Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH '
Maryland. Twice addressed as "old Poet," he is much closer to the real
Ebenezer Cook than the narrator of the earlier work. Here the narrator
probes more deeply into actual events, especially the legislative enactments
and letters regarding tobacco and inspection laws. The same wealthy planter
who appeared in the first The Sot Weed Factor appears as bedmate of
the speaker, and the two discuss the ills of the province. Lemay feels that
this poem shows in several ways the influence of the verse of Cook's Maryland
contemporary Richard Lewis. It is, like much of Lewis' work, quite
immediately topical, or applicable to current problems, though for this
very reason it is not so interesting today as the earlier work. Legislative
and agrarian problems in Maryland could lend themselves to satire, but
Cook had not discovered the way in which they could be handled. Still,
he wrote almost entirely for a local audience which probably received it
with eagerness.
The Maryland Muse, like Sotweed Redivivus published in Annapolis,
is in each of its two parts or two components of considerable interest.
Part I, "The History of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia.
Done into Hudibrastic Verse, from an old MS" is Cook's longest poem,
based almost surely on a copy of Cotton's account just discussed, a copy
furnished Cook probably by the historian Hugh Jones. Though Cook in
general follows Cotton's narrative, he seems also to have used Beverley's
History. Beginning with a mixture of classical and Hudibrastic references,
the story unfolds, perhaps twisting Cotton's "historical facts" a bit. Bacon
as a comic hero is compared to Cromwell ("Noll" ) and "Quixot." Canto II
describes Bacon's ragtag army, the siege, and the white-aprons and planterswives
episode, and gives a ludicrous description of Berkeleyite Herbert
Farrell and of Bacon's lieutenants who resemble "Quixot's Sancho, Fool
and Knave." Cook satirizes Captain Grantham, who wrote vaingloriously
of his role as peacemaker in the rebellion, and ends with a sigh of relief-so
much for hangings and killings-and with a reference to the second part
of the volume. The essentially tragic nature of the Bacon material Cook
was less able to handle as skillfully or with as sophisticated irony as John
Cotton had done.
But "The History of Bacon's Rebellion" is more than another satire
on a major colonial conflict. Robert D. Arner has argued that through the
many larger historical allusions-to other revolts and rebellions in earlier
European history-Cook was universalizing the meaning of his poem.
The "recurrent follies of human nature" seem a second satirical focus,
even though or because they distort the historical facts in the case. One
should observe, however, that all major satire is of its nature doublevisioned,
that it attacks both the particular and the general. Since there is
a known historical source for this satire, albeit already a warped one, Cook
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