Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/42

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL JAN. 9, im

PHILLIS WHEATLEY AND HER

POEMS. (10 S. x. 385.)

WHILE the notice of Phillis Wheatley in The Knickerbocker, referred to by MB. THORNTON, may be correct in its general outlines, it is incorrect in its details. Thus it was not "in 1770," but on 18 Aug., 1771, that Phillis " was baptized and received into the church " (H. A. Hill's ' History of the Old South Church,' ii. 102). And MB. THOBNTON is much astray in stating that the editio princeps of her poems is that pub- lished by J. James at Philadelphia in 1787.

" Proposals For Printing by Subscription, A Collection of Poems, wrote at several times, and upon various occasions, by Phillis, a Negro Girl, from the Strength of her own Genius, it being but & few Years since she came to this Town an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa."

were printed in The Censor (a Boston maga- zine) of 29 Feb., 1772. This edition was aparently never published. On 8 May, 1773, Phillis sailed from Boston to London, and reached Boston again on 13 September. Her efforts to publish her poems, unsuccessful in Boston in 1772, met with success in London in 1773 ; and no doubt the editio princeps of her collected poems is

" Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. By Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England. London : Printed for A. Bell, Bookseller, Aldgate ; and sold Messrs Cox and Berry, King-Street, Boston.

This contained an engraved portrait of Phillis, " Published according to Act of Parliament, Sepf 1 st 1773 by Arch d Bell, Bookseller N 8 near the Saracens Head Aldgate." Phillis took with her to London a " Letter sent by the Author's Master to the Publisher," and an attestation of the authenticity of the poems signed by some of the best-known men then living in Boston, including Governor Hutchinson, Lieut. - Governor Oliver, John Hancock (afterwards Governor), James Bowdoin (afterwards Governor), and seven clergymen. The former was printed in ' Some Account of Phillis, a Learned Negro Girl,' in The Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1773 (xliii. 226) ; the latter was placed on exhibition by the London bookseller ; and both were printed in the ' Poems.' A review of the Poems ' appeared in The London Magazine for September, 1773 (xlii. 456).

The London edition was advertised for sale by Cox & Berry in The Boston Gazette

of 24 Jan., 1774, and was reprinted in Phila- delphia by J. Crukshank in 1786 ; so that the Philadelphia edition of 1787, called by MB. THOBNTON the editio princeps, was at least the third edition. Meanwhile, however, the publication of another work was contemplated in 1779. The Evening Post (Boston) of 30 Oct., 1779, contained

"Proposals, For Printing, By Subscription, A Volume of Poems and Letters, On Various Subjects, Dedicated to the Right Honourable Benjamin Franklin, Esq. ; One of the Ambassadors of the United States, at the Court of France, By Phillis Peters."

This work, which was to contain thirty- three poems and thirteen letters, apparently never saw the light.

But while the 1773 edition was the editio princeps of her collected poems, single poems had been published before, and were published after, that date. ' An Elegiac Poem, sacred to the memory of the Rev. George Whitefield,' was separately printed (in two or more editions) in 1770, and was included in the Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton's ' Heaven the Residence of the Saints,' a sermon on the same topic, reprinted at London in 1771 ; ' Farewell to America, To Mrs. S. W.' (no doubt her mistress, Mrs. Wheatley), was printed in The Boston Post- Boy of 10 May, 1773 ; a letter and a poem addressed to Washington were printed in The Pennsylvania Magazine for April, 1776 (ii. 193) ; ' An Elegy, sacred to the Memory of that great Divine, the Reverend and Learned Dr. Samuel Cooper,' was printed in 1784 ; while ' Liberty and Peace, a Poem,' was also printed in 1784, the year of Phillis's death. Nor was this all. A portion of a letter addressed to the Rev. Samson Occom, the Indian, was printed, "as a Specimen of her Ingenuity," in The Boston Evening Post of 24 March, 1774 ; the publication of thirteen letters was contemplated in 1779 ; and seven letters (written between 1772 and 1779) were printed by the late Charles Deane one of the most learned of Massachusetts historians in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for November, 1863 (vii. 267-78). The originals of five of the last letters are now owned by that society, and I have just examined them.

Hence for fifteen years from 1770 to 1784 Phillis was in the eye of the public ; and in the newspapers and magazines of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, I find her alluded to (between 1772 and 1784) as "the extraordinary poetical Genius," "the extraordinary Poet," " the extraordinary