WREATH FROM THE WILDERNESS: BEING A SELECTION FROM THE METRICAL ARRANGMENTS OF ACCOLA MONTIS-AMENI. Non liber ut fieret, sed uti sua cuique daretur Ovidius de Ponto, lib. iii, elegia 9. IRONBRIDGE: PRINTED BY WILLIAM SMITH. And sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, and by Darton 1816. TO THE THE author of the following trifles hath been an occasional versifier from his youth. He wrote, and he published in contemporary publications, or, he gave away his pieces, reserving no duplicates. Hence, it hath happened to him, to meet with manuscript copies of his own productions, in circulation among his friends, when, both the subject, and the manner of treating it, had been long forgotten by himself. In one instance, some verses were put into his hands, with a request that he would peruse and correct them, which, on looking over, he thought were not altogether new to him, but it was not until a second perusal, that his memory could assert any property in them. The lapse of nearly twenty years had obliterated them there. They continued to circulate under his name, but, they were become so altered by carelessness of transcript, some lines having been omitted, and many words changed, that he found it more easy to rewrite, than to correct them.* What the author beheld in this instance, may have taken place in many more, and there * These verses are not given in this volume, because that the circumstance occurring nearly fourteen years ago, not one line of them remains in the storehouse of the author's memory. They have become, a second time, the prey of Oblivion. |