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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Most Augustan poetry in America remains unattributed and unstudied. However, a critical study of the poems by Richard Lewis (1700?-34) reveals that he was not only the best Augustan American poet but also the first and most successful American nature poet before Bryant. His “To Mr. Samuel Hastings,” a progress piece on shipbuilding, is the earliest poem on an American industry. “A Journey from Patapsco to Annapolis,” a Thomsonian nature poem, and “Food for Clitics,” which anticipates Freneau, both contain the best elements of Lewis' poetry: a philosophy of scientific deism, praise of nature and the Creator, extended descriptions and catalogues of flowers, wildlife, and rivers presented in fine images which show his exact powers of observation, and the themes of the superiority of American nature, the wilderness as Eden, and the lost innocence of America. Pope refers to Lewis' “A Journey” in the Dunciad. His occasional verses, such as the one in honor of Lord Baltimore which shows Lewis' sense of history and patriotism, and his poems on Governor B. L. Calvert also reveal his merit. His reflection of contemporary poets and philosophers, his anticipation of significant American themes, and the excellence of his poetry all suggest that Lewis was an important poet.
1 George Sherburn wrote an excellent note on Lewis in American Poetry, ed. Percy H. Boynton (New York, 1918), pp. 600–602. Lawrence C. Wroth added some information to this in A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland, 1686–1776 (Baltimore, Md., 1922), p. 65. Walter B. Norris printed several of Lewis' poems from manuscript in “Some Recently Found Poems on the Calverts,” Maryland Historical Magazine, xxxii (1937), 112–135, but the texts are bad, and Norris mistakenly ascribes one of the poems to Ebenezer Cooke. C. Lennart Carlson, “Richard Lewis and the Reception of his Work in England,” AL, ix (1937–38), 301–316, follows Sherburn in tracing the printing history of “A Journey from Patapsco to Annapolis”; but Carlson found no American printings of the poem, and he confused the few biographical facts about Lewis that were supplied him by Joseph Towne Wheeler.
2 See Claude E. Jones, “Charles Woodmason as a Poet,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, LIX (1958), 189–194. For two other accounts, printed before “C. W.” was identified as Woodmason, see Hennig Cohen, “A Colonial Topographical Poem,” Names, I (1953), 252–258, and Cohen's “A Colonial Poem on Indigo Culture,” Agricultural History, xxx (1956), 41–44.
3 Robert A. Law has called attention to the existence of Dr. Thomas Dale as a poet in his “Early American Prologues and Epilogues,” The Nation, xcviii (23 Apr. 1914), 463–464, and in “Thomas Dale, An Eighteenth Century Gentleman,” The Nation, ci (30 Dec. 1915), 773–774. Law added some information about Dale's milieu in “A Diversion for Colonial Gentlemen,” Texas Review, n (1916–17), 79–88. But the only detailed treatment of Dale is concerned with his position in the history of medicine: Robert E. Seibels, “Thomas Dale, M.D. of Charleston, S. C,” Annals of Medical History, N.S., iii (1931), 50–57. The sole article on Kirkpatrick is Joseph Ioor Waring, “James Kirkpatrick and Smallpox Inoculation in Charleston,” Annals of Medical History, N.S., x (1938), 301–308. Nothing of significance has been published about Rowland Rugeley (d. 1776), author of two volumes of poetry. Although Drayton's The Letters of Freeman, Etc. (London, 1771) are well-known, there has been no attempt to study his poetry.
4 See J. A. Leo Lemay, A Poem by John Markland of Virginia (Williamsburg, Va., 1965). Commissary of Virginia, President of the College of William and Mary, and author of several volumes of poetry, William Dawson is not even in the DAB. Henry Potter had written two operas before he came to Virginia. A number of Waller's poems are extant in the MS collections of the libraries of William and Mary Coll. and of Colonial Williamsburg, Inc. Boiling, who has been called “one of the greatest poetical geniuses that ever existed”— Columbian Magazine, n (Apr. 1788), 211—contributed poetry to the London Imperial Magazine in 1761–62 and published extensively in the Virginia Gazette. In his “History of Virginia,” Edmund Randolph wrote that Mercer's writings “first … distinctly elucidated upon paper the principles which justified opposition to the stamp act.” Randolph reports that Mercer's manuscripts circulated widely and produced “a ground work for an uniformity of popular sentiment.” Typescript of Randolph's “history,”Huntington Lib., p. 272. The manuscript of Mercer's famous “Dinwiddiana” (euphemistically referred to in print as “The Little Book”) is in the Huntington Lib. An edition by Richard Beale Davis has just appeared in the Transactions of the Amer. Philosophical Soc, LVII, Part 1 (1967).
