“The remainder of this scene is honorable to the character of Powhatan. It will remain a lasting monument, that, though different principles of action and the influence of custom have given to the manners and opinions of this people an appearance neither amiable nor virtuous, they still retain the noblest property of the human character, the touch of pity, and the feeling of humanity.
“The club of the emperor was still uplifted; but pity had touched his bosom, and his eye was every moment losing its fierceness. He looked round to collect his fortitude, or perhaps to find an excuse for his weakness in the faces of his attendants. But every eye was suffused with the sweetly contagious softness. The generous savage no longer hesitated. The compassion of the rude state is neither ostentatious nor dilatory; nor does it insult its object by the exaction of impossible conditions. Powhatan lifted his grateful and delighted daughter, and the captive, scarcely yet assured of safety, from the earth.”
[[NOTE 23—CANTO FIFTH, SECT. XV.]]
But glancing round upon his men,
Unbending still he stood,
Upright in native dignity,
Like an old oak of the wood.
Powhatan having refused to go to Jamestown to receive the royal presents which Newport had brought from King James, it was decided that Newport and Smith should go to his residence with a file of men, and invest him with the robe of state and crown agreeably to King James’s request. A brief account of the ceremony is given in the quaint language of Captain Smith, as follows.
“The presents were sent by water, and the captains went by land with fifty good shot. All being met at Werowocomoco, the next day was appointed for his coronation. Then the presents were brought in, his bason and ewer, bed and furniture set up, his scarlet cloak and apparell with much adoe put on him, being perswaded by Namontack they would not hurt him. But a foule trouble there was to make him kneele to receive his crowne, he neither knowing the majesty nor meaning of a crowne, nor bending of the knee, endured so many perswasions, examples, and instructions, as tyred them all. At last, by leaning hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped, and three having the crowne in their hands put it on his head.”
[[NOTE 24—CANTO SIXTH, SECT. VII.]]
And still with sad and anxious thought
And moveless eyes he stood,
Till he saw her by another flash
Enter the midnight wood.
SKETCH OF THE CHARACTER OF POCAHONTAS.
“The character of this interesting woman, as it stands in the concurrent accounts of all our historians, is not, it is with confidence affirmed, surpassed by any in the whole range of history; and for those qualities more especially, which do honor to our nature—a humane and feeling heart, an ardor and unshaken constancy in her attachments—she stands almost without a rival.