of such spirits; and still less ought he heedlessly or unfeelingly to cavil at the more hazardous yet finely accomplished task of such a transfusion of Dante's mind, as is rendered to us in the translation of Mr. Cary. Deficient, however, as we have shewn Mr. Taaffe to be in poetic taste and execution, and in substantiating many of his objections against Mr. C., yet, as far as industry and learning may supply the place of higher and more intuitive faculty, he does not appear unfitted to discharge the weighty duties of the character which he has assumed.

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Thus (page 398.), on Dante's Hebrew line, "Pa pe Satan! Pa pe Satan aleppe !" which appears to have defied the efforts of previous commentators, the new interpretation of Mr. Taaffe renders it clear and satisfactory. "Look out, Satan, look out in the majesty of thy splendors, princely Satan!" "What venerable concision,' observes Mr. T., 'is that of the original! Two long lines,

"Forth, Satan, forth! Thine awful forehead shine!
O princely Satan, for one gleam of thine-"

are scarcely à paraphrase.' We believe, however, that this is a disputed discovery between the commentator and the Abbé Lanci, which we must leave them to settle as well as they can.

The verbal exposition of the next passage, with some others that follow, is more indubitably Mr. T.'s own. (Comment. p. 437.)

"Evil spending and evil hoarding robbed them of the beautiful world." Most annotators interpret "beautiful world," Paradise: but some (among whom I am one) think it signifies this beautiful natural world. I have preferred putting this obvious interpretation on the text to that usually given, (avarice and prodigality shut all these wretches out of Paradise,) because Virgil need scarcely have told that to Dante, who sees them in hell; → and, besides, it were a repetition of what has been said so often.'

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Accompanied by bird's eye views,' as the author terms them, of the various circles of the poet's hell, we come to Mr. T.'s remarks on the punishment of "anger; (Comment. c. vii. p. 451.) and this passage will give no bad idea of his whole style of annotating and explaining,

The obvious signification of Virgil's words is, "It is anger that is punished in this lake: those whom you see on the surface were men who allowed themselves to be habitually overpowered by transports of violence; and the bubbles that you see rising (or rather bourgeoning) all along the water are the hard breathings of crowds, who are there deeply immersed for having been conREV. Nov. 1823. taminated

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-taminated with a still worse description of the same iniquity pent-up anger, or hate." This is of a piece with what we shall see in the river of blood," of a future canto; where the sufferers are plunged more or less deeply, according to their gradations in the same crime, tyranný.

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Again, canto vii. p. 452.

I am quite of Daniello's opinion, that it is the second and worse description of anger that is below the surface, sticking in the hellish mud. We call it hate. "With a furious man thou shalt not go." "It is an implacability of nature (thus Boccaccio) with which the Tuscans are cursed above all other Italians, and the Florentines above all other Tuscans. The Florentines never pardon." Yet Dante's manner of rendering his idea is somewhat I defective in clearness, for (accidioso fummo) "lazy smoke" induces many to contend that it is no description of anger, but? merely sloth that is stifling in the bottom of Styx. But why make sloth more criminal than anger? Dante does quite the contrary in Purgatory: nor would he have subverted there the ethical scale which he had adopted here. Besides, the slothful are evidently j included among the despicable crew, who "ne'er were living yet, and whom we saw in the vestibule.'

We must now take our leave of Mr. Taaffe and this first of his twelve Herculean labors, "things unattempted yet in, prose or rhime:", but we must wish him long life and health, t if we are to indulge the hopes of receiving an annual importation of "Comment" from Italy. Had we more time and space, we could farther remark on the various advantages, which, we think, English literati and English literature might derive from such an accession to its strength in a department of criticism but little explored, and too long and unaccountably neglected. When we reflect how greatly we have been indebted to the transcendant genius of Italy, above that of all other countries, in supplying our early dramatic, epic, romantic, and pastoral writers of every description with models for their pen, and with sources of poetic imagery and feel-, ing, we conceive it to be quite incun.bent on us to direct, a, portion of our critical inquiries to the exact nature, character, t and importance of the productions of Italy's "master-spirits" of their age. Above all these, Dante towers like a giant he deserves, and he will bear, all the tomes of commentary which Mr. T. can lay on him; and when an Italian opens the Divina Commedia, he ought to address him, as the poet addresses Virgil:

“O pregio eterno del luogo, ond' i fui:
Qual merito, O qual grazia mi ti mostra?"

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Purgat. c. vii. v. 181)

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ART. II. Memoirs of a Captivity among the Indians of North America, from Childhood to the Age of Nineteen with Anecdotes descriptive of their Manners and Customs. To which is "added, some Account of the Soil, Climate, and Vegetable Productions of the Territory westward of the Mississippi. By John D. Hunter. 8vo. pp. 446. 12s. Boards. Longman and Co. 1823.

WE E have lately heard much about the Indians of North America, and the wild regions which they inhabit, the country rude as the savage, and the savage rude as the, country but we have not often received accounts of these people from the pen of an individual who has been for years one of themselves, and, in every thing but his actual birth and parentage, an Indian, imbibing their feelings, practising their manners, and living their life. Such a detail, however, unusual and extraordinary as it must be, is now presented to us.

