Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by

JOHN G. SAXE,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

PRINTED BY THURSTON, TORRY, AND EMERSON.

TO HON. GEORGE P. MARSH,

U. S. MINISTER RESIDENT AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

DEAR SIR,

I DEDICATE this little Volume to you, not in your capacity as the honored Representative of your country at a Foreign Court, nor yet in your higher character, as one of the foremost scholars of the age; but rather, as is more befitting, in token of my esteem for your private virtues, and in grateful acknowledgment of your personal friendship. I hesitate less to avail myself of your kind permission to use your name in this place, since it was greatly owing to your flattering judgment of my first elaborate essay at verse writing, that other pieces were subsequently undertaken, and that these are now here collected. In christening the book, I have chosen, for several reasons, to conform to the customary nomenclature which allows every kind of literature to be 'Poetry,' that is not written in the fashion of prose; yet I have no quarrel with that nicer rule of modern criticism which assigns to all metrical compositions of a mainly facetious or satirical character, a place rather on the border than fairly within the domain of legitimate poesy. If I have excluded several trifles which some of my friends would like to have seen with the rest, it was because I could not afford to make the volume larger at any risk of making it worse. Should the verses which I have ventured to retain, receive, in their present form, the favor which has been accorded to most of the poems separately, I am very sure no one will be more gratified than yourself, -except it be

Your sincere Friend, and humble Servant,

BURLINGTON, VERMONT, 1849.

JOHN GODFREY SAXE.

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