now, hear ar me. You came here as stran gers, but few in number, and asked us for a little piece of land for a garden; we gave it you. By and bye, you asked for more, and it was given. When we were tired of giving you purchased of us great tracts of country for tobacco boxes and rum. The tobacco boxes and rum are gone, and you have the land. Is it any wonder that we are angry at being made fools of, and wish to have our lands back again? Every day the white man and pushes the Indian farther and farther back into the woods, we neither fish nor oysters to eat. Is it any wonder that, when we are hungry, we fall into bad humours and hate the white-men The Dominie tells us that you have a right to our country, because we don't make fences, plough up the ground, and grow rich and happy, like your people, in their own country. If they were so happy at home, I don't see why they came here. s Long Knife! We would like to be friends with you, but you are a bad people? you have two faces, two hearts, and two tongues; you tell us one thing, and you he says, he will do: he never crosses his track. You came here as friends, but you have been our worst enemies; you brought us strong drink, small-pox, and lies: go home again, and take these all back with you. We would, if possíble, as we once were, before you came amongst us. Go! leave us to our woods, waters, our and our ancient gods. If the Great Spirit wishes us to Upon the whole, while we can give no extraordinary praise to this production, it exhibits an occasional power of description, and still b more, a considerable portion of light and easy humour, which makes ds. it bearable and even entertaining. Walking in the track of the author of The Pioneers and The Spy, the power displayed, as in most cases of s imitation, is very inferior. Upon the whole, however, the tone is good, st and the feeling manly; and, we hold it to be a good sign that the American writers are looking out for Stories, (in the annals hand tradition of their comparatively young antiquity, rather than attempting to delineate the factitious gentility and worn-out associations of European society, like Geoffrey Crayon It is for every country to furnish the chief sources of its own characteristic delineations; and the productions of the late C. B. Brown, the New York History of Crayon aforesaid, and the tales of The Pioneers and The Spy, already alluded to, prove that neither materiel for this branch of inventive and descriptive composition, nor adequate power to use it, is any longer à desideratum in Anglo-America. Q. S. I have the honour to revisit you, friend Milton, and should have no objection to renew our conversation respecting the machinery of your poetry, should such conversation happen to consist with your leisure and with your wishes. M. The harp of Orpheus could not be more charming to me, Socrates, than is the sound of your voice. But I perceived clearly, at our former conference, that the morality of the fall of man was not consistent with your philosophy. Perhaps you may entertain a better opinion of that other branch of the subject, toward which Bishop Newton would direct attention, and with which you originally proposed to have begun your animadversions. S. Why, we have in reality been unconsciously coasting along the Bishop's terra firma, almost for the whole of our past voyage, without discovering any port of conviction, wherein we could safely rest at anchor. However, I will endeavour to think with him, and with you, if I should find it practicable, that the redemption justifies the ways of God to man and certainly there is something redeeming to your own philosophy in certain passages of your Paradise Regained. M. In my Paradise Regained! Well, I confess, I was ever partial to that poem † myself. The English critics, I know, have reprehended my partiality, but you now console me. S. (smiling). At least you see I am not angered by your making the Devil I speak well of me there. But it was to quite another part of the Paradise Regained, that I meant to allude. It was to that part wherein you appear to repudiate those false notions to which you seem wedded in the Paradise Lost: It is where you would extinguish that delusive light, that ignis fatuus of false glory, which you had before lit up, and persuaded yourself that you valued so much above the primitive happiness of man. In your later poem, you wisely ely contrive to Dr. Newton, in his annotations on this verse, says that "the ways of God to man are justified in the many argumentative discourses throughout the poem, and particularly in the conferences between God the Father and the Son." +"It is commonly reported that Milton himself preferred this poem to the Paradise Lost; but all that we can assert upon good authority is, that he could not endure to hear this poem cried down so much as it was, in comparison with the other," -Newton's Life of Milton, EXH. See Paradise Regained, B. IV. vv. 273, 280. hahakkar pets and S make Satan address himself to, and endeavour to attract the attention of, Jesus Christ, towards that desire of glory by which men are so easily stimulated. Will you permit me to observe, in passing, that heaven itself appears to be the place where the Devil first caught the idea? But the Son of God, in your. Paradise Regained, disclaims its influence. This is becoming awid að 8051 9 118 CÓ HÍ M.But you don't seem to attend to my distinction between false and true glory.I have written, Huệ KLAS **MY, 191 19 360 4, 10 They err, who count it glorious to subdue 102 378: By conquest," and so forth. This is false glory; and the true I have characterised as follows; beginning indeed with a doubt, which, as I now conceive, cannot be far from meeting your ideas,—and to which I am probably indebted for the commendation with which you have been pleased to speak of Paradise Regained, to my no small gratification. And I then proceed to cite the examples of Job and yourself. S. I know you do; I am much obliged to you; and would willingly show myself grateful for the favour. But should we not also attend here to Satan's reply? You have an English proverb (as I have heard) expressing that the Devil is justly entitled to his due-But allow me to repeat the verses:— "Think not so slight of glory; therein least Glory from men; from all men, good and bad, Glory he requires From us his foes pronounced, glory he exacts." Should it be argued that you did not intend that your Devil should deliver gospel truths, and that we are not therefore to receive them as such; the rejoinder of Jesus must be taken into the account, with its admission of Satan's asseverations, and its feeble, quibbling, abortive attempts to justify the father, by means of that ambiguity, and miserable, evasive, shifting of terms, of which I have before complained, and to which you must be driven whenever you attempt to justify passion more especially a passion so vulgar)-in