PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.

I HAVE been invited to introduce the following Poems to the English public; and it gives me pleasure to do so; partly for the sake of the author, (a man of high talent and sensibility,) and partly because it is incumbent upon every member of literature, however unimportant he may be, to do his best to diminish the space that separates America from England.

This is not the place to speak of the author, even as he deserves. He would object to my eulogiums, probably, as flagrant and unmerited; and I should

not be satisfied with administering any thing short of the praise due to him. Although an American, (the proselytes of our reigning politics will smile at this,) he does not exist upon panegyric. He can afford to render admiration to others, and to think modestly of himself. All which being the case, I shall leave the poet to ingratiate himself, after his own fashion, with the reader, and proceed to say a few words, generally, on the writers who have risen up on the other side of the Atlantic.

It is clear that we have, until lately, done injustice to American writers. We have tested them by an unfair rule, and have measured them by their weakness only, and not by their strength And this has been done, not in sincere error, or in an honest attempt to arrive at their real merits-but evidently for the sake of exalting ourselves, or depressing them. A system like this

cannot be too much discountenanced by men of letters. And how foolish and injurious is it, to be perpetually boasting of this or that thing achieved by the separate countries as though

every good deed, whether in America or England, were not done for the credit of our common literature. If every individual scribbler were to stand up solely for his own little trumpery distinction, and cavil at all other writers who contributed their share to the general stock of amusement, should we not hoot him down with contempt? Why do the liberal English people, then, allow the spleen or illblood of any man or set of men to vitiate their taste? to blind their understanding? to widen the breach between them and their American friends? dishonesty is a betrayal of the cause of literature, a calumny on the English character, and should be

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reprobated and punished accordingly like any corresponding private slander.

If we possess an advantage in some respects over America, by reason of our having had more opportunities of cultivating the mere elegancies of letters, yet, in others, our superiority is by no means evident. The public works of the United States (the results of great activity of mind and matchless perseverance of character) put our own to shame. And in mechanics, and all that relates to practical science, the men of America are fully as well educated as ourselves. What more is wanted to entitle them to respect? They have already done all that a young nation could be expected to accomplish; and Time will bring them the rest. It will bring them essayists, novelists, historians, as good and numerous as ours; and poets also as lofty (with one unapproachable exception) as any that we have been accustomed to deify. The great and free land of America must of necessity produce great poets and eminent men. With the