and their own fociety: yet many have been fo fituated, that they might have availed themfelves of the converfation of their mailers; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumftance have always been aflbciated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and fciences are cultivated to a confiderable degree, and have had before their eyes famples of the bed works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not def- titute of defign and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a coun- try, fo as to prove the exiftence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They aftonilh you with ftrokes of the moft fublime oratory; fuch as prove their reafon and fentiment ftrong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But Nn [ 274 J never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never faw even an elementary trait of painting or fculpture. In mufic they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a fmall catch*. Whether they will be equal to the compofition of a more extenfive run of melody, or of com- plicated harmony, is yet to be proved.
Mifery is often the parent of the moft affefting touches in poetry.—Among the blacks is mifery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar ceftrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the fenfes only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compofitions publilhed under her name are below the dignity of criti- cifm. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that * The inftrument proper to them is the Banjar, which they brought hithcp from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar, its chords being pre* cifely the four lower chords of the guitar.
poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in compofition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breath