Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

More documents

Recommendations

Info

· INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH ' dising, gambling, horse racing, slavery, and much else are his themes. His vigorous arguments against slavery include references to ancient history, and his list of those he considered the colony's leading families is significant. There is no suggestion that he felt his own family had lost prestige because of his ancestor's prominent part in Bacon's Rebellion, but there is a deep-seated pride in the people and the land. Here in Virginia everyone will grant That we enjoy what other people want. Climate alone is not the only favor : Lands to produce, streams to transport, our labor. Then he goes into descriptions of the rivers of his sylvan Venice. Quite aware of his shortcomings in prosody and imagery, he must have appreciated with great humility the versified encomiums of Benjamin Waller, Richard Hewitt, and John Dixon, at least two of whom were more facile and sophisticated than he.251 Moral Scottish-born James Reid, who in his prose "The Religion of the Bible and K[ing] W[illiam] County Compared" satirized the materialism and worldliness of fellow colonials, qualities especially evident when they attended church, did compose some verse which is perhaps at times playfully ironic but not really satiric. Writing for the Virginia Gazette in 1768 and 1769, he alternated serious moral and religious essays with a variety of verse, including tender mock-elegies noted above on the death of a pet bird, a revealing poem "To my Pen," and some playful love lyrics in the neoclassical style already noted. On December I, 1768, still using his pen name "Caledoniensis," Reid addressed "A Billet Doux in the modern taste," a half-mocking plea to the lady of his choice. Besides the revealing "To Ignorance" discussed above, perhaps Reid's most graceful poem is religious, his "Ode on Christmas Day" in six-line stanzas. Arise, my muse, with warmth divine No subject mean I am to sing Arise without delay, In lofty strains teach me t'unfold That heavenly beauty shown of old Upon first Christmas day. This he continues through twelve quite dignified and moving stanzas. Generally Reid, like Davies, represents a literary traditon which has persisted in the South and finally flowered in the twentieth century in that region'S pervasive attempt to explore the individual in relation to his immediate society, his cosmos, and his God. When one considers all his verse and prose, it is evident, as already suggested, that Reid is closer in temperament to Faulkner or Robert Penn Warren than to Jefferson in his sense
· Literature, Principally BeUetristic . of evil and human depravity. For he is a southern puritan, not Puritan, as was also Alexander Whitaker in the first generation of southern colonists and as are dozens of the area's writers in the twentieth century. He expressed himself in the accepted forms of his neoclassical age-the periodical essay, the long prose satire, and the religious, occasional, and satiric poem.252 Besides these amatory lyrics and religious and meditative poems several other varieties are represented in eighteenth-century Virginia, especially in the Gazette. Patriotic verse had been composed sporadically since the seventeenth century. Davies, for example, probably wrote the lines appearing in the Scot's Magazine (XVII [October 1735), 488 ), "Verses on Gen. Braddock's Defeat," which was reprinted several times in American newspapers.253 Richard Bland's "An Epistle to Landon Carter," urging the latter to stand for the House of Burgesses, is certainly a patriotic poem.254 Dozens appeared after 1763, a few of which have been mentioned in connection with poets who also wrote before that date. Only one interesting piece, "The Stamp Act Repeal" by Dr. Thomas Burke written for a celebration of this event at Northampton County courthouse on the Eastern Shore, can here be noticed. Part of it was edited by Richard Walser quite recently, but the whole poem appears in Frank Moore's Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (New York, 1855) along with many other later controversial southern poems of the decade before the Declaration of Independence. A few earlier narratives and ballads from the 1740S appeared in the Virginia Gazette or London Magazine or General Magazine, from the scatological to the 1751 "A New Ballad on the British Herring Fishery," none of particular intrinsic or historical interest. Occasional poems include prologues and epilogues for plays (see Chapter VIII) and a variety of songs by Edward Kimber published in the London Magazine in the 1740S concerning episodes in his colonial tour, and a few others of some significance. Perhaps the most interesting historically, and not bad in form, is the "Expeditio Ultramontana," the celebration of Spotswood's western expedition translated from the Latin of Arthur Blackamore by his old Oxonian friend the Reverend George Seagood and published in the Maryland Gazette of June 24, 1729 (before there was a Virginia Gazette) . Topographical as well as occasional, its couplets carry descriptions of the countryside through which the expedition journeyed. The form is roughly epic, announcing the heroic nature of the event and following the protagonist, Spotswood, to and from his destination across the mountains, comparing him in the last couplet with Hercules, who "Had made two Mountains, Pillars of his Praise." The Latin poem must have for some years been circulated in Virginia, for published in the Southern Literary Messenger
Page 1 and 2:
CHAPTER NINE ••• Literature,
Page 3 and 4:
.... ,-... .I ,-... .I ,-... .I Sat
Page 5 and 6:
· Literature, Principally Belletri
Page 7 and 8:
Page 9 and 10:
Page 11 and 12:
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
William Byrd II, by Sir Godfrey Kne
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
• Literature, Principally Belletr
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
· Literatttre, Principally Belletr
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78:
Page 79 and 80:
Page 81 and 82:
Page 83 and 84:
Page 85 and 86:
Page 87 and 88:
· Literature, Principally Belietri
Page 89 and 90:
Page 91 and 92:
Page 93 and 94:
Courtesy of The Virginia Historical
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
. Literature, Principally Belletris
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
· LiteratMe, Principally Belletris
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
· uterature, Principally Belletris
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
t:.); • rt , If..... ... i " ...
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136: · Literature, Principally Belletri
Page 137 and 138: · LiteratureJ Principally Belletri
Page 167 and 168: · Literature, Principally BeUetris
Page 171 and 172: · Literature} Principally Belletri
Page 181 and 182: · Literature} Principally Belletri
Page 185: · Literature, Principally Belletri
show all

Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?