5 Worthington C. Ford, “Franklin's New England Courant,” Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc, LVII (1924), 336–353, identifies a number of the writings of “the Mysterious Mr. Gardner.” Capt. Christopher Taylor solves the mystery of Gardner's identity in his letter in the Boston News Letter for 4 Feb. 1722/3, where Taylor also identifies several other essays by Nathaniel Gardner (1694–1770), brother-in-law of Joseph Green.
6 This, I presume, is the reason why Daniel Henchman's 1727 project of a “New England” collection was never published, why Ebenezer Cook did not bring out a second volume of his Maryland Muse, and why William Parks never published his projected Virginia Miscellany.
7 The only complete guide to the contents of any colonial newspaper is Lester J. Cappon's and Stella F. Duff's Virginia Gazette Index, 1736–1780, 2 vols. (Williamsburg, 1950). There are 15 pages of entries under horses and 1 1/2 pages of entries under poems. There is no first-line index to the poems. Works like Hennig Cohen's The South Carolina Gazette, 1732–1775 (Columbia, S.C., 1953), Anna Janney De-Armond's Andrew Bradford, Colonial Journalist (Newark, Del., 1945), and Elizabeth Cristine Cook's Literary Influences in Colonial Newspapers, 1704–1750 (New York, 1912) are of considerable value for the poems they discuss, but they do not attempt to list or to identify the authors of the local poems.
8 The best of the examinations of the magazines is Lyon N. Richardson, A History of Early American Magazines, 1741–1789 (New York, 1931). Numerous theses and articles on individual magazines and special topics have appeared since.
9 Calvert's letter is printed in Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1915), x, 109, n. Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxoniensis: The Members of the University of Oxford 1715–1886, 4 vols. (London, 1889–98), iii, 847. Personal letters from R. U. Sayce, editor of the Montgomeryshire Records, dated 17 May 1965, and from D. S. Porter, dated 20 Oct. 1965, of the Department of Western MSS, BodleianLib., Oxford. Parish Register, 1700–24, All Hallows Parish, Anne Arundel County, p. 16, Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis.
10 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, xxxviii (1733–34), 119–120. Lewis' Musciptda was reprinted (although not entirely accurately) in Bernard C. Steiner, Early Maryland Poetry (Baltimore, 1900). My quotations are from the original.
11 Henry James, Hawthorne (London, 1879), p. 12.
12 Richmond Pugh Bond, English Burlesque Poetry 1700–1750 (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), pp. 219–221, surveys the influence of Holdsworth's poem.
13 The Maryland Gazette for 30 Dec. 1729 is not extant, but the Pennsylvania Gazette, reprinting the poem, notes “From the Maryland Gazette, Decemb. 30.”
14 Maryland Archives, xxxvii, 14, 33, 62, 129, 130, 136.
15 Philosophical Transactions, xxxvii (1731–32), 69–70.
16 Dr. Samuel Chew (1693–1743) later became Chief Justice of the “three lower counties” of Pennsylvania (New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, on Delaware). Maidstone is near West River, Maryland, about 12 miles from Annapolis. A Quaker, Chew was expelled from the religion for his speech on the lawfulness of self-defense. An obituary for his wife Mary appears in the Pennsylvania Gazelle, 30 May 1734, and his advertisement selling drugs (the shop of Samuel Chew and Thomas Bond) appears in the Pennsylvania Gazelle, 27 June 1734. He was perhaps the author of an article in the MarylandGazelle, 17 June 1729, against the practices of the London tobacco merchants. Although the article is signed with the pseudonym “Ferdinando Fair Trade,” it is attributed to “Docf Chew” in a contemporary MS note.
