In May, 1824, Colonel Stanhope received orders to proceed forthwith to England. Before he left Zante, he put into the hands of his friend, Captain Humphreys, a paper of instructions, chiefly concerning the loan. The following is the sixteenth article:

"Explain Captain Trelawny's plan to the government. Let them endeavor to get some English or American Privateers, to harass the Turkish ships and their coasts. To this end they must appoint some naval port for the fitting out of such vessels, a cash-market for the disposal of prizes, bounty-money for ships that are destroyed, head-money for prisoners taken, and an admiralty court. The government should address Mr. Roscoe, of Liverpool; Mr. Eckford of New-York; and Mr. Godwin, of Baltimore, on this subject, and send commissions to them empowering them to act without delay. The government must endeavor to prevent all piracies. They cost the state dear and throw odium upon it."

Colonel S. left Zante in the Florida on the 25th of May, and reached the Downs on the 28th of the following month, He thus concludes a letter, written the day after his arrival, to the Adjutant General :

"However badly I may have been represented, permit me to assure you that the first desire of my heart has ever been, in Greece as elsewhere, to deserve the esteem of mankind, my country and my king."

Of this we have no doubt. No one can peruse these letters without remarking, in every line of them, strong evidence of an ardent and generous philanthropy. Colonel Stanhope does not, it is true, give frequent testimony of great extent or depth of diplomatic or political knowledge; but on all occasions he displays what is far more rare, and quite as useful, an unextinguishable love of liberty, an unaffected and unquestionable generosity of character, and an indefatigable perseverance in the prosecution of his plans; every where recommended too, by frankness in his language, firmness in his purposes, and all the high-spirited gallantry of a soldier in his general deportment. Those who consult this volume for information beyond what naturally came to him in the execution of his agency, will of course be greatly disappointed; for Colonel Stanhope confines himself in his book, as he confined himself in his commission, directly to the business for which he was employed. Still, those who examine the work for such matters as the Agent of the Greek Committee might be expected to have attended to, will be more than satisfied with the contents of Colonel Stanhope's book, which certainly, in the present dearth of intelligence from Greece, contains much that is new, curious, and important.

It was our intention to conclude this notice with a brief acVol. II. No. XII.

57

count of the progress of the Grecian war since the date of Colonel Stanhope's return to England; for which purpose we have been industriously collecting much interesting and authentic information; but our remarks on the book before us have run out to so great a length, that we are precluded for the present from communicating to our readers, what we have no doubt will be equally acceptable at some future opportunity.

Mengwe; a Tale of the Frontier. A Poem. Princeton, printed. Carey & Lea. Philadelphia. 1825. pp. 76.

This is the second attempt which has fallen under our observation, within a short period, to convert the Indian character and manners to the purposes of poetical fiction. As chroniclers of the cotemporary literature of our country, it is our duty, we consider, to let no work with such aim and object escape our notice;—and we have perhaps been guilty of a sin of omission, in making no comment on Escalala, a legend in rhyme, which was published a few months since, and written, as we are informed, by a citizen of this state.

When, however, nothing very good or very bad can be decidedly said of a book, the reviewer can find but little inspiration for his task; and there is a degree of affectation in assuming as the text of an essay on a general subject, a book containing but one hint on the matter in discussion, which, though sanctioned by the practice of the great critical journals of the day, seems more striking and intolerable in a magazine like ours. It is our intention, however, in a future number, to go over the ground referred to, examine critically the works that have been produced on this theme, and consider, as systematically as we can, the question, whether the Indian character and history are fit materials for poetry.

In the notices appended to a cotemporary Review of the highest standing, we find the tale of "Ontwa" spoken of, in terms of no ordinary commendation. We recollect that at the time when this book came out, we remained in doubt, after a very cursory perusal of its contents, whether there was any poetry, properly so called, to be found in its pages. If we were in error, we would gladly be undeceived; and we intend to read "Ontwa" again more leisurely; and to consider its merits in connexion with the other poems on the same subject.

The author of Mengwe observes in bis preface, that "few have succeeded in making Indians speak and think as we know

they do." He is probably correct in his remark; but if he supposes that by obtaining this only object, the result would be to produce a poem of merit, he surely labors under a most grievous error. The purely prosaic attributes and diction of the savages must be neglected. Even their figurative. language, however strongly it may convey their meaning in their harangues and talks, is sometimes as far removed from that of poetical metaphor and hyperbole as the proverbs of Sancho are from the proverbs of Solomon. The ordinary style of their allusions, or their oratorical commonplace, referring to the simple objects of nature, their implements of war and peace, and their every-day customs, have already become hackneyed; and are extremely limited in their range and in their capabilities of being combined and varied. It is doubtful whether much can be made of them at best. But, from all that can be read and learned and observed of their super, stitions, religion and modes of thought and action, to extract materials for the operations of invention and the embellishment of fancy,-to separate the pure poetical gold from the dross of barbarism, vulgarity and ignorance-requires an analysis of which the common mind is incapable. It belongs only to the original power, which is "born, not made;" the want of which, imitation and study can but imperfectly supply, however much they may effect on themes already tried, by copying the models of great masters, or by collecting and arranging the fragments, rejected or unemployed by them in creating their perfect work.

