Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH '
Rowland Rugeley (c. 1735 ?-1776), perhaps a secretary to a colonial
governor, had published a number of poems in periodicals and at least
one collection, Miscellaneous Poems and Translations from La Fontaine
and Others (Cambridge and London, 1763), before he came to South
Carolina about 1765. The earlier poems, often facetious, quizzical, or humorous
in some other way, were published in the Universal Magazine
and the London Magazine and are datelined from St. Ives. They differ
not at all in form or quality from verses of the same period (1759-1765 )
appearing in the southern American gazettes. For example, UA Rebus,"
printed in the London Magazine (XXIX (Sept., 1760], 487-488) might
have been lifted from Charleston newspapers.
A vehicle by love employ'd,
A sage curiosity destroy'd,
A word which beaux and belles oft [use]
A pest which merit still pursues.99
Typical titles are "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse," UFriar Philip's
Geese: A Tale from La Fontaine," and "The Ephesian Matron. A Tale
from La Fontaine." Though there are almost surely other yet unidentified
later poems by him in Anglo-American periodicals, he was certainly
known in Charleston for the anonymously published The Story of /Eneas
and Dido Burlesqued: From the Fourth Book of the /Eneid of Virgil, published
in the South Carolina city by Robert Wells in 1774. On the title
page below the title appears "Vive la Bagatelle," and in that suggested
spirit the poet obviously meant to be taken.10o The preface begins in a jocular
and mocking tone, with numerous references to the classics including
Cato, and to Pope, Scarron, and Voltaire, with the avowed aim UTo make
you laugh, Ye Goose." The opening lines are pure mock-epic:
lEneas finished here his ditty
Of old King Priam and his city;
The Tyrians, at a tale so deep,
And wond'rous moving, fell-asleep.
Not so the Queen-with mouth wide op'd,
She swallow'd every word that drop'd;
Bawdy, lusty, replete with descriptions of heroes, queens, and gods in
English terms, this is essentially the tale a-Ia-Fontaine extended, and perhaps
the most mocking and sexual long poem of colonial America. That
it was published in Charleston on the threshold of the Revolution reflects
at least something of the tastes of that city, though as far as local allusions
are concerned it might have been written in Britain.
One remarkable bit of satire emerges from early Georgia, in this in-