Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

• INTELLECTU AL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH '
1766 brought out 141 specimens of verse, 90 of them printed by Parks,
50 by Hunter, and I by Joseph Royle. Almost all (135) appear in the
extant issues of the years between 1736 and 1756. Three more appeared
in 1740, the additional three in 1757, 1759, and 1762. Perhaps about onethird
of the poems published from 1736 to 1766 are now available, but
they are sufficient to show a great deal about the provincial taste and ability.
A good deal is original, as suggested by the datelines and by letters printed
to introduce and accompany the verse. In some instances it is difficult to
determine whether a piece is native or not, as "The lady's Complaint" sent
in to Parks by a subscriber who did not remember having seen it in print.
It appeared in the October 22, 1736, issue, in which the advertisement of
Poems on Several Occasions was run and in which the "Monitor No. X,"
on appreciation of music, was printed. The South-Carolina Gazette reprinted
the "Complaint" on August 15, 1743, where it is signed "E.R."
On December 10 in the Virginia Gazette "To a lady, On a Screen of
Her Working" was printed, a charming poem full of flower and color
imagery and signed in its "reprint" in the London Magazine of the same
month as by "W--m D-ws-n." It is definitely superior to most of the
poems in Dawson's collection and probably represents his greater maturity
at the time of composition. On April 29, 1737, "On modern Courtship" by
"Amintor" was published in the newspaper, along with the author's avowal
that this was its first time in print. Conventionally pastoral, with Chloe
and Damon as shepherds, it also carries the carpe diem theme present in
most love lyrics. The issue of June 3, 1737, contained "Verses occasioned
by a young Lady's singing to a Spinnet," signed "By a young Gentleman of
Virginia," a piece reprinted on August 26. If this is Dawson's, it is somewhat
inferior to the poem of December 10 but is of some interest as indicative
of musical activity and appreciation. "J .R." signs a piece on a
rejected proposal of marriage on February 17, 1738, and for May 5, "W.B."
sent in a brief love lyric "by . .. a Youth of the Frontiers" entitled "The
Discovery," not a bad poem, which some believe might actually have been
written by the aging William Byrd II, who felt a little ashamed to acknow
ledge the trifle. The transmitter of verse to all the colonial newspapers
was indeed often its author, whatever he pretended. "Amintor"
wrote twelve lines of translation from Ovid's Art of Love for the Gazette
of December 12, 1740, though it survives only in the reprint in the
General Magazine of Philadelphia in its January 1741 (I, 57) issue. Incidentally,
in the same number of the General Magazine is a ten-line
epithalamium celebrating the marriage of William Gooch, Jr. (d. 1744),
to Eleanor Bowles, a poem also reprinted from the Virginia Gazette.
Just a little earlier, in the Gazette issue of September 13, 1739, was
a poem sent in by "H.P." but claimed to be the work of a friend, in which
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