of Don Juan. Henry James, in his life of Hawthorne, laments the lack of historic inspiration for prose and verse in this country; yet Byron, sadly turning from the shams and hypocrisies of the Old World, which he scathingly satirized in his great production, burst into a beautiful strain of hope as he contemplated the uncorrupted heroes of the new world beyond the Atlantic. The description begins half humorously with the sixty-first stanza:
"Of all men saving Sylla the man-slayer,
Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boon, backwoodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest among mortals anywhere;
For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoyed the lonely, vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze."
The reader cannot help smiling at the poet's mistake in leaving off the final letter of Boone's name and calling him "General," when all Kentuckians, even including the illustrious pioneer, are "Colonels"; but the spirit of a master interpreter of Nature is in the stanzas that follow.
It was not until 1778 that LouisVille, as it was then called, was founded, George Rogers Clarke
