Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

• INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH '
dated Bewdley, January I5, I755, and is hardly by a Carolina resident,
but six lines in the South-Carolina Gazette of June 5, I756, dated from
"Charlestown" June 3, and praising Governor Lyttelton, are certainly colonial
in origin.
The best of the South Carolina commendatory and occasional poems are
probably the various prologues and epilogues for plays by Dr. Thomas
Dale mentioned in the preceding chapter. Dr. Dale was probably "Dismal
Doggerel," who wrote the sixteen lines celebrating St. George's Day pub­
lished in the Gazette of March 4, I732. A hundred lines addressed to General
Oglethorpe on his settling the colony of Georgia, written by "a Muse
from India's savage Plain," are easy couplets complimenting the man and
his colony that appeared in the February IO, I733, number of the Gazette.
This is one of several poems written in England and America on Oglethorpe
and his enterprise.
A different sort of occasional poem was printed in the February 8, I 7 35,
issue--"To the Horn-Book"-at the conclusion of an essay. In the Gentleman's
Magazine of I736 was a series of exchanges, as "Miss--of I6, To
a sprightly beautiful Boy, in his third Year" (September, VI, 545 ) signed
"Carolina," and in the February, April, and October issues of the Gentleman's
is an exchange between "Carolina" and other persons. "Carolina's"
relation to the American colony, if any, is not clear. The I742-I743 is­
sues of the Gazette carry a number of occasional poems, perhaps all bor­
rowed, for Lemay has not included them in his Calendar. But the satirist
Joseph Dumbleton on March 20, I 749, had in the Gazette both his "Rhap­
sody on Rum" and his more conventional "Ode for St. Patric's Day. Humbly
inscrib'd to the President and Members of the Irish Society," a remarkable
poem mixing pagan and Christian elements. "Philagathus," who earlier
signed himself "a Native of this Place," published October 7, 175 I, "Distress
and Deliverance, Sept. I6, I75 I," forty lines on the near-wreck of the
ship Great Britain.
"S.J." proposed "An Algebraic Question" in twelve lines of the September
I7, I753, issue of the South-Carolina Gazette, and one hundred lines
"to the Printer" answer the "Widow's Letter" on May 3. "Ode Written on
New-Year's Day" in the January 6, I76I, number would seem to be of
local origin because of its early date of publication. Its first stanza (of
four ) is characteristic:
The setting Year in Shades of Night,
Has hid its head from Mortal's Sight,
And like a Dream is fled;
Past Joys or Griefs, whose Pow'rs controul
And drive with rapid Sway the Soul,
Are mingled with the Dead.