Captain Smith, who next to Sir Walter Raleigh may be confidered as the founder of our colony, has written its hiftory, from the firft adventures to it, till the year 1624. ^^ ^^^^ ^ member of the council, and afterwards prefident of the colony;
and to his efforts principally may be afcribed its fupport againft the oppofition of the natives. He was honeft, fenfible, and well informed; but his flyle is barbarous and uncouth. His hiftory, however, is almoft the only fource from which we derive any knowledge of the infancy of our ftate.
The reverend William Stith, a native of Virginia, and prefident of its college, has alfo written the hiftory of the fame period, in a large o6lavo volume of fmall print. He was a man of claffical learning, and very exaft, but of no tafte in flyle. He is inelegant, therefore, and his details often too minute to be tolerable, even to a native of the country, whofe hiftory he writes.
Beverley, a native alfo, has run into the other extreme, he has comprifed our hiftory, from the firft propofitions of Sir Walter Raleigh to the year 1700, in the hundredth part of the fpace which Stith employs for the fourth part of the period.
Sir William Keith has taken it up at its earheft period, and continued it to the year 1725. He is agreeable enough in ftyle, and paffes over events of little im- portance. Of courfe he is fhort, and would be preferred by a foreigner.
During the regal government, fome conteft arofe on the exacSion of an illegal fee by governor Dinwiddle, and doubtlefs there were others on other occafions not at prefent recollefted. It is fuppofed, that thefe are not fufficiently interefling to a foreigner to merit a detail.
The petition of the council and bur- gefles of Virginia to the king, their me- morial to the lords, and remonftrance to the commons in the year