Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
From not later than 1735 to the end of the period and after there were
patriotic verses supporting British arms. "For the Honour of Old England"
was printed on September 13, 1735, an unsigned poem in rhymed alter­
nate lines. A fourteen-line piece on the dictates of common sense and law,
really political, was published July 17, 1736. More probably locally authored
is "Demetrius' " twenty-one lines of an acrostic on Frankland,
Payne, and Mitchell in the January 14, 1745, number, celebrating a victory.
"The Highlanders Pedigree," May 19, 1746, following hard upon the last
Jacobite rebellion, declares that the Scots are descendants of Cain, rather
severe in view of the number of these people settled everywhere in the
Carolinas. Locally written, said to have been by "a lad but 12," is the twelve­
line "The Duke's Birth and Victory" sent in by a Williamite (as opposed
to a Jacobite ) and published April 20, 1747. It concludes :
Then may all the true sons of Freedom
For ever brave WILLIAM remember,
Fight, drink, and sing, for great GEORGE our King,
And a F-rt for a Popish Pretender.
This poem contains veiled references to a local merchant who was secretly
a Jacobite.
Thirty-two lines and a four-line refrain, written extempore by a volun­
teer in the army after he had read another "Song" published in an earlier
South-Carolina Gazette, appeared on November 3, 1759. More elaborate
are the 194 lines, probably by Thomas Godfrey noticed above while he
was on a business trip in Charleston, celebrating the victory at Quebec. This
is good verse, reprinted not only in the South-Carolina Gazette but also in
the New Yark Gazette.
Kindred verses, eulogies of individuals and commendatory poems, are
also fairly frequent in the Charleston Gazette. James Kirkpatrick may have
been the author of "To the Reverend and Learned Doct Neal, on his excellent
Sermon preached at Charlestown, on Sunday, the 26th of May,
1734," thirty-five lines signed "Philanthropos." Lemay assigns the poem to
Kirkpatrick on the grounds that it mentions Pope (see verses below ) and
has a religious bent, of course by no means certain clues. The Reverend
Lawrence O'Neill, the subject of the poem, had just emigrated to America.
Dated from Cooper River in South Carolina September 20, 1753, is a
poem in the Gentleman's Magazine of February 1754 (XXIV, 88 ) "To
Benjamin Franklin Esq.; of Philadelphia, on his Experiments and Dis­
coveries in Electricity" signed "C.W.," almost surely Charles Woodmason,
merchant and later Anglican missionary whose prose is noticed in preced­
ing chapters.266 A poem in the Scot's Magazine of January 1755 (XVII,
43 ) honoring the new governor of South Carolina, William Lyttelton, is
1495