Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature,
Principally Belletristic .
version half the present length years before, presumably in South Caro­
lina, and was incited to enlarge and complete it by the incidents of his
return voyage from America in a ship of war commanded by Townshend.
He had found it surprising that no major poem on the subject had been
produced by a nation of excellent poets and of sea adventurers. He had seen
the UNautics" and piscatory eclogues of Parthenius in Latin verse only after
he had concluded this piece and declares he is no more to be accused of
plagiarism than Milton was in Paradise Lost, and he goes on in a digression
on Milton's use of Homer and Virgil and the whole question of parallel
themes and forms in the literature in various languages. Shakespeare,
Sophocles, Horace, Democritus, Persius, Henley, Pope, and a galaxy of
physicians ancient and modern are cited on nature and human nature. He
considers himself-with Doctors Ratcliff, Sydenham, and West-as a
medical practitioner who could also be a man of letters, and he concludes
with a "sportingly translated" passage from Horace :
The God of Verse and medic skill
Oft plies the Muses harmless Quill,
Not still intent to write and kill.
There is more in the preface, such as a defense of his digressions and of
the lack of a real plot, and the supplication that the sublimity of the sea
as an aspect of nature has been an impelling factor in his production.
Though the earlier eighteenth century had appreciated the sea views of
the painter and engraver, Kirkpatrick seems to have been right in declaring
that poets had not felt the grandeur of this aspect of nature. One critic in
the Monthly Review (II [1750), 257, 258) had been unable to classify
the poem and objected to its overuse of cant terms, in both of which Kirk­
patrick had anticipated him in this preface.269
Canto I begins in the tradition of heroic verse and epic theme, with
suggestions of Miltonic or Popean imagery in the first lines of the "Invocation."
The movement or narrative begins with his sailing west from Scotland
and Ireland, somewhat feebly anticipating Coleridge'S indication of
direction and ship movement in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, con­
cluding the canto with a farewell to the Old World. Canto II, that originally
published separately, begins with a declaration of his novel and sublime
theme, linking it with the work of an earlier poet who wrote of the first
southern settlement.
Drayton, sweet ancient Bard, his Albion sung
With their own Praise her echoing Vallies rung;
His bounding Muse o'er ev'ry Mountain rode,
And ev'ry River warbl'd where he flow'd.
The fost' ring Sea, that secretly sustains
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