in several northern
colleges, notably in Princeton and Yale.

Naturally, the first books written in America were descriptions of the
country and narratives of the vicissitudes of the infant settlements,
which were sent home to be printed for the information of the English
public and the encouragement of {329} further immigration. Among books
of this kind produced in Virginia the earliest and most noteworthy were
the writings of that famous soldier of fortune, Captain John Smith.
The first of these was his _True Relation_, namely, "of such
occurrences and accidents of note as hath happened in Virginia since
the first planting of that colony," printed at London in 1608. Among
Smith's other books, the most important is perhaps his _General History
of Virginia_ (London, 1624), a compilation of various narratives by
different hands, but passing under his name. Smith was a man of a
restless and daring spirit, full of resource, impatient of
contradiction, and of a somewhat vainglorious nature, with an appetite
for the marvelous and a disposition to draw the long bow. He had seen
service in many parts of the world, and his wonderful adventures lost
nothing in the telling. It was alleged against him that the evidence
of his prowess rested almost entirely on his own testimony. His
truthfulness in essentials has not, perhaps, been successfully
impugned, but his narratives have suffered by the embellishments with
which he has colored them, and, in particular, the charming story of
Pocohontas saving his life at the risk of her own--the one romance of
early Virginian history--has passed into the realm of legend.

Captain Smith's writings have small literary value apart from the
interest of the events which they describe, and the diverting but
forcible {330} personality which they unconsciously display. They are
the rough-hewn records of a busy man of action, whose sword was
mightier than his pen. As Smith returned to England after two years in
Virginia, and did not permanently cast in his lot with the settlement
of which he had been for a time the leading spirit, he can hardly be
claimed as an American author. No more can Mr. George Sandys, who came
to Virginia in the train of Governor Wyat, in 1621, and completed his
excellent metrical translation of Ovid on the banks of the James, in
the midst of the Indian massacre of 1622, "limned" as he writes "by
that imperfect light which was snatched from the hours of night and
rep