Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literatttre, Principally Belletristic .
the Knickerbocker History and even the Satyricon perhaps more than
Addison and Steele. The "Ephesian Matron" tale from Petronius (which
Byrd was to translate ) is incorporated into "Monitor NO. 9," believed by
some critics to be the best of the series. At least two other essays also refer
to the Satyricon.
Most of the earlier extant numbers are lighthearted satire and may have
been composed by one author, but a group including numbers 10, 12, 16,
18, 20, and 21 seem to be composed in a more serious vein. They instruct
the reader in music appreciation, the difference between French and Italian
opera, "social discord" in relation to human nature, the evils of scandalmongering,
and the popular topic "Good Nature." Stylistic differences
here from most of the more satirical pieces point to at least dual authorship,
perhaps multiple authorship. Parks was himself perhaps a principal author,
and several essays may have been the work of a group of William and Mary
students. One would not be too surprised if it were one day discovered
that certain of the better essays, such as 6 and 9, may have been the work
of college faculty members or of William Byrd II, Sir John Randolph, or
another of the several sophisticated Virginians of talent resident in or frequent
visitors to the little capital. But early in February 1736/7 the authorauthors
closed shop, and the "Monitor" was no more. Perhaps they did
simply run out of material, as a perceptive critic suggests, because there
was a dearth of complexity in the society which was being mirrored. It
seems more probable that someone, perhaps the publisher, thought the
series had run long enough, or that a busy writer or writers had more important
matters to occupy his or their time. If a man such as William Byrd
or Randolph was an author, his interest would almost certainly have
flagged after he had composed a few amusing pieces.
That the "Monitor" was in the British periodical-essay tradition does
not mean that it was entirely derivative. Throughout both Great Britain
and America for more than a century after the Tatler and Spectator their
form and types of personae were employed in creating some delightfully
original essays in language and spirit. The Monitor was urbane, well educated
in the classics, and prone at times to compare provincial with British
society. Irony, burlesque, and all the lighter forms of satire-invective appears
to be absent-are used with some skill. Perhaps the author did discover
early, however, the inappropriateness of the facets of American
social life to the Anglo-European comedy of manners. When Byrd did make
enduring comic art of New World materials, he had turned to new
subjects-the frontier and the frontiersman and the pastoral-agrarian
world of his own plantation.77
Satire in the Virginia Gazette by no means ended with the "Monitor."
Facetious, semi-facetious, mocking, burlesquing verse and prose appear