ROBERTSON. 297 



of which the author was at full liberty to indulge his 

 fancy in selecting, or indeed in imagining the facts and 

 the scenes he represented. That author, too, is a poet of 

 no mean fame, the late Mr. Southey, who has sung 

 the discovery of America by Madoc ; and his verse is 

 much less fine, and as a poem, than the history which 

 I have been asking the reader to contemplate. The 

 poet leaves out all the most picturesque matters, the 

 truly poetical matters ; and instead of them all, after a 

 mutiny he raises a storm, which so cripples the ships 

 that the seamen cannot sail back if they would. All 

 he says of the discovery is, that the commander 

 watched upon deck till dawn, and then saw the distant 

 land arise like a grey cloud from the ocean. He also 

 makes the sea shallow, though at such distance as that 

 the land looks like a cloud. It really should seem 

 as if he had refrained from looking at Robertson's 

 ' History ' because he was to write a poem on the sub- 

 ject, as he tells us he did from reading Voltaire's poem 

 before, and, indeed, also after he wrote ' Joan of Arc.' 

 There is one reflection which arises very naturally 

 on examining the rare excellence of such narratives as 

 that of Pedro de la Gasca and Columbus's voyage. 

 The subject of the latter is altogether free from warlike 

 interest ; of the former, nearly so ; and of neither scene 

 is the effect at all heightened by the vices or the ex- 

 cesses of the actors. Then who can find any more 

 interesting narrative of events where great crimes are 

 the subject, and who can doubt that the same pen 

 which could so admirably paint the scenes, peaceful and 

 guiltless, which compose the subject of such historical 

 pictures, could in like manner have lent an interest 



