Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by

ALLEN, MORRILL AND WARDWELL,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

PREFACE.

Soon after the subject of the following Memoir had been called from life, his friends expressed a unanimous desire that some of the fruits of his scholarship should be given to the public. The parish over which he had been ordained, and the Association of ministers with which he had been connected, testified their regard to his memory by formally requesting his sermons for the press. Candidates for the sacred office and clergymen who had but recently commenced their labors were especially earnest for the publication of his essays and discourses. It was often said that the writings of a young man are peculiarly attractive to scholars of his own age, that his excellence, whatever it be, engages more of their sympathetic interest and is therefore more readily imitated, than the excellence of a writer who is further removed from them in age and cultivation. There is sometimes an approach to perfectness in a model which discourages all attempts to equal it, and men are often less benefited by such a copy than by one which is less highly finished. Man has a tendency to imitation which cannot be entirely repressed. Whenever he may properly indulge it, he should look not merely for standards which are free from fault, but also for such as are imitable, and such as afford incentives to original exertion. It is not claimed that the writings of Mr. Homer furnish a model for the imitation of all, but it is thought that they exhibit some good qualities which are seldom found in the pulpit, and that they may stimulate the