with everything else, gifted with prophetic vision? Besides, he first gave the Indian to American literature, for you remember that he lived long before Cooper and Longfellow. For the race in general, he had no respect. He dubs the Indian as inconstant, crafty, cautious and covetous, quick-tempered, malicious and treacherous. He made an exception, however, in his Pocahontas story; it may be a myth but it is his finest bit of colouring.

How vivid is the picture of his capture by Powhatan his rescue by the beautiful maiden; of her bringing corn to the famished colonists, and her later royal reception in London as the daughter of an Indian king. It is the first dramatic tale that comes into American literature.

John Smith began his literary work when Shakespeare was, writing; he, too, was a dramatist, but in a different way. While some of his descriptions border on the marvellous, he is always able to make up in romance what he lacks in history, and his compositions have done more to preserve his fame than his brave doings.

His enemies accused him of exaggeration, saying that "He writ too much, and done too little." But whatever he "writ" and whatever he "done," his chivalrous narrative is a most valuable literary relic. We do not like to think that Captain John Smith, our earnest chronicler, "died poor and neglected in England," but so it is told.

The "English Drayton" in a "spirited valedictory" to the three ship-loads of heroic fortunehunters who had sailed from England, in 1606, prophesies for them a literary future:

"And as there plenty grows
Of laurel everywhere,-
Apollo's sacred tree-

You it may see

A poet's brows

To crown, that may sing there."

IV

OTHER WRITERS OF THE VIRGINIA COLONY

AND there were other attempts besides that of Captain John Smith to leave to posterity a literary record. William Strachey, secretary of the colony, wrote and sent to London, in 1610, a manuscript, telling of a fierce storm and shipwreck off the Bermuda Islands "the still vex'd Bermoothes "; and this thrilling description, it is thought, may have furnished a plot to Shakespeare in "The Tempest."

George Sandys, treasurer of the colony, working sometimes by the light of a pine knot, made a most imaginative translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses."

And there were later adventurers and annalists: among them, Colonel William Byrd, a wealthy and brilliant man, and an amateur in literature, who, in 1736, when writing the history of his experience in running a dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina, gives a pleasant picture of colonial life; but he says:

"They import so many negroes hither, that I fear the colony will, some time or other, be known by the name of 'New Guinea." "

Bacon's Rebellion was one of the most striking

episodes in these anti-Revolutionary times; and in 1676, "The Burwell Papers" described it, and in these appeared some elegiac verses on the death of Nathaniel Bacon.

So Virginia, the "Cradle of the Republic," became, also, the "Cradle" of a literature associated with noble names.

Many of the colonists came from the titled ranks of English society. They were the originators of the "F. F. V's," or "First Families of Virginia," and strongly bound both to royalty and the Established Church. Instead of building many towns, these planters spent a manorial existence on their broad estates, devoting their free and careless hours to fox-hunting, horse-racing, and cock-fighting.

Robert Beverly, in his "History of Virginia," published in 1705, emphasises Southern hospitality. Indeed, this was one of the strongest traits in the character of the planter. Families of ample means sent their sons abroad to be educated; and the courthouse rather than the school was the nucleus of social and political life.

It was proposed early in the seventeenth century to build a University, and some Englishmen donated the money for the purchase of the land; but a terrible Indian massacre interfered. So William and Mary College was not begun at Williamsburg until 1660, and did not receive its charter until 1693. It was closely fashioned after Oxford, in England; and

James Blair, its founder, and author of "The Present State of Virginia," was a man alike of force and intellect. And many more old chroniclers there were who wrote about Virginia, the State destined later on to be "The Mother of Presidents.' Doubtless, their documents are historically valuable but they would form curious reading for us.

And what may we find in Jamestown to-day to help us recall our earliest colonial literature? Only a few indefinite relics. Captain Smith selected this as "a fit place for a great city," but it proved too marshy and unhealthful. The land, however, has been recently set apart by the " Virginia Antiquarian Society," in order to preserve the ruins.

Among them, there is seen under water the remains of a powder-house built by Captain Smith. There are, also, some graves in an ancient burialground. The most attractive thing is an old church tower, which legend says stands upon the spot where, under a sail stretched between the trees, the colonists first worshipped. Near this to-day is a statue of valorous John Smith, whose pluck and daring laid the foundation of our earliest literary structure. The inscription reads: "So thou art brass without but gold within."