Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
in book form in many library inventories, they were never as frequently
listed as the T atler and Spectator collections. One of Cato's Letters on
freedom of speech appeared in the South-Carolina Gazette as early as
1736 and the same one twelve years later, with several other pieces from
this source between and after 1736-1748. In fact, so many of these Whig
essays were reprinted that Peter Timothy felt forced to declare that despite
them he was not a Republican "unless Virtue and Truth be Republi­
-can." Abridged and whole selections were borrowed from the Grubstreet
Journal, the Universal Magazine, the Reflector, the Gentleman's Magazine
and the London Magazine, and essays were taken from the Chinese Spy,
the Guardian, the Bee, the North Briton, and other serials or collections.201
But in the South-Carolina Gazette as one might expect the essays most
quoted, referred to, or presented as a whole were Addison and Steele's
two series.
The Maryland Gazette borrowed from most of the same periodicals,
and from the General Magazine, the Westminster Journal, the Dublin
Society's publications, the Remembrancer, the Traveller's Magazine, the
Rambler, and a dozen others. The Gentleman's Magazine, the Westminster
Journal, and the Universal Magazine were favorite sources from which
to borrow essays for Jonas Green's Gazette and as already pointed out,
many of William Parks' earlier "Plain-Dealer" pieces were straight from
the British Free-Thinker.
A study of the Virginia Gazette 1736-1766 reveals that Samuel Johnson's
Rambler was the single most important source for borrowed essays
in that newspaper, furnishing twenty-five. Next in frequency were borrowings
from the Gentleman's and London Magazines and the London
Gazetteer, with a number of others not too often used by the other southern
newspapers. Altogether about 42 percent of the essays for these thirty years
are reprints, a figure one could guess would hold for the Annapolis and
Charleston newspapers. The aim of the Rambler was "to inculcate wisdom
or piety," and its popularity may thus be in part explained, though in part
also by the fact that these were much more nearly contemporary than the
Addison and Steele prose pieces. The first Rambler appeared in 1750. The
first to be reprinted in the Virginia Gazette was No. 67, on April 25, 175 I.
Half a year or more later No. 65 and others appeared. On through 1752
still others were carried, thus all within a year and a half. Their subjects
and forms reveal a good deal about colonial tastes and what models were
easily available for locally authored essays. The first printed was a dreamallegory
about the role of hope in the life of man, the next an Eastern
fable, and the third a disquisition on "complacency" with one's lot in life.
Then there were more Eastern fables and moral essays on the advantages
of mediocrity, the folly of desiring great wealth, the advisability of spending
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