a group of poets and prose writers, who,
in their generation, added to the original off-spring of the American
press--Brockden Brown, Dunlap, Verplanck, Paulding Fessenden, Richard
Alsop, Peter Irving, and the now universally famed Washington Irving.

I must note a circumstance of some import on the state of letters among us
about those times. Longworth had secured from abroad a copy of the first
edition, in quarto, of Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and determined
to reprint it; yet, not satisfied with his own judgment, he convened a
meeting of his literary friends to settle the matter. The committee, after
solemn deliberation, suggested his venturing to reproduce only the
introductions to the cantos, as an experiment, in order to ascertain the
public taste. Would I speak in terms too strong if I affirmed that since
that committee sat, millions of copies of the numerous volumes of Sir
Walter Scott have been bought by the reading world in America. My circle
of literary acquaintance was a good deal enlarged by the coteries I now
and then found at Longworth's, as he was not backward in seizing
opportunities of issuing new works, when from their nature they might
excite the appetite of the curious. No publication of his so effectually
secured this end, as the _Salmagundi_, in 1807, sent forth in bi-weekly
numbers by young Irving and his friend Paulding. When we are apprised that
some few of our middle-aged citizens, who sustained the stroke of that
literary scimetar so long ago, still survive among us, I think we may
argue from strong data for the salubrity of our climate. At Longworth's, I
first saw the youngest dramatic genius of the time, Howard Payne, then
about fourteen years old, and who, a short while after, appeared as young
Norval on the boards of the theatre. He was editor of the _Thespian
Mirror_.

Originally of Ireland, Hugh Gaine, upon his emigration to this country
during our colonial dependence, set up in this city in 1753 his Royal
Gazette, the _New-York Mercury_. His fame as well as his patriotism is
embalmed in the irony of Freneau. It is only as a bookseller that I knew
him, in Hanover Square. He was then at a very advanced age. His savings
rendered him in due time independent in pecuniary matters. We may safely
infer that he was not surpassed in industry, and that he was ever awake to
the main chance, when we are assured that at the commencement of his
journal, he collected his own news, set up his