Page:Poems translated from the French of Madame De la Mothe Guion.djvu/10

 hands when we meet. They are yours to serve as you please, you may take and leave as you like, for my purpose is already served. They have amused me, and I have no further demand upon them." On my return, Mr. C. presented me with these translations, to which he added the letter to a Protestant Lady in France, and the Poem on Friendship.

The idea of printing them was afterwards suggested to Mr. C. and he gave his full consent, intending to revise them before I should send them to press. Various circumstances prevented him from doing this; and the poems would probably have still remained unpublished, if it had not been found that several copies of them had already got abroad. The Editor therefore had reason to believe, that they would otherwise have made their appearance in a state far less correct than if printed from the original manuscript. Nor can he imagine that even in their present form, they will, on the whole, tend to diminish the well-deserved reputation of their excellent Author.

To infer that the peculiarities of Madame Guion's theological sentiments, were adopted either by Mr. C. or by the Editor, would be almost as absurd as to suppose the inimitable translator of Homer to have been a pagan. He reverenced her piety, admired her genius, and judged that several of her poems would be read with pleasure and edification by serious and candid persons.

I have taken the liberty to add the Stanzas subjoined to the Bills of Mortality, which had been published a few years past at Northampton; and the Epitaph, which had appeared in a periodical publication. They sufficiently mark the genius of their Author, correspond with the other parts of this small volume, and have not before been printed in a uniform manner with his poems.

WILLIAM BULL.

NEWPORT-PAGNEL, 6th June, 1801.