To John Adams from David Humphreys, 5 March 1786

From David Humphreys

Paris March 5th. 1786

Dear Sir

Colonel Smith has been so good as to take charge of a printed copy of Mr Dwight’s Poem and a letter from that gentleman to your Excellency, which I found at my return from London had been forwarded under cover to me. He is also the bearer of a manuscript copy of Mr Barlow’s Vision of Columbus together with letters from the Author and our friend Mr Trumbull on the subject of its publication.1

As you are placed in the enviable situation of being considered as the Mecænas of America2 and as I have often heard you express your wishes that the Poems in question might be published; I find it unnecessary for me to say what might otherwise have been proper with respect to these performances & the Authors of them. Indeed the Public, as well as your Excellency, is already in posession of my opinion of their poetical abilities: but I cannot conceal my anxiety that their works may be ushered into the old world under as favourable auspices as the circumstances will permit. The success or failure will operate powerfully in stimulating or extinguishing the future efforts of genius in America.

While writing the above, I am honoured with the receipt of your letter of the 27th Ulto.3 and will tomorrow make effectual arrangements for securing a passage in the April Packet for a Gentleman, Lady & Servt agreeably to your instructions.

With my best Complts to the Ladies / I have the honor to be Yr Excellencys / sincere friend & / Most devoted servt

D. Humphreys

RC (Adams Papers description begins Manuscripts and other materials, 1639–1889, in the Adams Manuscript Trust collection given to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1956 and enlarged by a few additions of family papers since then. Citations in the present edition are simply by date of the original document if the original is in the main chronological series of the Papers and therefore readily found in the microfilm edition of the Adams Papers (APM). description ends ); internal address: “His Excellency / John Adams Esqr.”

1. For JA’s patronage of American literary efforts, see the letters from Timothy Dwight of [ca. 8–12 Dec.] and Joel Barlow of 12 Dec. 1785, both above, and JA’s 4 April 1786 replies, both below [1] [2].

2. Gaius Maecenas (c. 70–8 B.C.), a Roman patron of poets, encouraged beneficiaries like Virgil and Horace to promote republican virtues in their work (Oxford Classical Dicy. description begins Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3d edn., New York, 1996. description ends ).

3. Not found. In a 4 March letter to Humphreys (NjP:De Coppet Coll.), JA repeated the request to procure passage from Lorient to New York City, presumably for Boston merchant Daniel Denison Rogers and his wife, Abigail Bromfield Rogers. With Humphreys, they sailed in mid-April aboard Le Courier de L’Europe, Capt. De Sionville, and arrived on 23 May (AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, and others, Cambridge, 1963– . description ends , 7:x–xi, 101; New York Journal, 25 May).

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Source Project: Adams Papers
Title: To John Adams from David Humphreys, 5 March 1786
Author: Humphreys, David
Recipient: Adams, John
Date: 5 March 1786

Reference

Cite as: “To John Adams from David Humphreys, 5 March 1786,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-18-02-0101. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 18, December 1785–January 1787, ed. Gregg L. Lint, Sara Martin, C. James Taylor, Sara Georgini, Hobson Woodward, Sara B. Sikes, Amanda M. Norton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016, pp. 200–201.]

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