Epilogue[31]

Well!--strange it is, that men will still apply Things to themselves, that authors never meant: Each country merchant asks me, "Is it I On whom your rhyming ridicule is spent?" Friends, hold your tongues--such myriads of your race Adorn Columbia's fertile, favour'd climes, A man might rove seven years from place to place Ere he would know the subject of my rhymes.-- Perhaps in Jersey is this creature known, Perhaps New-England claims him for her own: And if from Fancy's world this wight I drew, What is the imagin'd character to you?"

From the 1809 edition of Freneau's poems. This piece does not appear in the editions of 1786 and 1788. It ran as a serial for several weeks in the National Gazette, beginning May 17, 1792, and it was immediately reprinted by Bache in his Aurora. I can find no earlier trace of it. It was printed, together with "The Country Printer," in 1794 by Hoff and Derrick, Philadelphia, as a 16-page pamphlet, under the title, "The Village Merchant," and it was given a place in the 1795 edition, dated "Anno 1768." In the 1809 edition it was first divided into sections with sub-titles.

The epilogue was first added in 1795.

Debemur morti nos nostraque!