Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
I observe by your last letter that you are to Continue at Cambridge till
July Next, after two years stay at the Temple, I shall hope for you[r}
return to you [r} own Country but this will depend upon Incidents that
may arise in the mean time. . . . When you are settled in the Temple,
you will have a full V lew of the basic sense of Life, and be surrounded by
Many and Various Temptations. Then will be the time to put Your
Virtue to the triaP45
And the father spells out some things about love affairs and dueling. In
nearby Fredericksburg Charles Dick (1715-1783) sent to the Royal
Society of Arts a significant commentary on his fellow Americans which
echoes almost identical comments by the first John Clayton in the seventeenth
century and Hugh Jones in his History in 1724. Dick wrote on
June 22, 1762 : "The Americans in general are not a very industrious
people, they live easy and consequently pretty lazy, not caring to go out of
the way they have been brought up in . .. or at least the Appearance of it;
They are not much given to reading which consequently must hinder the
importation of Books." And, like Clayton almost a century before, he
goes on to explain how he had attempted to persuade southern colonists
to fertilize their lands.146 Then in 1756 a highly literate indentured servant
wrote of the colonists as not so industrious or so religious as the English,
very fond of pageantry and "Grandeur," extravagant financially, and yet
of good morals. One would like to know more of this man and the family
with whom he served his bond.147
The epistles of William Byrd II, including the facetious and sardonic
communications noted in discussion of his satire above, usually are highly
conscious art. Besides the tongue-in-cheek or bitingly jeering pieces, there
are letters to his particular friends Lords Orrery and Egmont and Sir
Charles Wager, or Sir Hans Sloane, which are composed with as much
deliberate art as the mocking letters. For Byrd could be philosophical and
wistful, informative and courtly, in graceful images. This letter of 1726,
portraying himself in the role of pater familias, pastoral variety, is fairly
typical, including its biblical imagery:
I have a large Family of my own, and my Doors are open to Every Body,
yet I have no Bills to pay, and half-a-Crown will rest undisturbed in my
Pocket for many Moons together. Like one of the Patriarchs, I have my
Flock and my Herds, my Bond-men and Bond-women, and every Soart
of Trade amongst my own Servants, so that I live in a kind of Indepen­
dence on every one but Providence . ...
Thus my Lord we are happy in our Canaans if we could but forget the
Onions and Fleshpots of Egypt. 148
Especially in his letters he liked to exercise the repartee of his time : "I love
to have the Ball tost directly to me & I catch it before it reaches the ground."