Initial Studies in American Letters | Page 3

contains a
graphic narrative of the fever and famine summer of 1607 at
Jamestown. But many of these gentlemen were idlers, "unruly gallants,
packed thither by their friends to escape ill destinies," dissipated
younger sons, soldiers of fortune, who came over after the gold which
was supposed to abound in the new country, and who spent their time
in playing bowls and drinking at the tavern as soon as there was any
tavern. With these was a sprinkling of mechanics and farmers, indented
servants, and the on-scourings of the London streets, fruit of
press-gangs and jail deliveries, sent over to "work in the plantations."
Nor were the conditions of life afterward in Virginia very favorable to
literary growth. The planters lived isolated on great estates which had

water-fronts on the rivers that flow into the Chesapeake. There the
tobacco, the chief staple of the country, was loaded directly upon the
trading vessels that tied up to the long, narrow wharves of the
plantations. Surrounded by his slaves, and visited occasionally by a
distant neighbor, the Virginia country gentleman lived a free and
careless life. He was fond of fox-hunting, horse-racing, and
cock-fighting. There were no large towns, and the planters met each
other mainly on occasion of a county court or the assembling of the
Burgesses. The court-house was the nucleus of social and political life
in Virginia as the town-meeting was in New England. In such a state of
society schools were necessarily few, and popular education did not
exist. Sir William Berkeley, who was the royal governor of the colony
from 1641 to 1677, said, in 1670, "I thank God there are no free
schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years."
In the matter of printing this pious wish was well-nigh realized. The
first press set up in the colony, about 1681, was soon suppressed, and
found no successor until the year 1729. From that date until some ten
years before the Revolution one printing-press answered the needs of
Virginia, and this was under official control. The earliest newspaper in
the colony was the Virginia Gazette, established in 1736.
In the absence of schools the higher education naturally languished.
Some of the planters were taught at home by tutors, and others went to
England and entered the universities. But these were few in number,
and there was no college in the colony until more than half a century
after the foundation of Harvard in the younger province of
Massachusetts. The college of William and Mary was established at
Williamsburg chiefly by the exertions of the Rev. James Blair, a Scotch
divine, who was sent by the Bishop of London as "commissary" to the
Church in Virginia. The college received its charter in 1693, and held
its first commencement in 1700. It is perhaps significant of the
difference between the Puritans of New England and the so-called
"Cavaliers" of Virginia, that while the former founded and supported
Harvard College in 1636, and Yale in 1701, of their own motion and at
their own expense, William and Mary received its endowment from the
crown, being provided for in part by a deed of lands and in part by a tax
of a penny a pound on all tobacco exported from the colony. In return

for this royal grant the college was to present yearly to the king two
copies of Latin verse. It is reported of the young Virginian gentlemen
who resorted to the new college that they brought their plantation
manners with them, and were accustomed to "keep race-horses at the
college, and bet at the billiard or other gaming-tables." William and
Mary College did a good work for the colony, and educated some of
the great Virginians of the Revolutionary era, but it has never been a
large or flourishing institution, and has held no such relation to the
intellectual development of its section as Harvard and Yale have held in
the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Even after the
foundation of the University of Virginia, in which Jefferson took a
conspicuous part, Southern youths were commonly sent to the North
for their education, and at the time of the outbreak of the civil war there
was a large contingent of Southern students in several Northern
colleges, notably in Princeton and Yale.
Naturally, the first books written in America were descriptions of the
country and narratives of the vicissitudes of the infant settlements,
which were sent home to be printed for the information of the English
public and the encouragement of further immigration. Among books of
this kind produced in Virginia the earliest and most noteworthy were
the writings of that famous soldier of fortune, Captain John Smith. The
first of these was his True Relation, namely, "of such occurrences and
accidents of note