's engagement with the Seraphis. – These, it is hoped will be considered not inelegant embellishments of the edition now presented to the public.