To Samuel Saunter, Esq.
Sir,
As I perceive your plan, like that of Coleman and Thornton, in the "Connoisseur," and like that of your relation, Solomon Saunter, in "Literary Leisure," admits Poetry as well as Prose, which one may feed upon alternately, as we eat bread and cheese, I send you a translation, from the German of Lessing, and some fugitive originals.
I am, yours
Harley.
I ask'd my fair, one happy day,
What should I call her in my lay,
By what sweet name, from Rome or Greece,
Iphigenia, Clelia, Chloris,
Laura, Lesbia, Delia, Doris,
Dorimene or Lucrece?
Ah, replied my gentle fair,
Beloved, what are names but air?
Take thou whatever suits the line,
Clelia, Iphigenia, Chloris,
Laura, Lesbia, Delia, Doris—
But don't forget to call me—thine.
Port Folio, III-25, Jan. 1803, Phila.
THE NAVIGATION
Translated from the French of Gessner.