"Je crois que le monde est gouverné par une volonté puissante et sage; PHILADELPHIA: KEY & BIDDLE, 23 MINOR STREET. 1833. Entered, according to act of congress, in the year 1833, by KEY & BIDDLE, in the office of the clerk of the district court of the eastern district of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: DEAR SIR, Brown University, September 3, 1833. The Franklin Society of this Institution, through the undersigned, as their committee, present you their unfeigned thanks for the elegant Poem with which you have this day favoured them, and hereby solicit a copy of the same for publication. In answer to your official letter of the 3d instant, on behalf of the Franklin Society of Brown University, I beg leave to observe, that while I receive with unaffected respect and pride the kind opinions of the association which you represent, and comply with the request for a copy of the viii CORRESPONDENCE. poem delivered before that body, I feel bound to extenuate the defects which are, in all likelihood, contained in the production. The majority of it is the effort of a few languid summer evenings, stolen from relaxation and society, after a performance of the onerous duties appertaining to the editorship of a daily gazette; and the closing portions were completed after my arrival in Providence, not many hours previous to their delivery. I do not mention these circumstances to excuse those blemishes in the poem, which I am well aware it may probably contain; and to apologize for which, I have not enough of that amabilis insania so finely satirized in the Horatian line. The subject was chosen because it was wide, and admitted of readier treatment than one less general and expansive. With this brief prologue, therefore, I submit the affair to the Society, "for better or for worse;" and remain, Gentlemen, with high consideration, Your obedient servant, W. GAYLORD CLARK. To E. P. DYER, and F. W. FICKLING, Esqrs. |