in this country, and even the title of it would have remained unknown
to the common reader of elegant literature but for occasional
allusions to it by Southey and other foreign critics.[2]

In the summer of 1843, while Mrs. Brooks was residing at Fort
Columbus, in the bay of New York,--a military post at which her son,
Captain Horace Brooks, was stationed several years--she had printed
for private circulation the remarkable little work to which allusion
has already been made, entitled "Idomen, or the Vale of the Yumuri."
It is in the style of a romance, but contains little that is
fictitious except the names of the characters. The account which
Idomen gives of her own history is literally true, except in relation
to an excursion to Niagara, which occurred in a different period of
the author's life. It is impossible to read these interesting
"confessions" without feeling a profound interest in the character
which they illustrate; a character of singular strength, dignity and
delicacy, subjected to the severest tests, and exposed to the most
curious and easy analysis. "To see the inmost soul of one who bore all
the impulse and torture of self-murder without perishing, is what can
seldom be done: very few have memories strong enough to retain a
distinct impression of past suffering, and few, though possessed of
such memories, have the power of so describing their sensations as to
make them apparent to another." "Idomen" will possess an interest and
value as a psychological study, independent of that which belongs to
it as a record of the experience of so eminent a poet.

Mrs. Brooks was anxious to have published an edition of all her
writings, including "Idomen," before leaving New York, and she
authorized me to offer gratuitously her copyrights to an eminent
publishing house for that purpose. In the existing condition of the
copyright laws, which should have been entitled acts for the
discouragement of a native literature, she was not surprised that the
offer was declined, though indignant that the reason assigned should
have been that they were "of too elevated a character to sell."
Writing to me soon afterward she observed, "I do not think any thing
from my humble imagination can be 'too elevated,' or elevated enough,
for the public as it really is in these North American States.... In
the words of poor Spurzheim, (uttered to me a short time before his
death, in Boston,) I solace myself by saying, 'Stupidity! stupidity