siderateness of his conduct in all the domestic relations of life. The generosity with which he shared his narrow means with all the members of his family, and tasked his precarious resources to add to their relief; his deep-felt tenderness as a husband and a father, the source of exquisite home-happiness for a time, but ultimately of unmitigated wretchedness; his constant and devoted friendships, which in early life were almost romantic passions, and which remained unwithered by age; his sympathies with the distressed of every nation, class, and condition; his love of children, that infallible sign of a gentle and amiable nature; his sensibility to beauty of every kind; his cordial feeling toward his literary contemporaries, so opposite to the narrow and despicable jealousy imputed to him; above all, the crowning romance of his life, his enthusiasm in the cause of suffering Poland, a devotion carried to the height of his poetic temperament, and, in fact, exhausting all that poetic vein which, properly applied, might have produced epics: these and many more traits set forth in his biography bring forth his character in its true light; dispel those clouds which malice and detraction may at times have cast over it; and leave it in the full effulgence of its poetic glory.
This is all, gentlemen, that the hurried nature of personal occupations leaves me leisure to say on this subject. If these brief remarks will be of any service in recommending the biography to the attention of the American public, you are welcome to make such use of them as you may think proper; and I shall feel satisfaction in putting on record my own recantation of the erroneous opinion I once entertained, and may have occasionally expressed, of the private character of an illustrious poet, whose moral worth is now shown to have been fully equal to his exalted genius.