Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov’d,
“O! may we NEVER LOVE AS THESE HAVE LOVED.”
Notes.
For many reasons it has been thought best to reprint this book exactly after the original copy, “VERBATIM ET LITERATIM ET PUNCTUATIM”; and although the modern purist may feel offended at the archaisms of orthography, syntax and punctuation—the last of which appears to have been used with rhetorical and not grammatical significance—, he must content himself with the fact that art would have lost all and science gained nothing by the rewriting of the above pages in the diction of today.
Out of regard for the feelings of the descendants of the originals of certain characters of the novel, who are living today in Boston, the editor has decided to reveal the identity only of those of the personæ who are already known, to a more or less extent, through the literary history of New England. Although curiosity may turn away unsatisfied with the volume, yet the art of it all remains through considering Harrington, father and son, Maria and Harriot, and Mrs. Holmes nothing more than types and not as individuals whose true biographies are written.
Vol. I, page 83, begins the story of “Martin” and “Ophelia,” the real characters of which were recognized at the time to be Mr. Perez Morton and his young sister-in-law, Theodosia Francis Apthorp. In commenting on this fact in the book, Sabin writes in his “Books relating to America” (Vol. XV, Page 377) “This work created quite a sensation, and was suppressed by interested parties. The names of Fanny Apthorp and Perez Morton are not yet forgotten as connected with the matter.”
Perez Morton was born at Plymouth, Nov. 13, 1751. His father settled at Boston, and was keeper of the White Horse Tavern, opposite Hayward-place, and died in 1793. The Son entered the Boston Latin School in 1760, and graduated at Harvard College in 1771, when he studied law; but the revolutionary war prevented his engaging in the practice, and he took an active part in the cause of freedom. In 1775 he was one of the Committee of Safety, and in the same year became deputy-secretary of the province. After the war, he opened an office as an attorney at law, at his residence in State-street, on the present site of the Union Bank.
In 1777 he married Sarah Wentworth Apthorp, at Quincy, noted by Paine as the American Sappho. Mr. Morton was a leader of the old Jacobin Club, which held meetings at the Green Dragon Tavern, and became a decided Democrat. A political poet of Boston thus satirizes Perez Morton:
“Perez, thou art in earnest, though some doubt thee!