United States from Paris, dated from that city August 14, 1786: “ . . . the public papers continue to say favourable & just things of your poems . . .”

The poem was translated into French by the Marquis de Chastellux, whose Travels in North-America , Humphreys was at that time considering translating into English; see no. 4023.

Jefferson is mentioned in the poem, in the “list of rev’rend fathers, props of freedom’s cause, who rear’d an empire by their sapient laws”:

And Jefferson, whose mind with space extends,

Each science woos, all knowledge comprehends,

Whose patriot deeds and elevated views

Demand the tribute of a loftier muse:--

David Humphreys, 1752-1818, soldier, statesman and poet, a native of Derby, Connecticut, was a friend of Jefferson. His career as a diplomat started in 1784, when he was appointed Secretary to the Commission for Negotiating Treaties of Commerce with Foreign Powers, which obliged him to go to Paris, whence he returned to the United States in 1786. It was during this period that these poems were published in London, Paris and in Connecticut.

Johann Melchior, Edler Von Birkenstock, 1738-1809, German statesman.

Jan Luzac, 1746-1807, Dutch scholar and lawyer, practised law at the Hague, but eventually settled in Leyden, where he was associated with his brother Etienne in the publication of the Gazette de Leyde [q.v. no. 164]. In 1785 he was appointed to the chair of Greek at Leyden and took possession with this discourse on Erudition as the nursing mother of the civil virtues in a Free State. Luzac was killed in 1807 by an explosion in Leyden.