The Sugar Cane

Samuel Johnson also recognised the subject's novelty in his review in the Critical Quarterly: "A new creation is offered, of which an European has scarce any conception: the hurricane, the burning winds, a ripe cane-piece on fire at midnight; an Indian prospect after a finished crop, and nature in all the extremes of tropic exuberance.

[2] Not long after the appearance of Grainger's work, John Singleton published A general description of the West Indian islands (1767) in which he paid tribute to the poem as a successful model.

By such deliberate allusions Grainger affirms the place of his "West-India georgic" in the British tradition of such writing, and not simply as an isolated piece of colourful Caribbeana.

"[8] One problem that all the writers of British georgics had in common was contemporary interpretations of the Classical model they were following, particularly in the matter of diction, where the use of specialised terms and low concepts were deprecated.

Grainger's presentation of West Indian slavery in The Sugar-Cane appeared a little before formal agitation against the slave trade in England but was informed by his reading of advanced thinkers who questioned its validity, such as Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and George Wallace's A System of the Principles of the Laws of Scotland (1760).

The poet talks of this ungenerous commerce without the least appearance of detestation; but proceeds to direct these purchasers of their fellow-creatures with the same indifference that a groom would give instructions for chusing an horse.

"[16] Modern judgements also point out the discrepancy between Grainger's liberal sentiments and the practical advice on the management of "Afric’s sable progeny", proving The Sugar Cane "ultimately rooted in a form of poetic failure".

[17] While admitting this, his editor John Gilmore has pointed out that many nineteenth-century writers who criticized Grainger for his depiction of slavery did not object to Virgil's writing about his own slave-tended estates.