17 The poem is briefly discussed by Robert A. Aubin, Topographical Poetry in XVIII-Century England (New York, 1936), pp. 245–247, who calls it “The first American journey-poem.”
18 C. Lennart Carlson, “Richard Lewis and the Reception of his Work in England,” AL, ix (1937–38), 307.
19 Franklin frequently reprinted from Parks's Maryland, Gazette; e.g., “Verses on St. Patrick's Day: Sacred to Mirth and Good-Nature” were printed in the Maryland Gazette, 17 Mar. 1729/30, and reprinted in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 25 Mar. 1731. Unfortunately, only a few issues of Parks's Maryland Gazelle are extant. See Alfred Owen Aldridge, “Benjamin Franklin and the Maryland Gazelle,” Maryland Historical Magazine, XLIV (1949), 177–189.
20 Quoted in Max Hall, Benjamin Franklin and. Polly Baker (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960), p. 118. Collinson identifies neither the poem nor the author; he says “A curious gentleman from Maryland sent me a poem of his own composing which, at the request of my intimates, was printed here.” Hall, following the suggestion of F. B. Tolles, supposes that the poem was Ebenezer Cooke's Sol-Weed Factor. I believe that it was Lewis' “A Journey.” Lewis corresponded with Collinson; Cooke, so far as we know, did not. Lewis' poem was printed in England shortly before Collinson's letter to Story; no record of an English Sol-Weed Factor of this date has come to light. Finally, it seems to me unlikely that Collinson would send Cooke's mildly scurrilous poem to Story or anyone else—and extremely unlikely that Collinson would describe the Sot-Weed Factor as containing “fine reflections.”
21 Percy H. Boynton, American Poetry (New York, 1918), p. 601. George Sherburn, who wrote the biographical and critical account in Boynton, first discovered that the later printings attributed the poem to Lewis.
22 Boynton, following the Gentleman's Magazine text of the poem, prints “Birds” for “Bird.” “Bird,” however, is found in the Pennsylvania Gazette text, and is necessary for pronoun agreement.
23 See Marjorie Hope Nicolson's discussion in Newton Demands the Muse (Hamden, Conn., 1963), p. 10, of the significance of the changing colors of the sylphs and sylphids in Pope's Rape of the Lock, ii: 59–68.
24 In reprinting an extract from Lewis' Carmen Seculare in the Gentleman's Magazine for Apr. 1733, p. 209, the editor wrote that it was by “Mr. Lewis, Author of the beautiful Poem inserted in our 4th Number, entitled, a Journey from Patapsco to Annapolis.” A poet writing under the pseudonym “Sylvius” in the Gentleman's Magazine for May 1734 (iv, 286) praised Lewis' poetry in the following lines: But chief I value the luxurious feasts Thy care provides for thy poetic guests, Enraptur'd hear thy tuneful muses sing, Inspir'd with draughts from the Pierian spring. Here Maryland delicious views displays, For ever blooming in the poet's lays. For the best contemporary praise of the poem (which appeared in the London Magazine), see the end of the article. The Philadelphia American Weekly Mercury for 19 Feb. 1740 contains a long poem that acknowledges its inspiration from Lewis' “A Journey.”
25 Evert A. Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck, The Cyclopaedia of American Literature, M. Laird Simons, ed., I (Philadelphia, 1875), 77–78.
26 See my “Francis Knapp: A Red Herring in Colonial Poetry,” NEQ, xxxix (1966), 233–237.
27 See Northrop Frye, “Toward Defining an Age of Sensibility,” in Eighteenth Century English Literature, ed. James L. Clifford (New York, 1959), pp. 311–318.
28 Shakespeare was the most popular playwright of the eighteenth century. Lewis refers to “a wretched Play, called Locrine; falsely attributed to Shakespeare” in n. “u” of his Muscipula. Steiner, p. 98.
