Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally BelletriJtic .
embellishments in any favorable sense--were added after he returned to
the mother country. Kirkpatrick's instinct was right-there was inherent
in the majesty of the sea a real heroic poem. But he was able neither to find
a genuine plot nor to provide striking images. He reaches out after the
sublime, but he comes nowhere nearly as close to capturing it as his
Virginia contemporary Davies does in far more modest forms.
The Charles Woodmason noticed above also contributed a topographical
poem on South Carolina, far more interesting to the American reader today
than Kirkpatrick's for its specific allusions to Carolinians and the weather,
manufactures, and shortcomings of the colony. It is also better verse than
The Sea-Piece. Santee, Savannah, Peedee, Stono-some of the rivers-and
Cherokees and clergy and some gentlemen of large estates are named.
This poem, entitled "e. W. in Carolina to E.J. in Gosport" (Gentleman'S
Magazine, XXIII [I753), 337, 338) includes competent presentation of
the translatio studii theme in the lines
Swift fly the years when sciences retire,
From frigid climes to equinoctial fire;
When Raphael'J tints, and T itian'J stroke shall faint,
As fair America shall deign to paint.
Here from the mingled strength of shade and light,
A new creation shall arise to sight,
And sculpture here in full perfection shine,
Dug, for her hand, our Apalachian mine.
Two months before in the same journal "C.W." had published an imitation
of Horace, Book I, Ode iv, in good couplets, in content another representa­
tion of Carolina nature here combined with gallantry for Carolina ladies.210
Moral and reflective poems, usually brief, were fairly frequent in the
South-Carolina Gazette. On June 29, 1734, tta fair Correspondent" sent
in two poems, "The Progress of Life" and "The Virgin's Prayer." The final
stanzas of the former are pleasantly expressed :
Then every Care's a driving Harm,
That helps to bear us down,
Which fading Smiles no more can charm,
But every Tear's a Winter's Storm,
And every Look a Frown.
Till with succeeding Ills opprest,
For Joys we hope to find,
By Age so rumed and undrest,
We gladly sink us down to Rest
And leave the Cheat behind.
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