Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH '
Hamilton provoked a literary war of burlesque essays and some verse with
two Baltimore poets, the parsons Thomas Cradock and Thomas Chase. The
"Annapolis Wits" versus the "Baltimore Bards" was an early feature of
Green's paper. As we shall see, Hamilton himself contributed much besides
the mimic warfare papers, and almost all of what he did was touched by or
embodied the witty and the ironic.
Jonas Green (I7 I2-I767 ), who had come from Massachusetts to Maryland
before or by I738, was a master printer responsible for perhaps the
handsomest of American books before the Revolution as well as scores
of sermons and pamphlets and several other real books. He was also a versifier
and became official poet laureate of the Tuesday Club. In his news­
paper he published locally authored essays on natural history, all sorts of
poems and translations, sermons, medical essays, political essays, and lit­
erary criticism which made his Maryland Gazette a major vehicle for sig­
nificant southern colonial writing. Besides Tuesday Clubbers, who were
frequent contributors, there were others such as the venerable historian
Hugh Jones.
Green's own scattered pieces show his irrepressible instinct and ability
in punning. His first major poetic effort for the Tuesday Club did not
come until May I6, I749, his "Anniversary Ode." Beginning with a "Rec­
itative," the verses proceed with mock praise of President Charles Cole.
The lines were read by Green himself, and were followed by the "Chorus"
(a song by the resident club musician William Thornton) to a tune im­
provised by an honorary member, Samuel Hart. Green had been given the
title "P.P.P.P.P."-!·purveyor, punster, punchmaker general, printer, and
poet," though in I748 he asked that it be changed to "P.L.M.C." for "Poetica
Laureatus, Magister Ceremonium." He also had most probably a considerable
share in the "Conjoint Muses" of the Club, as the "Lugubris
Cantus" (of January I5, I750/I ) and ItCarmen Dolorosum" (February
20, I752/3). His longest poem is a facetious account of an attempt to
rob Charles Cole on the night of July 3, I75I:
Dictate some gloomy muse, my verse
While I the Tragic scene reherse,
The tragic Scene, that had almost,
Transformed his Lordship to a ghost.
The subsequent lines are mock-heroic in the farcical tradition, concluding
that if it had not been for Cole's servant John, the president would have
been murdered and thereby "all" (the future lavish dinners supplied by
Cole) lost. Though the members voted against including this travesty in
the minutes, in his later versions secretary Hamilton took it upon himself
to spread it on the record.