ABSTRACT
The literary renaissance of Virginia began in the late twenties when the English romantic movement reached the quiet plantations. Life on the plantation was uncramped by the drab routine and skimpy meanness of the New England farm; it was unsoiled by the coarseness and vulgarity of the frontier; it had none of the sordidness of the middle-class town. At the time when the romantics were beginning their work of constructing the plantation tradition the intellectual renaissance of Virginia was passing. Born in Maryland in 1772 of Swiss parentage, Wirt belonged to Virginia only by adoption, and although on terms of intimacy with the plantation gentry he embodied few of the traits that went to the making of the plantation tradition. As a member of the Virginia bar Wirt took pride in the tradition of sober culture that had grown up amongst its distinguished practitioners.
