TO THE PUBLIC.

BEFORE I submit the following little Work to the Public, I must be permitted to say a few words upon the motives that induced me to do So. And in the first place, I beg that credit may be given to my assertion, that it was not the vanity of becoming an author. This will be the more readily believed, when the simplicity of the Work itself be taken into consideration. Had I wished to exhibit myself before the world as an author, I should probably have taken much higher ground, and have selected subjects and forms more suited to the profession to which I belong. But the truth is, that even when a boy at school, I was ever fond of reading our own Poets; and I used frequently, at my leisure hours, to exercise myself in trying my own hand at a little versification. At length I got into the habit of putting my