life; a wish, in which he has been amply gratified by the very obliging silence of some of his nearest connexions."
It is evident, therefore, that the journal, unlike most of the others we publish in this volume, was dressed up for publication, and purposely given a dramatic turn. The official report of the expedition, as sent to Bradstreet, together with letters from Morris to his superior, are in the British Public Record Office, still unpublished.[1]
The small volume of Miscellanies, from which we extract the journal, contains in addition thereto an essay on dramatic art, translations of two of Juvenal's satires, and five odes which are accompanied by transliterations into French prose. Morris had already published two collections of songs—in 1786, and in 1790. In 1792, appeared his Life of Reverend David Williams; and four years later a versified tale, Quashy, or the Coal Black Maid, which has been described as "a negroe love story which bears reference to the slave-trade, and is here but indifferently told."[2] With the publication in 1802, of Songs, Political and Convivial, Captain Thomas Morris passes from public view.
The character of the man throws the incidents of this hazardous journey into still stronger relief. Here is no frontiersman like Weiser and Croghan, familiar with the hardships of the wilderness; no missionary, like Post, seeking rewards not measured by earthly laurels and success; not even a bluff, practical soldier like Bradstreet, who dispatched him on his venturesome mission. Morris was a man of the great world, a fashionable dilettante, dabbling in literature and the dramatic art.
