English...

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PREF A CE.

THE principal poems in this volume, under the title of THE ECHO, Owed their origin to the accidental suggestion of a moment of literary sportiveness, at a time when pedantry, affectation and bombast, pervaded most of the pieces published in the gazettes, which were then the principal vehicles of literary information. Willing to lend their aid to check the progress of false taste in American literature, the authors conceived that ridicule would prove a powerful corrective, and that the mode employed in THE ECHO, was the best suited to this purpose. A description of a thunder-storm, in one of the Eastern papers, furnished them not only with the hint, but with a suitable subject for the commencement of their plan. The favourable manner in which this first essay was received, determined them, occasionally, to continue the numbers.

But the ridicule of a vitiated mode of writing was not long the sole object of THE ECHO. The important political changes which soon after occurred, not only in Europe, but in America, produced a corresponding change in the republic of letters; and some of the principal gazettes of this country, exhibited a disgusting display, not only of a perversion of taste