29 Although it is likely that this poem was printed by William Parks in Annapolis, “Verses” is known only from a MS copy in the library of the U. S. Naval Acad. It was printed by Walter B. Norris, “Some Recently-Found Poems on the Calverts,” Maryland Historical Magazine, XXXII (1937), 118–120, with the title “To John Ross Esqr Clerk of the Council.” I prefer the fuller title cited as a n. to l. 190 of Lewis' “Verses, to the Memory of his Exclly Benedict Leonard Calvert,” Norris, p. 125. Although Lewis' name is not signed to “Verses, to Mr. Ross,” his reference to it in his elegiac poem on Benedict Leonard Calvert (ll. 189–192) makes it indisputably his.
30 Most later accounts of Calvert's death give the date as 1 June, but the Gentleman's Magazine, II (June 1732), 826, gives 2 June.
31 Like the poem to Ross, Lewis' elegy to B. L. Calvert is known only from the MS notebook in the Naval Acad., printed by Norris, pp. 121–127.
32 Norris, p. 121, prints Lay, but the MS reads Lays—a key difference, as I shall note below. Unfortunately, this is not the only error in transcription that Norris makes. I have elsewhere silently corrected Norris' version.
33 Norris, pp. 116–117. The poem is found in the same MS notebook in the Lib. of the U. S. Naval Acad.
34 “Elegy on the death of the Honorable William Lock, Esq., one of his Lordship's Provincial Justices, who departed this Life at his Seat in Anne Arundel County, May, 1732. By Ebenezer Cook, Poet Laureate,” Maryland Historical Magazine, xiv (1919), 172–173.
35 Philosophical Transactions, xxxviii (1733–34), 119–121.
36 Probably Francesco Redi, Opusculorum pars prior, siveexperimenta circa generalionem insectomm … 2 vols. (Amstelaedami, 1686).
37 Printed just before Lewis' Carmen Seculare in the poetry section of the CM for Apr. is “An Address to James Oglethorpe, Esq.; on his settling the Colony in Georgia.” Theearliest extant printing of this poem is in the South Carolina Gazette for 10 Feb. 1732/3, reprinted from there in the New England Weekly Journal for 16 July 1733. Because the poem probably could not have been reprinted in the GM from the South Carolina Gazelle (too little time had elapsed), because the poem appears in the GM with another poem by Lewis, because the poem is by a colonial, and because the style and content of the poem are reminiscent of Lewis, it is quite possible that this poem too is by Richard Lewis.
38 “To the Right Hon. Lord Baltimore,” GM, vii (Dec. 1737), 761; reprinted in the Virginia Gazette, 14 Apr. 1738.
39 This was read at the Royal Society on 13 Mar. 1734, but was not published. LBC. 21. 308–309, Library of the Royal Society, London. A microfilm of this letter is available at the American Philosophical Society, exposures 3575–76.
40 Testamentary Papers, 1734, Anne Arundel, Box 39, folder 4, Maryland Hall of Records. I am indebted to Mrs. Lois Green Carr of the Maryland Hall of Records for the estimate of the amount that Betty Lewis received.
41 Testamentary Proceedings, 1735, Anne Arundel, Liber 30, fol. 23, Maryland Hall of Records.
42 Ibid., fol. 206.
43 “Richard Lewis Son of Richard Lewis late of Annapolis Schoolmaster.” Judgments, Anne Arundel County, I. B. No. 1, 1734 to 1736, fol. 417, Maryland Hall of Records.
44 St. Ann's Parish Records, I, 144, Maryland Hall of Records.
45 Eugene L. Huddleston, “Topographical Poetry in the Early National Period,” AL, xxxviii (1966), 310.
46 [Edward Kimber] “Itinerant Observations in America,” London Magazine, xv (1746), 327–328. For an account of Kimber, see Sidney A. Kimber, “The ‘Relation of a late expedition to St. Augustine,‘ with biographical notes on Isaac and Edward Kimber,” PBSA, xxviii (1934), 81–96. Kimber quotes 11. 120–124, 129–134, of “A Journey from Patapsco to Annapolis.” That Kimber takes the poem from his pocket “every now and then” suggests that the poem may have been published separately: if so, no copy survives.
I am indebted to my colleagues Ralph Cohen and Richard A. Lanham, and to my assistant Irving Jacobson, for their careful reading of this article.