Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/256

242 Captain Smith, who next to Sir Walter Raleigh may be conſidered as the founder of our colony, has written its hiſtory, from the firſt adventures to it till the year 1624. He was a member of the council, and afterwards preſident of the colony; and to his efforts principally may be aſcribed its ſupport againſt the oppoſition of the natives. He was honeſt, ſenſible, and well informed; but his ſtyle is barbarous and uncouth. His hiſtory, however, is almoſt the only ſource from which we der er ive our knowledge of the infancy of our ſtate.

The reverend William Stith, a native of Virginia, and preſident of its college, has alſo written the hiſtory of the ſame period, in a large octavo volume of ſmall print. He was a man of claſſical learning, and very exact, but of no taſte in ſtyle. He is inelegant, therefore, and his details often too minute to be tolerable, even to a native of the country, whoſe hiſtory he writes.

Beverly, a native alſo, has run into the other extreme; he has compriſed our hiſtory, from the firſt propoſitions of Sir Walter Raleigh to the year 1700, in the hundredth part of the ſpace which Stith employs for the fourth part of the period.

Sir William Keith has taken it up at its earlieſt period, and continued it to the year 1725. He is agreeable enough in ſtyle, and paſſes over events of little importance. Of courſe he is ſhort, and would be preferred by a foreigner.

During the regal government, ſome conteſt aroſe on the exaction of an illegal fee by governor Dinwiddie, and doubtleſs there were others on other occaſions not at preſent recollected. It is ſuppoſed, that theſe are not ſufficiently intereſting to a foreigner to merit a detail.