History of American Literature Part 3

Late in life, in her poem, _Contemplations_, she wrote some genuine poetry, little marred by imitation of the fantastic school. Spenser seems to have become her master in later years. No one without genuine poetic ability could have written such lines as:--

"I heard the merry gra.s.shopper then sing, The black-clad cricket bear a second part, They kept one tune, and played on the same string, Seeming to glory in their little art."

These lines show both poetic ease and power:--

"The mariner that on smooth waves doth glide Sings merrily, and steers his bark with ease, As if he had command of wind and tide, And now become great master of the seas."

The comparative excellence of her work in such an atmosphere and amid the domestic cares incident to rearing eight children is remarkable.

NATHANIEL WARD, 1578?-1652

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF t.i.tLE PAGE TO WARD'S "SIMPLE COBBLER OF AGAWAM"]

In 1647 Nathaniel Ward, who had been educated for the law, but who afterward became a clergyman, published a strange work known as _The Simple Cobbler of Agawam, in America_ "willing," as the sub-t.i.tle continues, "to help mend his native country, lamentably tattered, both in the upper leather and sole, with all the honest st.i.tches he can take." He had been a.s.sistant pastor at Agawam (Ipswich) until ill health caused him to resign.

He then busied himself in compiling a code of laws and in other writing before he returned to England in 1647. The following two sentences from his unique book show two points of the religious faith of the Puritans: (1) the belief in a personal devil always actively seeking the destruction of mankind, and (2) the a.s.sumption that the vitals of the "elect" are safe from the mortal sting of sin.

"Satan is now in his pa.s.sions, he feels his pa.s.sion approaching, he loves to fish in roiled waters. Though that dragon cannot sting the vitals of the elect mortally, yet that Beelzebub can fly-blow their intellectuals miserably."

He is often a bitter satirist, a sort of colonial Carlyle, as this attack on woman shows:--

"I honor the woman that can honor herself with her attire; a good text always deserves a fair margent; I am not much offended if I see a trim far trimmer than she that wears it. In a word, whatever Christianity or civility will allow, I can afford with London measure: but when I hear a nugiperous gentledame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week: what the nudiustertian fashion of the Court; I mean the very newest; with egg to be in it in all haste, whatever it be; I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kicked, if she were of a kickable substance, than either honored or humored."

He does not hesitate to coin a word. The preceding short selection introduces us to "nugiperous" and "nudiustertian." Next, he calls the women's tailor-made gowns "the very pett.i.toes of infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toys."

The spirit of a reformer always sees work to be done, and Ward emphasized three remedies for mid-seventeenth-century ills: (1) Stop toleration of departure from religious truth; (2) banish the frivolities of women and men; and (3) bring the civil war in England to a just end. In proportion to the population, his _Simple Cobbler_, designed to mend human ways, was probably as widely read as Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_ in later days.

In criticism, Ward deserves to be remembered for these two lines:--

"Poetry's a gift wherein but few excel; He doth very ill that doth not pa.s.sing well."

SAMUEL SEWALL, 1652-1730

There was born in 1652 at Bishopstoke, Hampshire, England, a boy who sailed for New England when he was nine years old, and who became our greatest colonial diarist. This was Samuel Sewall, who graduated from Harvard in 1671 and finally became chief justice of Ma.s.sachusetts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL SEWALL]

His _Diary_ runs with some breaks from 1673 to 1729, the year before his death. Good diaries are scarce in any literature. Those who keep them seldom commit to writing many of the most interesting events and secrets of their lives. This failing makes the majority of diaries and memoirs very dry, but this fault cannot be found with Samuel Sewall. His _Diary_ will more and more prove a mine of wealth to the future writers of our literature, to our dramatists, novelists, poets, as well as to our historians. The early chronicles and stories on which Shakespeare founded many of his plays were no more serviceable to him than this _Diary_ may prove to a coming American writer with a genius like Hawthorne's.

In Sewall's _Diary_ we at once feel that we are close to life. The following entry brings us face to face with the children in a Puritan household:--

"Nov. 6, 1692. Joseph threw a knop of bra.s.s and hit his sister Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed and swell; upon which, and for his playing at Prayer-time, and eating when Return Thanks, I whipped him pretty smartly. When I first went in (called by his Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the cradle: which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of Adam's carriage."

Sewall was one of the seven judges who sentenced nineteen persons to be put to death for witchcraft at Salem. After this terrible delusion had pa.s.sed, he had the manliness to rise in church before all the members, and after acknowledging "the blame and shame of his decision," call for "prayers that G.o.d who has an unlimited authority would pardon that sin."

Sewall's _Diary_ is best known for its faithful chronicle of his courtship of Mrs. Catharine Winthrop. Both had been married twice before, and both had grown children. He was sixty-nine and she fifty-six. No record of any other Puritan courtship so unique as this has been given to the world. He began his formal courtship of Mrs. Winthrop, October 1, 1720. His _Diary_ contains records of each visit, of what they said to each other, of the Sermons, cake, and gingerbread that he gave her, of the healths that he drank to her, the lump of sugar that she gave him, of how they "went into the best room, and clos'd the shutters."

