“ for you. The two American poems, by M ^r. Barlow & M ^r. Dwight You have certainly seen. These with the poem by Trumbull, all of New England, seem to shew that the Northern people have taken the lead in this very entertaining path of polite Literature . . .”

Rittenhouse’s article (unsigned) occurs in the second number of the magazine, that for October 1786. Other articles by Rittenhouse occur in the magazine.

Jefferson did not become a subscriber immediately, for the numbers for April, May and August, 1787, contain extracts from his Notes on Virginia , printed without his knowledge. On August 14, in his letter to John Stockdale, who had informed Jefferson that the Notes had been printed in the United States [see page 320, Volume IV], Jefferson wrote (from Paris): “ . . . unless you are very sure of your information of the printing the Notes on Virginia in America, I doubt it. I never sent but six copies to America, and they were in such hands as I am sure would not permit them to be published. I have letters from Philadelphia as late as the 6 ^th. of June, & certainly no such publication was then suspected by my friends. on the contrary mr Hopkinson, one of those to whom I had given a copy, & who is concerned in compiling the Columbian magazine, tells me he hopes I will not object to his publishing a few extracts from it. particularly the passages in which M. de Buffon’s work is controverted. so that unless you are very certain on the point, I shall disbelieve it . . . ”

The printed extracts, all from Volume I, are as follows:

Page 366, Comparative view of the Animals of America and those of Europe,--being a Refutation of Mr. Buffon’s Assertion, “That the Animals, common to both the old and new World, are smaller in the latter.” Extracted from Mr. Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia.

Page 407, the continuation of the extract, including Jefferson’s tables.

Page 573, an article headed Extract from Mr. Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia. This article contains an appendix by Charles Thomson, introduced by the paragraph: Mr. Charles Thompson, secretary to Congress, in an appendix to Mr. Jefferson’s work, adds the following remarks on the same subject. The reader will pardon, I am confident, the length of these extracts from a work so highly interesting, and which is not yet given to the public.

Two weeks before his letter to Stockdale, on August 1, Jefferson had written to Francis Hopkinson in Philadelphia: “ . . . I am obliged to you for subscribing for the Columbian magazine for me. I find it a good thing; and am sure it will be better from the time you have undertaken it. I wish you had commenced before the month of December; for then the abominable forgery inserted in my name in the last page would never have appeared. this I suppose the compilers took from English papers, those infamous fountains of falshood. is it not surprising that our news writers continue to copy from those papers tho’ every one, who knows any thing of them, knows they are written by persons who never go out of their garret, nor read a paper? the real letter alluded to was never meant to have been publick, and therefore hastily & carelessly dictated while I was obliged to use the pen of another. it became public however. I send you a genuine copy to justify myself in your eyes against the absurd thing they have fathered upon me in the magazine . . . ”

The “abominable forgery” is on page 204, at the end of the December number, 1786, and is headed Extract of a letter from Mr. Jefferson, plenipotentiary of the United States of America, to the Prevôt des Marchands and Sheriffs of Paris.

The number for July 1787, page 555, contains a Character of Mr. Jefferson.

Extracts from the Notes on Virginia in later issues are as follows: February, 1788, Vol. II, page 86, The State of Religion in Virginia. [From Mr. Jefferson’s Notes.] March, 1788, page 141, A Comparative View of the Faculties of Memory, Reason, and Imagination of Negroes. [From Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia.] The same number, on page 135, has An investigation of the justice of Mons. Buffon’s opinion respecting the Man of America. By Charles Thompson, Esq.

The Columbian Magazine ran from September 1786 to December 1792. With the number for March 1790 the title was changed to The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine.

The original proprietors of The Columbian Magazine were John Trenchard, Thomas Seddon, Charles Cist, C. Talbot, W. Spotswood and Mathew Carey. Carey withdrew in 1787 and founded The American Museum [q.v. no. 4903]. These two publications vied with each other in publishing every new writing by Francis Hopkinson, and in republishing his earlier works.