dition of fifteen hundred copies was printed
in March, and sold before the end of the year. A Ninth Edition of three
thousand copies was printed in the beginning of 1815.

TO THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.

My dear Moore,

I dedicate to you the last production with which I shall trespass on
public patience, and your indulgence, for some years; and I own that I
feel anxious to avail myself of this latest and only opportunity of
adorning my pages with a name, consecrated by unshaken public principle,
and the most undoubted and various talents. While Ireland ranks you
among the firmest of her patriots; while you stand alone the first of
her bards in her estimation, and Britain repeats and ratifies the
decree, permit one, whose only regret, since our first acquaintance, has
been the years he had lost before it commenced, to add the humble but
sincere suffrage of friendship, to the voice of more than one nation. It
will at least prove to you, that I have neither forgotten the
gratification derived from your society, nor abandoned the prospect of
its renewal, whenever your leisure or inclination allows you to atone to
your friends for too long an absence. It is said among those friends, I
trust truly, that you are engaged in the composition of a poem whose
scene will be laid in the East; none can do those scenes so much
justice. The wrongs of your own country,[194] the magnificent and fiery
spirit of her sons, the beauty and feeling of her daughters, may there
be found; and Collins, when he denominated his Oriental his Irish
Eclogues, was not aware how true, at least, was a part of his parallel.
Your imagination will create a warmer sun, and less clouded sky; but
wildness, tenderness, and originality, are part of your national claim
of oriental descent, to which you have already thus far proved your
title more clearly than the most zealous of your country's antiquarians.

May I add a few words on a subject on which all men are supposed to be
fluent, and none agreeable?--Self. I have written much, and published
more than enough to demand a longer silence than I now meditate; but,
for some years to come, it is my intention to tempt no further the award
of "Gods, men, nor columns." In the present composition I have attempted
not the most difficult, but, perhaps, the best adapted measure to our
language, the good old and now neglected heroic couplet. The stanza of
Spenser is perhaps too slow and dignified for narrative; though, I
con