John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

My Grandfather & namesake, for all his unquestiond Virtues, was no familiar of the Arts, and thwarted in his original purpose in calling you Laureat (w chbe it said We are confident he did, notwithstanding his later denials thereof), he was unable to perceive the value of your gift to Maryland. We do hence mark it fit, that now, when a generation hath attested the merits of your work, you s hdaccept in fact, albeit belatedly, that office & title the qualifications whereto you have so long since fulfill'd. Namely, Poet & Laureat of the Province of Maryland. .

Ebenezer merely smiled at the invitation and shook his head at his sister's suggestion that he accept it.

"Nay, Anna, 'tis a poor climate for a poet, is Maryland's, nor is my talent hardy enough to live in't. Let Baltimore give his title to one whose pen deserves it; as for me, methinks I'll to the muse no more!"

But that same year saw the death of Nicholas Lowe, which so touched the poet (owing to his delusion) that he broke his vow and his long silence to publish, in the Maryland Gazette, an Elegy on the Death of the Hon. Nicholas Lowe, Esq., containing sundry allusions to his ambivalent feelings towards that gentleman. Thereafter, either because he felt a ripening of his talents or merely because breaking one's vow, like losing one's innocence, is an irreparable affair which one had as well make the best of (the Reader will have to judge which), he was not sparing of his pen: in 1730 he brought out the long-awaited sequel, Sot-Weed Redivivus, or The Planter's Looking-Glass, which, alas, had not the success of its original; the following year he published another satirical narrative, this one dealing with Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, and a revised (and emasculated) edition of The Sot-Weed Factor. In the spring of 1732, at the age of sixty-six, he succumbed to a sort of quinsy, and his beloved sister (who was to follow him not long after), in setting his affairs in order, discovered among his papers an epitaph, which, though undated, the Author presumes to be his final work, and appends for the benefit of interested scholars:

Here moulds a posing, foppish Actor,

Author of THE SOT-WEED FACTOR,

Falsely prais'd. Take Heed, who sees this

Epitaph; look ye to Jesus!

Labour not for Earthly Glory:

Fame's a fickle Slut, and whory.

From thy Fancy's chast Couch drive her:

He's a Fool who'll strive to swive her!

Regrettably, his heirs saw fit not to immortalize their sire with this inscription, but instead had his headstone graved with the usual piffle. However, either his warning got about or else his complaint was accurate that Maryland's air — in any case, Dorchester's — ill supports the delicate muse, for to the best of the Author's knowledge her marshes have spawned no poet since Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman, Laureate of the Province.

John Barth, born May 27, 1930, in Cambridge, Maryland, was only twenty-six when his first novel was published. Titled The Floating Opera, it was the runner-up for the 1956 National Book Award. Mr. Barth's other works include The End of the Road, Lost in the Funhouse, Chimera, Giles Goat-Boy, and The Sot-Weed Factor. In 1965, a poll of two hundred prominent authors, critics, and editors placed John Barth among the best American novelists to emerge in the past twenty years.

John Barth holds an A.B. and an M.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University. From 1953 to 1965 he taught English at Pennsylvania State University. He is currently professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is married and has three children.

Scan Notes, v3.0 (RTF only):This was a tough proof because of the language used and the preponderance of apostrophes, but I spent many hours on't and 'tis about as close to perfect as one might expect in a file such as this one. One thing I did do is insert a space between all quotes and apostrophes. Though this may seem to be annoying at times, it looked much worse to let them run together. Italics and special characters are intact just as they were in the book. If you change the format of this file, be careful that you do not lose the formatting in the histories of the words that resemble such: "w ch", of which there is many.