THE 
MONTHLY 
MAGAZINE 
No. 178.] 
‘DECEMBER 1, 1808. 
** As long as thofe who write ar¢ ambitious of making Conyerrs, and of giving to their Opinions a Maximum of 
** Influence and Celebrity, the moft extenfively circulated Mifcellany will repay with the greace@ Effect the 
“*Curiofity of chufe who read either for Amufement or Initrustion.”” JOHNSON, 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
Some account of the coLUMBIAD, @ Po- 
iM in ten BOOKS; by JOEL BARLOW: 
lately published at PHILADELPHIA, 
VERY nation that can boast of an 
K epic poem of sufficient merit to be- 
‘come a classical work, has Certainly a 
good cause for self-complacency. Such 
a work inspires an additional interest, 
when built on a national subject ; when 
the author, who is destined to gratify his 
countrymen by soaring to this highest 
flight of human genius, can find among 
their own annals an action capable of 
supporting a strength of pinion equal to 
the task. 
The subject of our great English epic 
is not national; neither is that of the 
Germans, the Messias of Klopstock. The 
most distinguished work of that kind 
among the. Italians, the Jerusalem of 
Tasso, is but partly national, though 
wholly Catholic, and sufficiently inte- 
resting for the age of religious chivalry 
in which he lived. The Portuguese Lu- 
siad, the great poem of the Romans, and 
the greater of the Greeks, were all rear- 
ed on patriotic ground. 
I know not whether the French of 
the present day persist in claiming for 
their country the honour of an epic po- 
em: the work that went by that name 
while its celebrated author lived to sup- 
port it by the strength of his own charac- 
ter (I speak of the Henriade of Voltaire) 
was altogether national. To whatever 
cause the fact must be attributed, I 
believe it will not be denied that the 
French epic poem remains yet to be 
‘written 
_ Mr. Barlow has been particularly happy 
in respect to his subject. The discovery of 
_America is in itself a great action; but 
its importance is infinitely augmented: by 
the consequences resulting from the dis- 
covery. These consequences comprise 
by far the most interesting portion of mo- 
- ‘dem history; and their interest is strong- 
ly concentrated in bis country, it being 
Montutx Mag., No. 178. 
that part of the new world which has 
first. manifested its own importance, by 
giving birth to a great and civilized na- 
tion. 
The settlement therefore of the British 
colonies, the wars and revolutions through* 
which they rose to independent states, 
that vast frame of federative republican 
government on which they now stand, 
and which in the eyes of our enthusiastic 
bard is to extend itself over the whole of 
North America, and give an example to 
the world, composes the principal part of 
the active scenery of the poem. But 
other and far more extensive views of 
human affairs, drawn from. other coun= 
tries, and from ages past, present, and 
future, are likewise placed beneath our 
eye, and form no inconsiderable portion 
of this magnificent work; magnificent it 
certainly is beyond any thing which mo- 
dern literature has to boast, except the 
Paradise Lost of Milton, 
{ will first present your readers with 
a general plan or analysis of the po- 
em, and then proceed to. give. such 
extracts from it as shall offer as fair a 
view of its character for imagery and 
style, as can be comprised in a small 
compass. 
The author in his preface makes some 
pertinent remarks on the nature of the 
subject, and the difficulties it presented 
as to the best mode of treating it. “* The 
Columbiad (says he) is a patriotic poem; 
the subject is national and_ historical; 
thus far it must be interesting to my 
countrymen, But most of the events 
were so recent, so important, and so well 
known, as to render them inflexible to the 
hand of fiction, The poem therefore 
could not with propriety be modelled af- 
ter that regular epic form which the more 
splendid works of this kind have taken, 
and on which their success is supposed in 
agreat measure to depend, The attempt 
would. have been highly injudicious; ic 
must have diminished and debased a se- 
ries of actions, which were really great 
in themselyes, and which could not be 
$F disfigured, 
* 
