The Politician Out-Witted

Transcribers' Note:
For your convenience, the transcribers have provided the following links:
Spelling as in the original has been preserved.

SAMUEL LOW
(b. December 12, 1765)
The present play, which was opposed to the Federal union, was, according to some authorities, offered to the actors, Hallam and Henry, and was promptly rejected by them. There is no record of the piece having thereafter succeeded in reaching the theatre. It is mentioned both in Dunlap and in Seilhamer in a casual manner.

In the preface to his published poems, after the diffident manner of the time, Low says: Many of the pieces were written at a very early age, and most of them under singular disadvantages; among which, application to public business, for many years past, was not the least; not only because it allowed little leisure for literary pursuits, but because it is of a nature peculiarly inimical to the cultivation of poetic talent. For his own amusement and improvement he has written—at the request of his friends he publishes.
At St. Paul's Church, and at Trinity Church, his anthems and odes were ever to the fore. He must have been a member of the Tammany Society, or Columbian Order, because a Hymn to Liberty was penned by him, and sung in church on the anniversary of that organization, May 12, 1790.
His Masonic interests are indicated throughout the volume by poems written especially for such orders as the Holland Lodge, and the Washington Chapter of Royal Arch Masons. He was also asked to write an epitaph on John Frederick Roorbach.
His interest in politics may likewise be seen in several poems written about the Constitution of the United States; while his literary taste may be measured by his tribute to Kotzebue, the second Shakespeare, in which occur the lines: