Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
But the poems of gallantry, serious or satiric, are not all classical or
pastoral in origin. "A Riddle" in the January 22, 1732, issue, by "a Fair
Correspondent," was reprinted in the Pennsylvania Gazette and replied to
by another lady. It is concerned with "the Power of Letters:' Lucretia,
despite her Roman name, in the issue of February 12, 1732, paraphrases
in sixty-two lines the description of a harlot in the Proverbs 7, replying
to Honestlls in an earlier number. On February 19 "Secretus" combines
the pastoral setting and imagery with American subject matter, beginning
with celebration of South Carolina's beauties :
From Courts remote, and Europe's pompous Scenes,
With Pleasure view what Nature's Care ordains.
Here, various Flow'rs their blooming Beauties spread,
The happy Swain, here seeks the Lawrel's Shade;
Where, Nymphs unpractic'd in the Guiles of Art.
Are form'd to warm the coldest Briton's Heart.
Quite un-European is a poem mentioned under satire above, "The CAME­
LEON LOVER" with its defense or mock defense of amours "With the dark
Beauties of the Sable Race" and "Sable's" submission of "Cameleon's Defence,"
a quite feeble apologia.264 On March 25, 1732, "Dorinda" in twelve
lines datelined Santee, March 7, 1731, praises the knowledge and wisdom
of "Belinda," who had written on February 25. Here in the first year of the
Gazette what appear to be female contributors dominate the poetry column,
for these battles or loves of the sexes signed with female names are the
principal poetic subject.
Perhaps not of local origin is the unsigned "The Milk-Maid," eighty-two
lines recounting the old tale of the buxom lass counting her chickens before
they were hatched. On April 20, 1734, fifty-seven lines "To a Young Lady"
again may be borrowed, as may be the poems on the ladies and sensibility
on April 27, though "On an old Lover of a young Lady" on May 18, 1734,
seems locally authored and locally set. On June 15 "a young Person" addressed
"Flavia" in twenty-nine lines, which the lady herself sent to the
Gazette with a letter to editor Timothy saying this first endeavor by a
young person should be printed.
Two facetious poems on Orpheus and Eurydice, one by a bachelor and
the other by a married man, appeared on December I, 1737, as an "ex­
plication of the fable." During the 17 40S and the Whitefieldean furor
there was very little decent light lyric verse, original or borrowed, which
found space in the periodical, though in the issues of August 22 and November
21, 1743, there were some amusing "gallant" exchanges. On
March 4, 175 I, "The Maid's Soliloquy," by "a Lady of this Province,"
proves to be a rather interesting effusion of thirty lines beginning
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