1804

Burk, John. The History of Virginia from its First Settlement to the Present Day. Vol. 1. Petersburg, 1804. 111-15, 168-70, 181-90. This lively, almost literary, historical account of early Virginia, has two very prophetic insights. First, Burk heralds the pictorial potential that would flower in the 19th century: “The spectacle of Pocahontas in an attitude of entreaty, with her hair loose, and her eyes streaming with tears . . . is a situation equal to the genius of Raphael [and in which] the painter will discover a new occasion for exercising his talents.” And, secondly, Burk foresees the emergence of a Smith-Pocahontas romance: “It is not even improbable, that, considering everything relating to captain Smith and Pocahontas as a mere fiction, [posterity] may vent their spleen against the historian, for impairing the interest of his plot, by marrying the princess of Powhatan to a Mr. Rolfe, of whom nothing had previously been said, in defiance of all the expectations raised by the foregoing parts of the fable.”
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