By themes your soul delights to hear,
And loves like you, in sober mood,
To meditate of _just_ and _good_.

Exalted themes! divinest maid!
Sweet Melancholy, raise thy head;
With languid look, oh quickly come,
And lead me to thy _Hermit home_.

Then let my frequent feet be seen
On yonder steep romantic green,
Along whose yellow gravelly side,
_Schuylkill_ sweeps his gentle tide.

Rude, rough and rugged rocks surrounding,
And clash of broken waves resounding,
Where waters fall with loud'ning roar
Rebellowing down the hilly shore."[1]

[1] Alluding to William Smith's home at Falls of Schuylkill. There is a
further description in prose of Smith's summer home upon page 123 of the
magazine.

The other poems by Hopkinson in the _American Magazine_ are, "Ode on the
Morning" (page 187), "On the taking of Cape Breton" (page 552) and
"Verses inscribed to Mr. Wollaston" (the portrait painter).

The most remarkable poem in the magazine appeared in March, 1758. It
occupied seven octavo pages, and drew in its wake three closely-printed
pages of learned notes. It set forth its subject "On the Invention of
Letters and the Art of Printing. Addrest to Mr. Richardson, in London,
the Author and Printer of Sir Charles Grandison and other works for the
promotion of Religion, Virtue and Polite Manners, in a corrupted age."
The anonymous author lived in Kent County, Maryland. "His intimacy with
Mr. Pope," he says, "obliged him to tell that great Poet, above twenty
years ago, that it was peculiarly ungrateful in him not to celebrate
such a subject as the INVENTION OF LETTERS, or to suffer it to be
disgraced by a meaner hand."

It may not be amiss to note that the author credits Koster with the
glory of the invention of printing.

"Ah! let not Faustus rob great Koster's name
Like him, who since usurp'd Columbus' fame.
Pierian laurels flourish round his tomb;
And ever-living roses breathe your bloom!"[2]

[2] Which reminds us of Sandys's translation of a fifteenth century
epitaph:

"Let Koster's fame live ever in our hearts
Unshar'd; whose art preserves all other arts."

Many wild conjectures have been made as to the identity of the Kentish
man who contributed this long, careful and learned poem to American
literature, but the author has hitherto remained unknown. In the summer
of 1891, while reading in the British Museum, I found a copy of the
_American Magazine_, annotated throughout in