"SIR,--The two Volumes of Poems that in April last I engaged to have published, are finished, and will be ready for delivery in two or three days. The ten Setts you subscribed for I am rather at a loss how to have safely transmitted to you at your residence in Virginia, where I find by the Newspapers, you mean to Continue until the end of September. Will you on receipt of this, send me a line or two, informing me whether you would prefer having the Books put into the hands of some Confidential person here, to be sent or; that they be sent to the Post Office at Washington; or that they be forwarded directly to yourself in Orange County. The precise direction is not in my power." The 1809 collection is the most elaborate of all the earlier editions of Freneau's works. His statement that it was the only one which received his personal supervision is certainly wrong, for he had carefully supervised the 1795 edition. On the title page he announced that the poems were "now republished from the original manuscripts," and that he had added several "translations from the ancients and other pieces not heretofore in print," but the new poems that had not previously appeared in the _Time Piece_ were very few. On the title page also he placed the stanza: "Justly to record the deeds of fame, A muse from heaven should touch the soul with flame; Some powerful spirit in superior lays Should tell the conflicts of the stormy days." The poet's advertisement is as follows: "The Poems, included in these two volumes, were originally written between the years 1768 and 1793; and were partly published in the transient prints of the times, and afterwards collected into two editions of 1786 and 1795. The present is a revision of the whole, and now published agreeable to the terms of the subscription issued in this city, in April last. Such, perhaps, as are not attracted by mere novelty or amusement, will attend more particularly to the Poems originating from the temporary events of the American war. These Poems were intended, in part to expose to vice and treason, their own hideous deformity; to depict virtue, honour and patriotism in their native beauty. Such (says a most distinguished foreign author) was the intention of poetry from the beginning, and here her purpose should end. Whether the following verses have any real claim to the attention of the citizens of the American United States, who may honour them with a reading, is left for the Public to decide.