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This singular accession to our host of writers appears before the English public, avowing an imperfect acquaintance with our language, and a total ignorance of the art of bookmaking; intending simply to be the memorialist of his captivity by the Indians of North America, and of his dence among several of their tribes, from the period of infancy to his assumption of the habits of civilized life at the age of manhood. There is something, however, so very striking and singular in his narrative; and the account of his expeditions, in the battle and the chace, with the Pawnees and the Kansas, the Ottowas and the Osages, the Shawanees and the Kickapoos, has so romantic an air; that a certain degree of incredulity might naturally have been anticipated, as to the veracity of the relator. It may well excite astonishment, indeed, that a person kidnapped in his infancy; torn away from all civilized society before he could lisp his mother's tongue or articulate his mother's name; plunged into the deep forests of America by a tribe of savages, and learning no other than their barbarous and imperfect language; following for nearly twenty years the wandering life which they passed, roots and the wild buffalo his food, and the skins of hunted animals his clothing;-it must excite astonishment, we say, that' a person so brought up should, in the short space of a few years from his escape, have been able to compose a volume in the English language, in which terms of art and science are frequently and appropriately used, and subjects relating to physics, morals, jurisprudence, natural history, commerce, manufactures, &c. are introduced as occasion requires. On the first notification of this forthcoming book, therefore, it was suspected to be the fabrication of some ingenious impostor;

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impostor; and people who could gulp down without an effort the enormous lies of" The Fortunate Youth," of recent notoriety, affected to have a contracted swallow when this narrative was presented to them: which, after all, is only a mouse to a mammoth, a gnat to a camel. When Mr. Hunter himself made his appearance, however, with letters of introduction from gentlemen of the highest character and station in the United States, all suspicion was removed; and, happening to know persons who have become well acquainted with him in this country, we learn on their indisputable authority that none who have passed a single afternoon in his company, whatever might have been their previous impressions, have any longer had the slightest doubt that he is exactly what he represents himself to be: or that his story, recorded as it is entirely from memory, the savages among whom he lived having no written language, is perfectly faithful.

With the circumstances which led to his captivity, the author is altogether ignorant. The Indians on their own frontier-settlements regard with great and well-grounded jealousy the slightest invasion of their boundaries on the part of the Whites; fatal experience having taught them that the first invasion, even when it has been effected with their consent, invariably leads to farther encroachments, and then to expulsion from their old hereditary domains, if not to the positive extermination even of their tribe. The white outsettlers, also, are frequently men of indolent and dissolute habits, procuring an uncertain livelihood, like the Indians themselves, by fishing and hunting. This wandering mode of life makes them acquainted with their manners and languages; and first a few scattered individuals, then one or two, and afterward more families, venture in pursuit of game into the territories of the Indians, till the jealousy of the latter is excited, and they are often provoked, by petty frauds and thefts. A silent and certain vengeance is then at hand: the Indian broods over his wrongs in secresy, but never forgets them till he has been amply revenged in the blood of his enemy. The first complaints are individual and feeble: when they grow clamorous, a council is convened, the subject is debated, the measure of redress determined, and instantly carried into execution: but sometimes secret combinations of young warriors, anxious to acquire celebrity and distinction, anticipate this form, and the first intelligence which the chiefs have of their scheme is their return from the expedition with scalps and prisoners. It is probable that in some such excursion as this the writer was captured, and his parents killed.

I was taken prisoner at a very early period of my life by a party of Indians, who, from the train of events that followed, belonged to, or were in alliance with, the Kickapoo nation. At the same time, two other white children, a boy and a small girl, were also made prisoners.

I have too imperfect a recollection of the circumstances connected with this capture, to attempt any account of them; although I have reflected on the subject so often, and with so great interest and intensity, under the knowledge I have since acquired of the Indian modes of warfare, as nearly to establish at times a convietion of my mind of a perfect remembrance. There are moments when I see the rush of the Indians, hear their war-whoops and terrific yells, and witness the massacre of my parents and connections, the pillage of their property, and the incendious destruction of their dwellings. But the first incident that made an actual and prominent impression on me happened while the party were somewhere encamped, no doubt shortly after my capture; it was as follows: The little girl whom I before mentioned, beginning to cry, was immediately dispatched with the blow of a tomahawk from one of the warriors: the circumstance terrified me very much, more particularly as it was followed with very menacing motions of the same instrument, directed to me, and then pointed to the slaughtered infant, by the same warrior, which I then interpreted to signify, that if I cried, he would serve me in the same manner. From this period till the apprehension of personal danger had subsided, I recollect many of the occurrences which took place.

Soon after the above transaction, we proceeded on our journey till a party separated from the main body, and took the boy before noticed with them, which was the last I saw or heard of him.

The Indians generally separate their white prisoners. The practice no doubt originated more with a view to hasten a reconciliation to their change, and a nationalization of feelings, than Twith any intention of wanton cruelty.'

This poor orphan was adopted into the family of a warrior named Fongoh, who claimed him as his property, having captured him; and his wife, a squaw of intermediate stature and dark complexion, proved to him a kind and affectionate mother. As he grew larger, the Indian boys would occasionally upbraid him with being white, and the whites with them are all squaws, a term of reproach used in contradistinction to that of warrior. He was therefore often involved in boyish conflicts, which were fairly conducted; the victor always receiving the praises of the men, and even the vanquished, if he had conducted himself bravely, obtaining his due share of encouragement. While travelling with the different tribes, the author says that he recollects to have met three or four white children of his own age, who had been *R 379 9 2015 28 aola forced