1842

[Simms, William Gilmore.] "Pocahontas; A Study for the Historical Painter." The Magnolia (May 1842): 305-6. (Views and Reviews in American Literature, History and Fiction. New York, 1845. 88-101.) (Ed. C. Hugh Holman. Cambridge: Belknap Press of the Harvard UP, 1962.) Simms, in his second work on the Pocahontas story, gives a wonderfully dramatic reading of how the scene should be painted, indicating that Chapman's rotunda painting on her baptism (1840) is the wrong topic and without realizing that Chapman had indeed painted the rescue (1836). "She darts from her seat. . . . He looks only upon her. . . . [Powhatan's face] is full of surprise and anger." "What arrests the blow? What has arrested the blow of the murderer, so frequently and in all ages? – what but the interposition of an Angel. A form of light – that loveliest creation of human beauty, a young girl, just budding into womanhood – is this interposing angel."
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