Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Somerset County Historical Quarterly, 1915, Vol. 4
Visiting, last Winter, my friend Mr. George, at Raritan, in New Jersey, I wrote an Ode to the River. I now take the liberty to transmit it to you considerably enlarged, and, I ?atter myself, somewhat revised and corrected. New York, January 4, The Ode may be dismissed by saying that it is an excellent poem of forty - eight rhymed tetrameter lines, with a movement as ?owing and continuous as the river it celebrates. At the writer's suggestion, Mr. William C. Armstrong included it among the selections Of his Patriotic Poems of New Jersey, published in 1903, where it may be read at leisure by the interested.
Curiosity as to the career of a person who could write such good verse was awakened and was increased by finding in the same volume of the European Magazine another letter by Davis, in which the yellow fever plague at New York in 1805 was described. In this letter, also, was a reference to Mr. George, of New Jersey, whose identity became likewise a matter of interest.
Of John Davis much was gradually discovered. He was a self-made English school teacher, writer and traveller, who succeeded in even getting the notice of President Jefferson. He wrote poetry, history and novels, and a book of his travels. This last was published under the title, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of Amer ica; during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802. It was published in London in 1803. Very recently this work has been republished by Henry Holt 8: Company, with an introduction and notes by A. J. Morison. Upon examining this available work there was found frequent mention by Davis of a Lucas George, as having been successively the teacher of schools at Charleston and Georgetown, South Carolina, and Newtowtn, Long Island. No reference to Raritan is found in the Travels, because George began to teach there in 1802, later than the period covered by that book. But it was easy to make the connection, and it was a gratifying discovery to learn that the Mr George of the letters in the magazine was the Lucas George of the Travels.
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