Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature,
Principally Belletristic .
a lover is consoled for the loss of Bella (or Arabella) and advised to court
Myra instead. Missing issues of the Virginia Gazette between 1740 and
1745 cause us to look elsewhere for reprints, as the two in the General
Magazine just noticed. In this journal for April (1, 278-279) is a Virginia
poem by "A.B." on the war of the sexes beginning "Flavia complains of
dull restraint."
Journalist, chronicler, novelist, and poet Edward Kimber, already mentioned
several times as residing for a considerable period in Virginia and
other southern colonies, in February 1744 in his father's London Magazine
(XIII, 95-97 ) published in 195 lines "The Vindication. An Heroic
Epistle in Answere to one received from her June 2, 1743. On the Banks
of the Al-a. To Miss Susanna Maria T--, of W-- in C--,"
which may well have been written in Carolina and originally published in
a missing Virginia Gazette. In March in the same journal Kimber presented
"Fidenia: Or, the Explanation," a song about a "beautiful Negro
Girl," to be sung to the tune of "Love's Goddess is a Myrtle Grove & c."
In succeeding issues, young Kimber published a number of Americanwritten
and/or -inspired poems, including some to Suzanna Lunn (Kimber?).
Though Kimber is perhaps not to be identified residentially any
more with Virginia than with the other southern colonies, in the total
body of his prose and verse Virginia and Virginians are scenes and subjects
many times.
On February 14, 1751, the Virginia Gazette printed ninety-two lines on
"Love and Honour" by "a Gentleman of Virginia" who may or may not
be William Dawson. Probably a Dr. Thomas Thornton was the "T.T."
who published an epigram to the ladies on March 7, 1751, and also on
March 7 "The Moon is a Woman. Translated," dated from York [town}
March 4. On March 14 "Daphne. To Dr. T.T. occasioned by his Epigram
on the Ladies, supposed to be written after a Dissappointment" kept up
the little game. A pseudonymous poetaster printed "Love without Sight"
on April 25, 1751, and "Chloe's Choice. A new Song." on January 2, 1752.
In the last years of the colonial period and indeed up to the Revolution
most Virginia verse on love and gallantry survives in British periodicals.
Benjamin Waller of Williamsburg, the aforementioned epistolarian in
verse, had published in May 1759 in the Gentleman's Magazine (XXIX,
228-229) his "MyrtiUa to Damon," the manuscript of which exists in the
Waller Papers of Colonial Williamsburg.237 This is one of the most graceful
lyrics written by a Virginian of the mid-century period.
The Virginia lyric poet who contributed frequently to the London Im
perial Magazine, London Magazine, and Universal Magazine and probably
anonymously to the Virginia Gazette between 1761 and 1765 was Robert
Bolling of Chellowe, in Buckingham County, mentioned above for his
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