147 



ture. In music they are more generally gifted than the 

 whites with accurate ears for tune and titiic, and they 

 have been found cajjahle of imagining a small catch.* 

 Whether they will be equal to the composition of a 

 more extensive run of melody, or of complicated har- 

 mony, is yet to [)e proved. Misery is often the parent 

 of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the 

 blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. 

 Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their love is 

 ardent, but it kin<lles the senses only, not the imagina- 

 tion. Religion indeed has [)roduced a Phyllis Whately ; 

 but it could not produce a poet. The compositions 

 published under her name ai-e below the dignity of cri- 

 ticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Her- 

 cules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has 

 approached nearer to merit in composition ; yet his let- 

 ters do more iionour to the heart t!ian the head. They 

 breathe the ])urest eftusions of friendsliij) and general' 

 philanthropy, and show how great a degree of the lat- 

 ter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He 

 is often hap[)y in the turn of his compliments, and his 

 style is easy and familiar, except when he affects a 

 Shandean fabrication of words. But his in)agination is 

 wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every 

 restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its 

 vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and 

 eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through tlie sky. 

 His subjects should often have led him to a process of 

 sober reasonitig : yet we find him always substituting 

 sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though 

 we admit him to the first place among those of h's own 

 colour who have presented themselves to the f)ul)lic 

 judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers 

 of the race among whom he lived, and particularlv with 

 the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own 

 stand, we are compelled to enrol him at the bottom of 



* The iti«;trijment proper to ihem is the Baiijar, which they 

 brought hiiher fiom Afiica, and which is the original of the gui- 

 tar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar. 



