Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
Ye Brave, whose Deeds shall Vie with Time,
Whilst Mill can turn, or poet rhime,
Your tatters hoard for future Quires;
So Need demands, so Parks desires.
Nice Delia's Smock, which, neat and whole,
No Man durst finger for his Soul;
Turn'd to Gazette now all the Town,
Make take it up, or smooth it down.
In the South-Carolina Gazette of March 20, I740, Dumbleton printed a
lively burlesque on drinking, entitled "A Rhapsody on Rum."
Great Spirit hai1!--confusion's angry Sire,
And like thy Parent Bacchus, born of fire:
The Gaol's Decoy; the greedy Merchant's Lure;
Disease of Money, but Reflection's Cure.
We owe, Great DRAM! the trembling Hand to thee,
The headstrong Purpose; and the feeble Knee.
Though Dumbleton published at least two serious poems during the
I 740s, he is certainly best remembered for these two mock-heroic pieces,
which were reprinted elsewhere in America, and in Britain at least one was
in the Gentleman's Magazine (XIX [Sept., I749J, 424 ). In somewhat
the same spirit as these satiric verses is "The Northern Miracle. A Tale,"
a Rabelaisian narrative poem of the fabliau type popular in the age.
Though it appeared in the South-Carolina Gazette of January 8, 1750,
it had an English setting.97
The essays of "Humourist," printed in the South-Carolina Gazette in
I753-I754, are probably the ablest belletristic writing in that periodi­
cal in the colonial period. The author was a humorist in the older sense
and with grace and delicacy composed serious moral essays and light
prose satire, as well as a little vers de societe. He devotes a great proportion
of his space to the art of letters and gives his own definition of lit­
erary criticism. Here he should be remembered as a good-natured but
perceptive light satirist.
A number of later South Carolina pieces are not concerned essentially
with politics and may be taken as a continuation of the earlier satiric
tradition. One is "A Description of Charles Town in I769" by a Captain
Martin of the British navy. Its first lines set the tone :
Black & white all mix'd together,
Inconstant, strange, unhealthful Weather
Burning heat & chilling cold
Dangerous both to young & 01d.98
1397