Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic '
of the Chesapeake Bay planters. In 1756 Green printed Cradock's A New
Version of the Psalms of David, and in the Maryland Gazette appeared
other poems by the clergyman, such as elegies.
Among his manuscript remains mentioned by Ethan Allen were all
sorts of verses, including "the Culprit, Smectymnus or the Centinel, (a
Satire):' And recently, along with approximately a hundred manuscript sermons,
there have come into the possession of the Maryland Diocesan Library,
housed in the Maryland Historical Society, a number of interesting
poems. One of them shows his acquaintance with the verse of his Maryland
predecessor Richard Lewis, and in a group of related poems Cradock
is in the satiric tradition of Ebenezer Cook, for he employs many of
the same provincial subjects. The title "Maryland Eclogues In Imitation
of Virgil's By Jonathan Spritly, Esqr. Formerly a Worthy Member of the
Assembly Revis'd & Corrected by his Friend Sly Boots" may suggest multiple
authorship, perhaps partly by members of the Tuesday Oub, of which
Cradock was an honorary or nonresident affiliate, but the few students
of Maryland colonial literature who have seen this verse are inclined to
believe the collection is by Cradock alone.95
Despite the number of geographic and family allusions to southern
Maryland in the "Eclogues," the fondness for imitation of classical verse,
the sharp criticism of other clergy, and the fact that the verse is in Cradock's
hand are among the indications that it is his work. The ninth
eclogue's reference to the 1744 treaty negotiations with the Iroquois (see
Chapter II above), in which Cradock acted as chaplain for the Maryland
commissioners, also helps to date the work as well as suggest authorship.
The piece seems to have been prepared for publication for a non-Maryland
audience if the elaborate notes to the entire series explaining people and
things obvious to a Marylander are any indication of the expected reading
public.
There are a few pastoral scenes descriptive of a Maryland clergyman
living "By this purling Rill, / These shady Locusts, and that pleasant Hil1."
But most of the eclogues are travesties of Virgil's Bucolics, contrasting
rustic and Arcadian Rome with the crudities of Maryland rural life. In
place of Virgil's shepherds are indentured servants herding swine in Chesapeake
forests. The first eclogue, "Split-Text," satirizes a corrupt Virginia
clergyman, "Crape," turned out of his living and coming to the happy
home and situation of Split-Text. A dialogue ensues in which Crape bewails
his fate :
Beneath the Shade of these wide-spreading Trees,
Dear Split-Text. You can smoke your chunk at Ease;
I hapless Wretch! must bid such joys Adieu;
Stript of my Credit, & my Income [too?].
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