CHEVALIER OF THE MILITARY ORDER OF MERIT, AND OF THE RUSSIAN ORDER OF ST ANNE, &c. &c. NOW FIRST COMPILED FROM HIS ORIGINAL JOURNALS AND CORRESPONDENCE: VOL. I. PUBLISHED BY OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH; MDCCCXXX. PREFACE. SEVERAL years since a work purporting to be a "Life of Paul Jones" appeared in America, compiled by Mr Sherburne, Register of the Navy of the United States. An abridgment of the same work was reprinted in London by Mr Murray. The Life of Paul Jones still, however, remained to be written, for this good reason, that Mr Sherburne possessed no adequate materials for his work. The official correspondence of Paul Jones, while in the service of the United States, a few fragments of papers left by him in America, and discovered in a baker's shop of New York, and his letters to Mr Jefferson, though all probably quite authentic, afford but scanty materials for the memoirs of a life so varied and full of adventure as was that of Paul Jones. While Mr Sherburne was arranging these memoirs, the really private papers of their subject remained in the custody of his relatives in Dumfries. Mr Sherburne, and other individuals, aware of their existence, endeavoured to obtain these documents, but were refused, as there was a view to the present publication. The history of the private papers on which Mr Sherburne rests his narrative is briefly this :When at the end of the war, in 1783, Paul Jones was appointed by Congress agent for prizemoney in Europe, he deposited, among other effects, certain account-books, log-books, and copies of letters, in the custody of his friend, Mr Ross of Philadelphia. His private correspondence, and whatever he thought most interesting, he brought with him to France. On |
