Essayists and Descriptive Writers
It is strange that the South, with its fondness for the literature of the eighteenth century, did not produce more essayists, especially after the manner of Addison and Steele's The Tatler and The Spectator. As it is, William Wirt is almost the only writer of this form. Others, however, have left, incidentally to other purposes, as the selections below from Crockett, Audubon, and Elliott show, vivid descriptions of certain phases of Southern life.
WILLIAM WIRT
This and the following selection have been taken from Wirt's "Letters of the British Spy." This book of essays pretended to be copies of letters written by a young Englishman of rank, during a tour of the United States, to a member of the English Parliament. The letters presented, in the leisurely eighteenth-century fashion of Addison, geographical descriptions, delineations of public men, moral and political discussions, and literary views. The value of the book to the present generation lies chiefly in the fact that it shows how the eighteenth century ruled in the mind of a Southerner at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The British Spy's Opinion of the Spectator (Page 1)
The Spectator: the series of periodical essays written by Addison and Steele.—Bacon: Francis Bacon, the English philosopher and statesman of the Elizabethan age.—Boyle: Robert Boyle, a noted English scientific and philosophical writer of the seventeenth century.
Questions. 1. What literary ideals does the writer approve? 2. Were these ideals passing away in England and in other sections of the United States while surviving in the South?
An Old Virginia Preacher (Page 4)
The preacher is said to have been Rev. James Waddell, a noted Presbyterian preacher of Virginia who in his latter years was blind.
Orange: a county in Virginia.
Questions. 1. Describe the preacher and his preaching. 2. Has the South been noted for the production of preachers of exceptional power?
