Quisquis amissam (1714)

Quisquis amissam,” Oglethorpe’s first publication and only known poem, laments the death of Queen Anne and celebrates the coronation of King George I. It appeared in 1714 in Pietas Universitatis Oxoniensis in Obitum Serenissimae Reginae Annae et Gratulatio in Augustissimi Regis Georgii Inaugurationem, a volume to which most of the contributors were eminent Oxonians. Oglethorpe’s Sapphic stanzas (a form developed by Horace) are not distinguished, but they are competent. Oglethorpe had had a good classical education at Eton, and at Corpus Christi he had studied with the renowned classical scholar Basil Kennet.¹ For some years Latin had provided the medium of his education; and Oglethorpe was apparently a good linguist. French came easy to him; and on his voyage to Georgia in 1736 with the Moravians, he learned some German. Earlier, in 1734, he and August Gottlieb Spangenberg had been forced to converse in Latin.² His facility in that language he apparently retained. On a visit to the general in 1783, James Boswell recorded that Oglethorpe “quoted several of the Latin poets.”³ But perhaps the most significant aspect of the poem is its declaration of allegiance to the Hanoverian king, for Oglethorpe’s mother, brother, and sisters were all loyal to the Stuart Pretender.

“Quisquís amissam” was reprinted by Rudolf Kirk, in “A Latin Poem by James Edward Oglethorpe,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 32 (1948): 29–31, with a prose translation by Dorothy Flint. My text follows the original, in Pietas Universitatis Oxoniensis. For the translation I am indebted to Robert R. Harris, of the Classics Department at the University of Georgia.⁴