THE COLLECTED ESSAYS of ST. GEORGE TUCKER Edited, With
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THE COLLECTED ESSAYS OF ST. GEORGE TUCKER Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Carl Dolmetsch CONTENTS FOREWORD CHRONOLOGY OF ST. GEORGE TUCKER INTRODUCTION A DREAM THE DREAMER No. 1: Address to the Public No. 2: [The War of the Gothamites and the Bruti] No. 3: [The Dilemmas of the Gothamites] No. 4: [The Temple of Union] THE HERMIT OF THE MOUNTAIN --- - ------- I. Dr. Cecil's Legatee: The "Nuga" Notebook Essays II. Essays On Diverse Matters, Chiefly Social and Political. [Essay No.l] : To Solomon Squaretoes, Esqr. [from a Female Admirer] Essay No. 13: [The Character of Avarice] Essay No. 14: [In Praise of Virginian Women] Essay No. 16: [American Language and Literature] Essay No. 23: [On Eloquence] Essay No. 9: [The Spirit of Patriotism] Essay No. 26: [On Benevolence and Slavery] Essay No. 12: [A Dream Voyage to Lilliput] Essay No. 27: [The Jilting of Susannah Trifle] III. Four Allegories Essay No. 5: The History of Contentment. An Allegory Essay No. 15: Generosity and Oeconomy. An Allegory Essay No. 24: Youth, Health and Temperance. An Allegory Essay No. 28: [Ignorance. An Allegory] ii iii IV. Moses Dolittle's Narrative. Essay No. 17: [rvfoses Dolittle's Narrative: Part I.] Essay No. 18: [Mo s es Do l it t le ' s Na r r .:i t iv e : Part I I . ] V. The ?eligion of a Deist. Essay No. 19: [Are We Alone in the Universe?] Essay No. 20: [Dialogue of the Skeptic and the Believer! Essay No. 21: The Vision of Selim, Son of Alrashi<l VI. The Duel: Two Cautionary Tales. Essay No. 22: [The Sad Tale of Honorius and Amintor] Essay No. 25: [The Unfortunate Plight of Amanda] ESSAYS ATTRIBUTABLE TO ST. CEORCE TUCKER -- ---- --~--- ----·- ----- --------- - - ------- ----~- I. "The Old Bachelor," No. XXV I I, from the Richmond Enquirer, December 17, 1811. II. "The Rainbow," No. VIII, "Truth and Eloquence. An A1legory," from the Richmond Enquirer, October 7, 1804. NOTES CHRONOLOGY OF ST. 1,EOPCE TUCKEJ~ 17 52 - July 10 (June 29, o. s.), born at "The Crove, '' Port T{oyal, Bermuda, youngest of six children of Henry and Anne (Butterfield) Tucker. 1771 - October 14, departs for New York en route to Williamshurg, Virginia. 1772 - January, enters William and Mary College for six months' general study; then studies 1aw with Ceorge Wythe. 1773 - Returns (August-November) hrieflv to Bermuda. 1774 April admitted to the har of the county courts in Wil liamsbuq: and Petersburg, Va. 1775 - April 10, admitted to practice before the Ceneral Court of "irginia; in June, returns to Bermuda to enter father's shipping husiness. 1776 - Assists Silas Deane in smuggling gunpowder from Bermuda to aid American rebels. 1777 -· January 3, returns permanently to Virginia with a cargo of salt. 1778 - September 23, marries Frances (Bland) Randolph, widowed mother of three sons (including John Randolph of Roanoke) and mistress of three plantations; takes up tl1e life of a planter at Matoax. 1781 - Joins Virginia militia as a Major and (March) suffers slight wound at Battle of GuiJf ord Courthouse; September-October, serves as a Lieutenant-Colonel of Virginia cavalry during the Yorktown campaign. 1785 - August-November, returns with family for final visit of Bermuda. 1786 - September, serves with James Madison and Edmund Randolph as Virginia delegates to the Annapolis Convention (forerunner of the Constitu- tional Convention); publishes The Knight and the Friars: An Historical Tale; after the Manner of John Gilpin (New York: Eleazar Oswald). vii ., viii 1788 - January 4, e] ectecl by Virginia r;eneral Assembly a judge of the n~organized r;enera] Court of \'irg:inia; January 18, cle<Ith of Frances Tucker; publishes Libert v, A Poem _on_Q~e- _l_r_~c!_~_~nde~c_:_~-~ America, written in 1781 (Richmond; Augustine Davis). 1789 - Begins an anti-Federalist pla:1, lJp & Ride, or The Borough of _Brooklyn (unfinished and unpublished). 1790 - March 6, receives honorary LL.!). from William and Mary and succeeds Chancellor Wythe as professor of law there; June, 1791 - October 8, marries Lelia (Skipwith) Carter, widowed claugl1ter of Sir Peyton Skipwith and mistress of Corotoman plant;ition. 1792 - Publishes four poems in The AmeriC(:l_I1_l!_use~; contributes to a book of poems by several hands (including John and Margaret Lowther Page, James McClurg, et al.) published in Williamsburg (?) in a limited edition. 1793 - June-August, publishes first part of The ~rob~~~onary__ g~Je~ of Jonathan Pindar, Esq. in Freneau's Nation~-C~~~tJ::_t:.· 1796- Publishes A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the 1797 Gradual Abolition of It, in the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey) and the complete J)robationary Odes of Jonathan Pindar, Esq. A Cousin of Peter's, and Candidat_~J:_~r:_the I~~t-~ Poet Laureat to the C.U.S., in two parts (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin Bache); writes 5-act farce about western land speculation, The Wheel of Fortune (dated December 23, 1796-January 12, 1797, still unpublished); first oxtant es~.a.y ("A Dre.:un," 1~u~1st 2), l'{(J6). 