University of Virginia Library

ADVERTISEMENT.

I have entitled this story a romance, and not a
novel—the reader will permit me to insist upon the
distinction. I am unwilling that “The Yemassee”
should be examined by any other than those standards
which have governed me in its composition; and unless
the critic is willing to adopt with me, those leading
principles, in accordance with which the materials of
my book have been selected, the less we have to say
to one another the better.

Supported by the authority of common sense and
justice, not to speak of Pope—

I have surely a right to insist upon this particular.
It is only when an author departs from his own standards,
that he offends against propriety and deserves
punishment. Reviewing “Atalantis,” a fairy tale, full
of machinery, and without a purpose save the imbodiment
to the mind's eye of some of those
a distinguished writer of this country gravely remarks,
in a leading periodical,—“Magic is now beyond
the credulity of eight years”—and yet, the author set
out to make a story of the supernatural, and never
contemplated, for a moment, the deception of any good
citizen!

The question briefly is, what are the standards of
the modern romance—what is the modern romance
itself? The reply is instant. Modern romance is
the substitute which the people of to-day offer for the
ancient epic. Its standards are the same. The reader,
who, reading Ivanhoe, keeps Fielding and Richardson
beside him, will be at fault in every step of his progress.
The domestic novel of those writers, confined
to the felicitous narration of common and daily occurring
events, is altogether a different sort of composition;
and if such a reader happens to pin his faith, in
a strange simplicity and singleness of spirit, to such
writers alone, the works of Maturin, of Scott, of Bulwer,
and the rest, are only so much incoherent nonsense.

The modern romance is a poem in every sense of
the word. It is only with those who insist upon
poetry as rhyme, and rhyme as poetry, that the identity
fails to be perceptible. Its standards are precisely
those of the epic. It invests individuals with an absorbing
interest—it hurries them through crowding
events in a narrow space of time—it requires the same
unities of plan, of purpose, and harmony of parts, and
it seeks for its adventures among the wild and wonderful.
It does not insist upon what is known, or even
what is probable. It grasps at the possible; and,
placing a human agent in hitherto untried situations,
it exercises its ingenuity in extricating him from them,
while describing his feelings and his fortunes in their

progress. The task has been well or ill done, in proportion
to the degree of ingenuity and knowledge which
the romancer exhibits in carrying out the details, according
to such proprieties as are called for by the
circumstances of the story. These proprieties are the
standards set up at his starting, and to which he is required
religiously to confine himself.

The Yemassee is proposed as an American romance.
It is so styled, as much of the material could
have been furnished by no other country. Something
too much of extravagance—so some may think,—even
beyond the usual license of fiction—may enter into
certain parts of the narrative. On this subject, it is
enough for me to say, that the popular faith yields
abundant authority for the wildest of its incidents.
The natural romance of our country has been my object,
and I have not dared beyond it. For the rest—
for the general peculiarities of the Indians, in their undegraded
condition—my authorities are numerous in
all the writers who have written from their own experience.
My chief difficulty, I may add, has arisen
rather from the discrimination necessary in picking and
choosing, than from any deficiency of the material
itself. It is needless to add that the leading events
are strictly true, and that the outline is to be found in
the several histories devoted to the region of country
in which the scene is laid. A slight anachronism
occurs in the first volume, but it has little bearing upon
the story, and is altogether unimportant.