Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

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· INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH · Mary faculty, though at least a dozen men in and around Williamsburg might have written it. Not one reference to Christian myth or doctrine occurs in the poem, which in phrase is classical and pastoral. Randolph's public and private career and interests are referred to, as well as "His mournful consort." His work for the college and for the city as well as his principal political office is mentioned: Our wretched Seminary wails to find A Loss so great, as its departed Friend The Orphan City for its Parent grieves; His Death the Public of its Weal bereaves. The speechless Chair does fitly bemoan Th' August ASSEMBLY ' S Speaker, and its own. In the Williamsburg newspaper of December 9, 1737, appeared "An Acrostick upon Miss Evelyn Byrd, lately deceased," usually attributed to the subject'S father, William Byrd II, whose other known verse suggests that he was capable of composing these lines. This is a restrained and graceful tribute to a young woman who died aged twenty-eight. Two years later, on September 21, 1739, "An Epitaph" on another young woman, Miss Molly Thacker, was published in the Gazette. Angels and "the Heavenly Choir" are referred to, with the suggestion also found in other southern elegies that the reader should emulate the subject'S character. A week later, September 28, 1739, an eighty-two line elegy on the same young lady was printed. It is an extended lament listing Molly'S virtues, with the specific exhortation to readers to emulate these qualities of her character. Though there are references to her "strugling Coughs" and patient endurance of pain, most of the poem is devoted to the neoclassical cliches characteristic of the eighteenth-century funeral elegy. It is vaguely pastoral, and contains one reference to her "Christian" traits. Both these Thacker poems were published anonymously. Several other Virginia-authored elegies on Virginia subjects were printed in places other than the Gazette in this period. The Philadelphia General Magazine and Historical Chronicle in May 1741 published a twenty-line anonymous occasional poem "to Benjamin Needler, Esq." It is unusual in that it is written in ballad measure of five quatrains. Again anonymous, it contains no Christian references but employs conventional and general terms in lamenting this former secretary of the Virginia Gen eral Assembly. Other prominent persons were mourned in verse in the London Magazine, the verses by the Edward Kimber who had spent some time in the colony or by some colonial he had known in America. The first, in the issue of May 1750 is UA Monody, as a Tribute to the Memory of a most tender Mother, the Han. Mrs. Hannah Lee, late excellent Wife of
· Literature, Principally Belletristic . the Hon. Thomas Lee, Esq.; President of his Majesty's Council, and Commander in Chief in Virginia," possibly written by her son Philip Ludwell Lee, who had been educated at the Inner Temple. Not one word of Christian reference appears, but the classical yew and cypress, Philomela's song, and nymphs and swains are mentioned along with "America's extended plains." Conventional and moderately competent, it is inferior to "An Elegiack Monody: Upon hearing of the Death of the Hon. Thomas Lee . .. by an Acquaintance lately come over from thence" which appeared in the same journal in January 1752. This latter is almost surely by Kimber. The nineteen couplets mourn and extol in characteristic neoclassic fashion, without Christian reference, this patriot whose "publick loss" all Virginia will share.130 Another President of the Council, Colonel Digges, had a son Edward, who in 1744 had carved on the black marble slab over his father's grave an elaborate epitaph-elegy. It stresses the deceased's personal philosophy of the Horatian golden mean, a characteristic of earlier Virginia gentlemen emphasized by Louis B. Wright and Howard M. Jones. Digges, ever to extremes untaught to bend; Enjoying life, yet mindful of his end. In thee the world one happy meeting saw Of sprightly humour and religious awe Cheerful, not wild; facetious, yet not mad; Though grave, not sour; though serious, never sad. Sixteen more lines continue to emphasize the subject'S steady and moderate character in one of the better epitaphs which have been recorded.131 Another gravestone epitaph in memory of a sea captain, Virginia-born John Booth, aged thirty-four when he died in 1748, is entirely nautical in its imagery. Whils't on this variant stage he rov'd From Port to port on Ship board drove. Sometimes the wished-for haven reached, But twice his bark was stranded on the beach. No other coffin but the ship, the Sea his grave But god the merciful and just, Has brought him to the haven safe in dust His sails unfurled his voyage tis o'er His anchors gone he's safe on shore.132 This brings one chronologically to Samuel Davies, Presbyterian parsonpoet of distinction. The Davies-Dymocke controversy already alluded to seems to have been responsible for two mock-elegies or epitaphs which ap-
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Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

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