through a hostile country, three hundred miles in extent, making his assailants prisoners in great numbers and taking from them the cannon they brought to oppose him, and the colours that promised them victory. CONDITIONS. 1. The work is now in the press and shall be printed with a fair type, on a good paper, in a handsome duodecimo form. 2. It shall be embellished with an elegant engraved Portrait of General Moreau from a striking likeness of him taken at Paris. 3. It shall be delivered to Subscribers in boards for $1 and bound for $1.20. This glowing paragraph, coupled with the natural curiosity. in regard to a famous refugee within our borders, must have brought forth the necessary number of subscribers, for on March 13, 1806, the Life of Moreau was offered for sale by J. and M. Flanagan, Booksellers and Stationers, at No. 151 Water Street. From the fact that Davis undertook these two laborious works of translation, a task which was never productive of much literary fame, however well paid in money, it may be gathered that his French and Latin Academy was not prospering so well as he could wish. As the advertisement for the school continued. to appear in the Mercantile Advertiser and the Morning Chronicle at intervals from July until December 21, 1805, his prospective pupils probably never reached the "limited number" of twelve for which he advertised. That he remained in or near New York until after his translations were published is probable, and he doubtless found, as formerly, enough opportunities for private tutoring among the well-to-do families to support himself during his stay there. From the middle of March, 1806, however, no further mention of Davis or his activities has been found in the New York papers. CHAPTER VI VIRGINIA AND ELSEWHERE, 1806-1817 After the year 1806, which marks the end of Davis's active period of literary production, detailed information as to his life and occupations becomes more and more fragmentary. Indeed, Mr. A. J. Morrison, in prefacing his edition of Davis's Travels in 1909, ventures the statement that Davis's career "no doubt after 1806 was that of a London journalist and bookmaker.” This conjecture, however, is disproved by all the data in this and the subsequent chapter, which indicate that Davis remained in this country until 1817 and that even after his return to England he never visited London until 1836 or later. It is true that for a year and a half, from March, 1806, to September, 1807, no definite notice of Davis's whereabouts or activities has been discovered. This gap, however, in his history is more apparent than real. No less than three books by him were published at New York in 1806, besides one issued in London. One, at least, of the former, an enlarged edition of the First Settlers of Virginia, would doubtless require his presence at New York during the process of revision. Moreover, the letter from Davis to President Jefferson, written in September, 1807,1 which marks the end of the interval makes it clear that Davis had become definitely established in Virginia as a teacher at Petersburg, near Richmond. If it were not for the scarcity of Petersburg newspapers for the early months of 1807, the gap in our knowledge of him might be considerably shortened. The publication of the Life of Chatterton in London in 18062 has led to the surmise that Davis may have returned to England for a visit in that year. While there would have been time for such a voyage in the months not accounted for, it is very improbable, owing to the expense of time and money for so brief a visit. There are, moreover, several passages in Davis's writings which make it nearly certain that he remained in America until his final 'Jefferson Papers, Davis to Jefferson, September 1, 1807. 'By G. Hazard, 49 Beech Street, printer, for Thomas Tegg, bookseller, Cheapside. return to his native land. In the 1806 edition of the First Settlers, he said: I, however, have no further desire to travel. It is true I should like much to cross again the Atlantic, but then that would be to go home. I am only a sojourner in America. When the cold turf presses against my breast, I hope it will be dug out of the vallies of my native land. The letter to Jefferson referred to above mentions the fact that Davis has "been informed" of the publication of the Life of Chatterton in England, which seems to preclude the possibility of a very recent visit. In the same tenor is a remark in a note to Joseph Dennie written in January, 1809,3 "I am desirous . . . to acquaint my contemporaries and countrymen in England, that I am yet between heaven and earth." The most unmistakable evidence, however, is found in the circumstances of publication of the Chatterton itself. Inserted in the copy at the Widener Library, at Harvard, is the original of the following letter from the Duke of Bedford to Davis: Sir: Wobourn Abbey, I have by this morning's Post received your letter of the 23rd and beg leave to assure you that I can have no objection to your dedicating your