a Deity. Attend now, your purified ear, to the earlier part of the speech which you have written for your Saviour, and with which you have immediately followed what I have recited from Satan : "With reason, since his word all things produced: Though chiefly NOT for glory, as prime end, 1. But to shew forth his goodness 3. What could he less expect Than GLORY, and benediction, that is, thanks; Could Dryden have had these verses in view, when he made it necessary to combine a Homer and a Virgil, in order to produce a Milton, and pronounced that "the force of Nature could no further go?" The firmness of your philosophy evidently "felt unusual weight," when you penned such passages as this, which I could almost call pettifogging, and bent under the superincumbent obligation. The distinction to which you called my attention can no longer serve your turn; and you will not, I believe, persist in asserting that you have represented your Deity as actuated by that quiet, serene, love of glory, which you have done me the honour to say I preferred, as being compatible with patience and temperance; but will rather acknowledge, that the ambitious and conkind is imputable, which disclaimed cons quering kind is imputable, which Christ for himself disclaims. This is what I lamented at our former conference;" and why? Chiefly because the talent of no other poet enabled him, with half the effect which that of Milton might have produced, to stimulate the imaginations of his readers to the conception of that immense and mysterious power without passion, which can belong to God alone?It is clear that you found, or fancied, yourself obliged to adopt the passionate God of the Pentateuch; and passion being utterly incompatible with my apprehension of DEITY, it is better for me to confess at once that I can never on this point become the proselyte of your fine poetry. boof another of those mystic technicals those sophisticated attributes, which you felt or fancied yourself obliged to adopt along with the vindictive Deity-Eshall perhaps be told that it can be known and understood only by those to whom Heaven vouchsafes to impart it. These are the grand priestly stops to philosophical discussion. As far as plaimsense can penetrate, novices are to pray until their inflated fancies flatter them that they are heard, and that Grace is vouchsafed, but since (as is well known to my disciples) I ever steered clear of all this sort of free-masonry, I shall only add, that the sense which you seem to annex to Grace, must operate, in its vis inertia, as a stop to you also, from all further enforcement of the Free-will of man; that faculty being, according to the present doctrine, absorbed in the Freewill of Heaven, dupyte Jebizoqquz you Did you not perceive the palpable contradictions which you put into the mouth of Perfect Knowledge, and how you subjected yourself, and those whose doctrines you adopted, to the censure you have passed on those disputants of Pandæmonium, who 50% DJs enivasg histroo & ytaitet "Reason'd high Jastas Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate; bluow---bo-Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute; sofinora od And found no end-in wand'ring mazes lost?”; · Did you not discover the reproach of inconsistency to which jected yourself, when you caused the Deity to say of his creatures Adam and Eve "Not free, what proof could they have given sinceredw.ot noitsanSO sved Jand true allegiance, constant faith or love, to me vd 10) only what they needs must do appear'd, som oy betiva protsigre Not what they wouLD? $ Jon blueW 2:1 "Man shall not quite be lost, but say'd who will die nomme 75dt avond Yet NoT of will in him: but GRACE in me *sw soliw.Freely vouchsafd088 V979m 208.eonelovered saivib ed: have I chosen of 1959 inghest above the restunar Grace bas no 2291213 Elect, 2707 "bad oved nobyad bind J The rest shall hear me call 7 s bac temoll a snidmos 63 WIRS Tour 19 While offer'd Gracet adiba neonong will clear senses dark, Invites: for I w What may suffice, and stony hearts To pray, repent, and bring obedience dueð að sen 送 And shall not Grace find means, that finds her way 0172 5.143 To visit all thy ; and to all 900197 Comes unpret Creatureslored, unsought " M. Perhaps there may remain one point, Socrates, to which you have not yet thoroughly attended. We everywhere learn from our sacred Scriptures, that the whole plan and conduct of the grand drama of human redemption, was to display the immensity of the divine MERCY; therefore have I written, that "Mercy first and last shall brightest shine :" and I must be permitted to say that, toward the conclusion of your for mer discourse, you spoke of this attribute with a degree of disrespect, not warranted, as I thought, either by my poem or your own reasoning. Surely you would not now justify that Areopagus which condemned yout for impiety? nu? 5. 1955d kriog aidz no S. I would not. I would always endeavour to join in your professed purpose of justifying the ways of God to man. And this would trust to do, with those upright and pure intentions which, as you justly nober serve, the Holy Spirit must prefer before all temples; I wouldo never implicitly adopt, with blind timidity toward the priesthood, but with reckless temerity toward truth, the wretched masquerade system of unexamined mystical technicals and cant nomenclature, that I found in use in any of those temples, how brightly soever emblazoned with glory. But, Milton, can you for a moment suppose that I meant to contemn the reality of mercy! that truly Godlike attribute? Did I not say miscalled mercy? mynt B 2002 nals woy M. You certainly did, Socrates; and perhaps I may be mistaken in my supposition that you were a little transported with in moment. at the S. Why did I say so? Because, had the mercy of which you treat, and in which you would persuade your readers to place credence, been genuine and sincere, would the divine atonement on which youb dwell with so much plausible emphasis, as being necessary to satisfy a certain abstract idea of immutable justice, by which (to adopt for an instant your own inconsistencies) the Lord of Fate himself was governed-would it have been deferred for four thousand years? Would not the sacrifice have been immediately made? Would not the son, or lamb, of God, have been immolated on the first rude altar erected by Abel or Adamnot on the cross of Pilate ?-Why could not Abel himself, or some other apparently-immediate offspring of Adam-by that process of incarnation to which none but Omnipotence can have miraculous recourse (or by some other miracle, less or more wonderful, as might best have suited your moral or your poetic purpose) have been the expiatory ? Would not a common, calculating, human, mind, far less a Deity, have known that the divine benevolence, and mercy, and glory, if you please, which was sacrifice? Had not this been a much wiserve known that |