We wish not to prate about the ideal ; as it is a theme on which writers are apt to run into unintelligible nonsense. All understand, however, that poetry presents the shows of things, and not the things themselves; not pictures as they are painted on the retina of the eye, but as they are reflected from the mirror of the imagination; not material persons as they are connected with a chain of facts, but as they are personifications of abstract conceptions, and allied with mental associations. To make Indians, therefore, talk and act as we know they do talk and act, may be an object easy of attainment; but what its accomplishment has to do with writing a poem, we cannot well conceive, and must refer to the author of Mengwe' for information. Campbell, in the character of Outalissi, has not, as the author supposes, by any means succeeded in this; neither had he ever such an intention. has succeeded in converting into a beautiful creation of his own genius the qualities of the Indian character which his fine perception sketched as suiting his purpose. He has drawn

He

the image of a generous savage, not as he is to be found realized in actual existence, but as it has passed through the alembic of a poet's brain. We are sorry we cannot say as much for any of the characters in Escalala,' or in Mengwe.' They are neither drawn literally from the life, nor are they so presented to the fancy, as to leave the definite impression of any certain character.

The author of the former work, whose production we have not before us at present, has laid his scene in the fabulous ages of this continent, and related the wars of a great nation founded by the descendants of Odin, with the aborigines of this country. His knowledge of Scandinavian and Indian mythology appears both from his text and his notes to be rather slender. One difficulty he had obviously to encounter, had he possessed even the genius of Shakspeare: The hard of Avon, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, where his fancy has luxuriated in its wildest and most picturesque creations, however he may have overleapt all the congruities of time, place, and circumstance, had still Athens and its vicinity for his scene of action, and Theseus and his spouse, and mortals with Greek and English names, for his human agents. There are associations with the names, which, though they have no connection with the plot of the fable, by rendering the names themselves familiar, prevent our being startled by their introduction; and we easily enter into their personification by the poet. It is a very different thing where a poet is compelled to manufacture or adopt an uncouth appellative, carrying no meaning in itself, and unlinked with aught suggested by legend or history, or even etymological resemblance. This difficulty we perceive forcibly in Madoc; where even the unquestionably fine descriptions and narrative parts cannot reconcile us to the sesquipedalia verba, which we are bound to remember as the names of the heroes and heroines. It must exist, more or less, in writing any poem founded on Indian history or tradition; but less where modern associations are connected with the plot. Of the fable of Escalala we at present recollect little, and of the individual characters nothing. We remember a lady, mounted on a mammoth, who, with the co-operation of the wild beast, did great execution among the hostile ranks. This transcends even the proportions to be observed in romance. The versification of the poem is fashioned after the manner of Scott; and there are in it many palpable imitations of his style. The verse is however fluent, and generally correct; and though this production affords insufficient means from which to augur what the poetical success of the author

might be, were he to make a serious task of that which seems to have been merely an amusement, it is too respectable throughout, in its comparison with much other metre that is periodically lauded and forgotten, to warrant any sweeping sentence of condemnation.

"Mengwe," from the extreme carelessness of its versification and rhymes-from its studied obscurity-and from its continually manifest imitations, we should judge to be the production of a youth, were it not that so far from finding any redundancy, and luxuriance of ornament, we doubt whether a single metaphor or simile is to be found in the whole tale; or any attempt to paint in poetic colouring the visible objects of nature. This may be, perhaps, accounted for, on the ground that it is written in imitation of Byron; and the author seems to have been inspired with the singular idea of making a Giaour out of an Indian. The story, so far forth as we can comprehend it, among the asterisks with which the writer has seen fit to garnish his production, is simply this: An Indian of the half blood, in love with, and beloved by the daughter of an inhabitant of the frontiers, rises with his confederates against the settlers, and carries off his mistress from the arms of her father, who dies broken hearted. She loses her senses, and after some time follows her parent to the grave. The ravisher continues to haunt the scene of his former exploits, where he one evening makes a speech to a traveller, who passed that way out of curiosity; in which he complains of the wrongs done to the Indians, prophesies their increase in power and knowledge, and their retribution at some future day, and disappears forever. The slender thread of this fable has no beautiful appurtenances or ornaments, which we can discover, to atone for the want of interest; and with a very few unimportant alterations, the action might as well have been located, (to use a word said to be an Americanism,) in any other country. It has nothing absolutely Indian about it. The writer seems to have some ear for the music of poetry; and we notice that he frequently places a comma where the caesural pause happens-which may be of service to such of his readers as have no ear. There are, however, in almost every page, specimens of carelessness, in the introduction of rhymes positively intolerable, and in abrupt changes of the metre, which no one who understands the melody of versification can endure. For example,

The freemen's birthright in thy soil,

Land of our father's struggle and victorious toil.