Life of Chatterton to me if you think fit so to do, and I have only to hope that the book may be worthy of the subject you have undertaken. I am Sir Your obedt. H. Sert Bedford.' Very evidently, then, the work belongs to the very end of Davis's period in England from 1802 to 1804. The title page bears, besides the name of the author, a quotation from Ossian apparently chosen with reference to Davis's impending departure from England: 'Port Folio, January, 1809. Note prefatory to "The Natural Bridge" in that issue. "The Life of Chatterton as published bears no dedication whatsoever. The time of my departure is approaching. The work was clearly undertaken as a potboiler and probably left in the hands of Davis's publisher, Tegg, who had brought out the Wooden Walls Well Manned. The author shows slight interest in the subject and seems not to have gone deeply into it or to have done much original investigation. As a result, measured by our standards of biography, the work falls far short of the ideal. In a footnote Davis acknowledges his indebtedness to Thomas Warton for several of his best critical remarks. At one point he hurls a barbed shaft at the Edinburgh Review critics, whom he had not forgiven for their recent harsh treatment of the Travels. Speaking of Chatterton, he says he was "articled clerk to Mr. Lambert, an attorney of Bristol, a man transcendently qualified to be a scrivener, for he had not more learning than the Edinburgh reviewers." Davis's occasion for writing the Life he sets forth in the "advertisement," saying that "Dr. Gregory's Life of Chatterton being now only known as it is appended to the Collection of the Works of Chatterton, in three large volumes, a new Life of the boy bard is indisputably wanted." The resulting volume, Davis told Jefferson, had been "highly praised" in England. The following criticism, however, from the Annual Review for 1808 does not present the work in so favorable a light: Mr. Davis sometime ago published a volume of travels in America. In the advertisement to his present work he tells us that he has undertaken the task with no small diligence and has endeavored to make his biography agreeable, entertaining, and instructive. It is not wise in an author to raise our expectations too highly, for it rarely happens that splendid promises at the beginning of a work are equalled in the execution of it. Mr. D. appears to have been ignorant of several circumstances connected with the history of Chatterton and has not stated what he knew in the most agreeable form. Mr. Davis has not given us his opinion on the subject of Chatterton's insanity and seems ignorant of a circumstance which "George Gregory, D. D. (1754-1808), an Irish divine and man of letters; author of The Life of Thomas Chatterton, 1799. throws considerable light upon the character of this extraordinary boy. Mr. Davis ridicules all the elegies which were written on the death of Chatterton and certainly most of them are deserving of the censure he so liberally bestows upon them. Let us see, however, how far this gentleman's prose effusion on the grief of Chatterton's mother is exempt from faults. . . . Nothing can be more misplaced than declamation on subjects which are in themselves sufficiently affecting, and here . . . it is enough to give one the headache. Our first information concerning Davis's activities at Petersburg is contained in his letter to Jefferson previously referred to, in which he says: I take the liberty to send you a Latin Pamphlet, which I have lately published, partly borrowed, partly original. I am now cultivating the Greek language day and night. I have young gentlemen of this place under my tuition, who, at twelve years of age, know all Horace's odes ad unguem; in some measure owing to the pains I take with them, but more to their own genius; Virginia is the soil of genius. Davis's position at Petersburg was that of a teacher in Petersburg Academy, with which institution the historian of the town, Arthur Kyle Davis, says he was connected "about 1808." This academy is historically important as one of the earliest American schools to adopt the Lancastrian system of teaching. Davis, judging from his letter, was presumably preceptor in the languages. From several references, he seems to have devoted himself with especial energy during the period to the study of Greek, which had been somewhat slightly treated in his early treatise on self-education in the languages. The fact that no contributions by his pen have been found in American periodicals of this period may be accounted for by the more regular routine of teaching duties required by the academy. Probably the most exciting episode of Davis's stay in Petersburg was the duel in which his friend and fellow author, John Daly Burk, lost his life on April 11, 1808. Burk, said to have been a relative of Edmund Burke, was born in Ireland about 1776 and came to America in 1796 as a political refugee. For a "In Three Centuries of an Old Virginia Town, The Story of Petersburg. |