Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
local interest which sometimes owed as much to Trenchard and Gordon
·as to the greater prose penmen in both form and subject.
From the first extant issue of the Gazette, January 8, 1732, there is edi·
torial encouragement of those who will write in verse or prose for the
newspaper. Perhaps the earliest periodical familiar essay is from upublicola"
of Goose Creek on the nature of censure and satire, written in letter
form, in the issue of January 29, 1732. On February 12 "Lucretia" contributed
on vice, and on February 26 came "z.x:'s" piece on "Slander and
,slanderers." All these were intermingled with outright borrowings from
the SpectatoT, soon followed in 1735 by the "Meddler" pieces strongly indebted
to the same British series. From Crowfield, dated January 15, 1732,
and signed "F.S.," came a moral-educational essay urging promotion of Ita
Disposition to lay Foundations for a good Literature," this one published
()n April 29. The author declares himself a native of Carolina.
In subsequent issues follow essays, sometimes original and sometimes
borrowed, on the old subjects of "Love and Marriage," "Beauty and Wom­
'en," "Government of the Tongue," "Pride," "Death and Immortality,"
"Anger, Envy, and Malice," and "Moderation." On June 9, 1733, in a probably
local piece someone discussed the ideal of the middle way. Carolinian
John Lloyd on July 7, 1733, had his essay on "Nonsense" printed, a disquisition
on high and low satire or wit. He makes specific references to
local persons, as Chief Justice R. Wright. Recognizable in the same years
are the excerpted writings of Trenchard, Gordon, Goldsmith, Johnson,
Wilkes, and selections from the British periodicals named earlier in the
text or bibliography of this chapter.
The "series" on business ethics contributed by "Philander" in 1736 combines
the practical with philosophic speculation-they could be included
in the series groups above, but each has a special point which would allow
consideration as individual pieces. In 1747 in "Discourse on Taste and
Education" an anonymous learned author urged increased emphasis on the
study of languages and mathematics, another mixture (though not necessarily
so of itself) of the utilitarian and the philosophic. Perhaps most
notable among the nonbelletristic pieces carried in the newspaper were the
religious polemics growing out of the Whitefield controversy and the
thoughtful comments on agricultural method.
The ablest known essayist of the period before 1764 in South Carolina
was the learned jurist Chief Justice Nicholas Trott (1662/3-17 39/40 ).
Able compiler and editor of the laws of South Carolina (1736) and of
"the British Plantations in America" (172 I ), he had also in 172 I published
Clavis Linguae Sanctae (a lexicon of the Psalms). But it is one group
of legal-philosophical essays written, as was at least one of Gooch's, as
charges to the Grand Jury of the Province, which show Trott's remarkable
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