University of Virginia Library

TO Mrs. WASHINGTON, At Mount-Vernon.

Dear and respected Madam,

In conformity to the intimation given in my letter, dated the 22d of February last, I now dedicate to you a Poem, on the death of your late husband, delivered yesterday, at the house of the American legation in this city, in presence of a respectable number of persons belonging to different nations. Their partiality to the subject led them to listen to it with peculiar indulgence. And from you, I flatter myself, it will meet with no unfavourable reception, even if it should not have the desired effect of diminishing the source of your sorrow, as it contains a representation (though but an imperfect one) of my melancholy sensations—and as it is rather the production of the heart than of the head. When I wrote to you on the 22d of February last, I was ignorant that day had been set apart as sacred to the memory of General Washington. I was unconscious that the voice of mourning was raised at that moment throughout every district in the United States for your and their irreparable loss. Yet, on a day which had been rendered for ever memorable by his birth, it was so natural for the feelings of the whole nation to be in sympathy, that I could not fail of participating in the mournful solemnity which I afterwards found had been recommended by the President to the people of the union.

The anniversary of Independence produces, in some sort, a renovation of the same sentiments. For who can separate the idea of our Washington from that of our Independence? Who can avoid renewing their lamentations, that he, who contributed so largely to the establishment of it, is now no more? That he was raised up by Heaven to be more instrumental than any other mortal in obtaining the acknowledgment of our right to be an independent nation, and in securing the enjoyment of our civil liberty under a good form of government, no one has ever pretended to deny. For the accomplishment of this glorious destiny, it was indispensably necessary that he should have been born just so long before the

revolution, as to have acquired all the qualities of body and mind adequate to the performance of the important part he was called upon to act. This observation has probably often occurred and been expressed. But I beg leave to mention another which has not, to my knowledge, hitherto been made. It seems not unreasonable to suppose (from the wonderful change of sentiments which has since taken place in France) that his death was ordained by Providence to happen exactly at the point of time when the salutary influence of his example would be more extensively felt than it could have been at any other period. So that it may be said of him, with peculiar propriety, that his whole existence was of a piece, and that he died as he lived, for the good of mankind. Perhaps the efficacy of his example could not be so much needed at any moment hereafter as it is at present, to recommend systems of morals and manners calculated to promote the public felicity. Had he died when the Directory governed France, it cannot be doubted that his name, if not loaded with obloquy, would, at least, have been treated with contempt in that country, and, as far as it was possible, consigned to oblivion. The circumstances are now greatly changed, and the good and the brave in that, as in every other nation, consider themselves as having lost in him the ornament and glory of the age. In the British dominions distinguished honours have been paid to his memory. In France itself, a public mourning has been decreed for his death. There those descriptions of men just now mentioned have given utterance to their generous feelings, and the cry of grief and admiration has resounded in the very place where the howling of rage and malediction was but lately heard. In the funeral eulogium pronounced by Fontanes, at the command of the French government (of which I have made and enclosed a translation for your perusal), you will find many correct, useful, and sublime ideas. The men who now possess the supreme power have ordered the models of public virtue (if I may so express myself) personified at different epochas, to be placed before them. The bust of General Washington is associated with those of the greatest human characters that have ever existed. This is a happy presage of better intentions and better times: for ambition and selfishness, shrinking from his presence, could ill support the mute reproaches of that awful marble.

In either extremity of life so immediately does the lot of General Washington appear to have been the charge of heaven! Since the mortal as well as the natal hour is unchangeably fixed, it

becomes our duty to acquiesce in the wise dispensations of the Deity. The illustrious father of his country was long since prepared for this event. You well remember, when his life was despaired of at New-York, he addressed these words to me: “I know it is very doubtful whether ever I shall rise from this bed, and God knows it is perfectly indifferent to me whether I do or not.”—Amidst all the successes and all the honours of this world, he knew, “that no man is to be accounted happy until after death.”

Happy is it that the seal of immortality is set on the character of him, whose counsels as well as actions were calculated to increase the sum of human happiness. Those counsels are now the more likely to be spontaneously obeyed, since his career has been successfully finished, and since it is every where fashionable to speak of his talents and services in terms of the highest applause. In fine, the world is disposed, in this instance, to do justice to the most unsullied worth it has perhaps ever witnessed. While heroes, and statesmen, and nations contemplate with complacency his public life as a perfect model for a public character, it remains for those who knew him in the calm station of retirement to demonstrate how dearly they prized his amiable dispositions and domestic virtues, by imitating his conduct in private life. To be great is the lot of few—to be good is within the power of all. What are the inestimable consolations of a good conscience in the hour of afflictions, no one knows better than yourself; and it ought not to be indifferent to you that posterity too will know, that, in all your social relations, and in discharging all the duties of your sex, the whole tenour of your behaviour has been highly exemplary, and worthy of the most unreserved approbation: indeed, that it has been worthy of the wife of General Washington.

With such consolatory reflections I bid you an affectionate adieu, in renewing the assurances of the great regard and esteem with which