Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), May 17, 1845, vol. 1, no. 20, p. ???-???

[page 314, column 2, continued:]

ESSAYS ON THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY, and on the private and Political rights and obligations of Mankind. By Jonathan Dymond. Collins, Brother & Co., 254 Pearl st.

This is an important book, and we are happy to perceive from the title page that the present issue is the fourth thousand published. If it contained but the one chapter on the Morality of Legal Practice, it would be enough to entitle it to a wide circulation.

How truthful an air of lamentation hangs here upon every syllable! It pervades all. It comes over the sweet melody of the words — over the gentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden herself — even over the half-playful, half-petulant air with which she lingers on the beauties and good qualities of her favorite — like the cool shadow of a summer cloud over a bed of lilies and violets, “and all sweet flowers.” The whole is redolent with poetry of a very lofty order. Every line is an idea — conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn, or the artlessness of the maiden, or her love, or her admiration, or her grief, or the fragrance and