Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
tangled, and inthralled in so intricate a laborinth that I was even awearied
to unwinde my selfe thereout. But almighty God, who never faileth his,
that truely invocate his holy name, hath opened the gate, and led me
by the hand that I might plainely see and disc erne the safe pathe wherein
to treade.9
During the second decade of Jamestown history, when the affairs of
the colony in London were in the hands of the Southampton-Sandys
coalition, most of the extant letters were written by two "liberal" governors
and two university-bred "literary" men. The voyagers, planters, burgesses,
and clergymen, and even an occasional indentured servant are represented,
however, among the epistolarians. Perhaps most interesting among the
lesser officials was George Thorpe, formerly gentleman of His Majesty's
Privy Chamber and member of Parliament, and Virginia resident deputy
in charge of the lands of the proposed college at Henrico. He survives in
three optimistic letters concerned with the state of the colony in the two
years before the massacre. Among other things, Thorpe may be document­
ing the birth of American bourbon whiskey by mentioning that "wee have
found a waie to make so good drinke of Indian corne as I protest I have
divers times refused to drinke good strong English beare and chosen to
drinke that." 10
Governor Sir George Yeardley, the honest man of keen business acumen,
and Governor Sir Francis Wyatt, of an erudite and poetic family and a
man of philosophic mind, reveal themselves in their letters as just what
history has called them. The most entertaining in content and polished in
style among the epistles of this period are those of that versatile gentleman
John Pory, M.A. of Cambridge, M.P. for Bridgewater, author-intelligencer­
translator and experienced lesser diplomat. He arrived in Virginia in April
1619 as secretary of the Council and on July 30 became first speaker of
the new General Assembly, the earliest representative legislative body of
English America. He remained in Virginia until August 1622, exploring,
writing, and talking, and he came back in 1624 and talked and wrote again
before he returned to Britain to pursue his profession of intelligencer, or
news-letter correspondent, for the great and noble.
Though something of a tosspot and a worldly intriguer, Pory in his
letters from the colony shows himself a graceful proseman of charm and
perception. His verbal pictures of "Earth's onlie Paradise" have been fre­
quently quoted, but even a brief consideration of southern epistolary art
would not be complete without at least one famous passage from them (al­
ready quoted at greater length in Chaper I). After acknowledging the
uncouthness of this wild place where ships come in freighted more with
ignorance than anything else, Pory rationalizes romantically.
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