remained unacknowledged. It was the general observation, that he possessed genius without its eccentricities." Of his fervent piety, his letters, his prayers, and his hymns, will afford ample and interesting proofs. I must be permitted to say, that my own views of the religion of Jesus Christ differ essentially from the system of belief which he had adopted; but, having said this, it is, indeed, my anxious wish to do full justice to piety so fervent. It was in him a living and quickening principle of goodness, which sanctified all his hopes, and all his affections; which made him keep watch over his own heart, and enabled him to correct the few symptoms which it ever displayed of human imperfection. His temper had been irritable in his younger days, but this he had long since effectually overcome; the marks of youthful confidence, which appear in his earliest letters, had also disappeared; and it was impossible for man to be more tenderly patient of the faults of others, more uniformly meek, or more unaffectedly humble. He seldom discovered any sportiveness of imagination, though he would very ably and pleasantly rally any one of his friends for any little peculiarity; his conversation was always sober, and to the purpose. That which is most remarkable in him, is his uniform good sense, a faculty perhaps less common than genius. There never existed a more dutiful son, a more affectionate brother, a warmer friend, nor a devouter Christian. Of his powers of mind it is superfluous to speak; they were acknowledged wherever they were known. It would be idle too, to say what hopes were entertained of him, and what he might have accomplished in literature. This volume contains what he has left,-immature buds, and blossoms shaken from the tree, and green fruit; yet will they evince what the harvest would have been, and secure for him that remembrance upon earth for which he toiled. PREFACE. THE following attempts in verse are laid before the public with extreme diffidence. The author is very conscious that the juvenile efforts of a youth, who has not received the polish of academical discipline, and who has been but sparingly blessed with opportunities for the prosecution of scholastic pursuits, must necessarily be defective in the accuracy and finished elegance which mark the works of the man who has passed his life in the retirement of his study, furnishing his mind with images, and at the same time attaining the power of disposing those images to the best advantage. The unpremeditated effusions of a boy, from his thirteenth year, employed, not in the acquisition of literary information, but in the more active business of life, must not be expected to exhibit any considerable portion of the correctness of a Virgil, or the vigorous compression of a Horace. Men are not, I believe, frequently known to bestow much labor on their amusements: and these poems were, most of them, written merely to beguile a |