1798- Composes an abortive series of four Addisonian essays ("The Dreamer"), 1799 ix intended for publication in the Richmond !•:xc:01iner. 1803 - Decemher, resigns William and Mary professorship amid contro- versy over his teaching methods; publishes 5-volume redaction of Blackstone's Commentaries: with Not_~?_oJ__ I_3._eference, to ti~<:_ Constitution and Laws, of the Feder~:_!i_~~er_~ment ~~~~tee!_ States; and of the Commonwealth of Virginia (Philadelphia: Birch and Small). 1804 - January 6, succeeds Edmund Pendleton as a judge on t11e Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. 1811 - March, resigns from the Virginia Supreme Court, resolved to retire from public life; Pugust-September, writes 27 or 28 essays for Wirt's Richmond Enquirer series, "The Old Bachelor," only one of which is published; December 15, completes a "medley" (musical play), The Times, or The Patriot Rous'd. 1813 - January 27, accepts President '1adison 's appointment to succeed John Tyler (Sr.) as judge of the Federal District Court of Eastern Virginia; September 12, death of favorite daughter, "Fanny" (Frances Coalter) brings an end to his project to integrate his unpublished essays into Nuga: The Hermit of the Mountain. 1815 - March 22, writes draft of a 2-act "musical drama," The Patriot Cool'd as sequel to The Patriot Rous'd. 1822 - Death of Lelia Tucker. 1823 - Poem, "Resignation" (writ ten 1807) published in The__ Mirrc~r~_ Literature, Amusement and Instruction (London). 1825 - December, retires from judiciary because of declining health. 1827 - November 10, dies and is buried at Warminster, home of his step son-in-law, Joseph C. Cabell. ,. INTRODUCTION In several obvious ways the career of St. George Tucker challenges comparison with that of his older contemporary, Thomas Jefferson. Both men prepared for their legal studies at the College of William and Mary then trained as lawyers in Williamsburg under the tutelage of Ceorge Wythe whom Jefferson was later to appoint and Tucker to succeed as first professor of law and police in an American university. Both exhibited intellects and interests that ranged far beyond the law to make tl1em "virtuosi" in the Renaissance sense, students of diverse sciences, am<J teur inventors, patrons or practitioners of various arts. Both were resolute agrarian democrats, passionate patriots of the American Revolution and, afterward, champions of individual liberty and localism against the encroachments of centralized power. Both held paradoxical views on chattel slavery, publicly deploring and writing against it while continu ing to hold slaves themselves. That they knew each other and had mutual friends is beyond dispute as is Tucker's staunch adherence to Jeffersonian republicanism. Yet curiously, considering these parallels and the closed society in which they lived, they seem to have been scarcely more than polite acquaintances. There are, moreover, some fundamental differences between them. These stem less from the fact that Tucker was an immigrant who married his way into the plantation oligarchy while Jefferson was a native-born Virginian than from their divergent choice of careers. Althougl1 educated to the law, Jefferson abandoned it for politics. To politics he brought xi one of the keenest minds of his or any age an<l his choice ultimately vaulted him to the highest offices of the land and gave free rein to his talents. Tucker eschewed politics for the law and his unswerving pursuit of it gave his life at once a more serene and more restrictive course than might have been the case had he followed Jefferson into the political arena. Nevertheless, to be for a large part of l1is life simply "Judge Tucker," renowned for his legal learning as "the American Blackstone," was to this thoroughly affable hut also guardedly private pater familias satisfaction enough. In a worc1, St. George Tucker nur tured no consuming ambitions and in view of this his quiet hut unJeniahly significant contributions to American jurisprudence and to our early national letters seem all the more impressive. Tucker's decision to confine his puhlic career to bench and pro fessorial lectern rather then seek elective office (which he doubtless could have won) may also have been responsible for another salient dif ference between the Williamsburg judge and the master of Monticello. While the acknowledged literary merits of his political writings (es pecially the Declaration of Independence), his Notes on tl1e State of Virginia and his splendid late-life correspondence with John Adams provide ample evidence of Jefferson's powers as a writer and suggest what he might have achieved had he given himself more fully to literary composi tion, he had little interest in belles-lettres and less penchant for what Tucker liked to call "a literary jeu d'esprit." Jefferson's writings were utilitarian to a high degree, however felicitous their style.