"Nov. 2. Gave her about 1/2 pound of sugar almonds, cost 3 shillings per [pound]. Carried them on Monday. She seem'd pleas'd with them, ask'd what they cost. Spake of giving her a hundred pounds per annum if I died before her. Ask'd her what sum she would give me, if she should die first?"

"Monday, Nov. 7. I went to Mad. Winthrop; found her rocking her little Katy in the cradle. I excused my coming so late (near eight). She set me an arm'd chair and cushion; and so the cradle was between her arm'd chair and mine. Gave her the remnant of my almonds. She did not eat of them as before.... The fire was come to one short brand besides the block, which brand was set up in end; at last it fell to pieces and no recruit was made.... Took leave of her.... Her dress was not so clean as sometime it had been. Jehovah jireh!"

Acute men have written essays to account for the aristocratic Mrs.

Winthrop's refusal of Chief-Justice Sewall. Some have said that it was due to his aversion to slavery and to his refusal to allow her to keep her slaves. This episode is only a small part of a rich storehouse. The greater part of the _Diary_ contains only the raw materials of literature, yet some of it is real literature, and it ranks among the great diaries of the world.

COTTON MATHER, 1663-1728

[Ill.u.s.tration: COTTON MATHER]

LIFE AND PERSONALITY.--Cotton Mather, grandson of the Rev. John Cotton (p.

14), and the most distinguished of the old type of Puritan clergymen, was born in Boston and died in his native city, without ever having traveled a hundred miles from it. He entered Harvard at the age of eleven, and took the bachelor's degree at fifteen. His life shows such an overemphasis of certain Puritan traits as almost to presage the coming decline of clerical influence. He says that at the age of only seven or eight he not only composed forms of prayer for his schoolmates, but also obliged them to pray, although some of them cuffed him for his pains. At fourteen he began a series of fasts to crucify the flesh, increase his holiness, and bring him nearer to G.o.d.

He endeavored never to waste a minute. In his study, where he often worked sixteen hours a day, he had in large letters the sign, "BE SHORT," to greet the eyes of visitors. The amount of writing which he did almost baffles belief. His published works, numbering about four hundred, include sermons, essays, and books. During all of his adult life, he also preached in the North Church of Boston.

He was a religious "fantastic" (p. 40), that is, he made far-fetched applications of religious truth. A tall man suggested to him high attainments in Christianity; washing his hands, the desirability of a clean heart.

Although Cotton Mather became the most famous clergyman of colonial New England, he was disappointed in two of his life's ambitions. He failed to become president of Harvard and to bring New England back in religious matters to the first halcyon days of the colony. On the contrary, he lived to see Puritan theocracy suffer a great decline. His fantastic and strained application of religious truth, his overemphasis of many things, and especially his conduct in zealously aiding and abetting the Salem witchcraft murders, were no mean factors in causing that decline.

His intentions were certainly good. He was an apostle of altruism, and he tried to improve each opportunity for doing good in everyday life. He trained his children to do acts of kindness for other children. His _Essays to Do Good_ were a powerful influence on the life of Benjamin Franklin.

Cotton Mather would not have lived in vain if he had done nothing else except to help mold Franklin for the service of his country; but this is only one of Mather's achievements. We must next pa.s.s to his great work in literature.

THE MAGNALIA.--This "prose epic of New England Puritanism," the most famous of Mather's many works, is a large folio volume ent.i.tled _Magnalia Christi Americana: or the Ecclesiastical History of New England_. It was published in London in 1702, two years after Dryden's death.

The book is a remarkable compound of whatever seemed to the author most striking in early New England history. His point of view was of course religious. The work contains a rich store of biography of the early clergy, magistrates, and governors, of the lives of eleven of the clerical graduates of Harvard, of the faith, discipline, and government of the New England churches, of remarkable manifestations of the divine providence, and of the "Way of the Lord" among the churches and the Indians.

We may to-day turn to the _Magnalia_ for vivid accounts of early New England life. Mather has a way of selecting and expressing facts in such a way as to cause them to lodge in the memory. These two facts about John Cotton give us a vivid impression of the influence of the early clergy:--

"The keeper of the inn where he did use to lodge, when he came to Derby, would profanely say to his companions, that he wished Mr. Cotton were gone out of his house, for he was not able to swear while that man was under his roof....

"The Sabbath he began the evening before, for which keeping of the Sabbath from evening to evening he wrote arguments before his coming to New England; and I suppose 'twas from his reason and practice that the Christians of New England have generally done so too."

We read that the daily vocation of Thomas Shepard, the first pastor at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, was, to quote Mather's n.o.ble phrase, "_A Trembling Walk with G.o.d_" He speaks of the choleric disposition of Thomas Hooker, the great Hartford clergyman, and says it was "useful unto him,"

because "he had ordinarily as much government of his choler as a man has of a mastiff dog in a chain; he 'could let out his dog, and pull in his dog, as he pleased.'" Some of Mather's prose causes modern readers to wonder if he was not a humorist. He says that a fire in the college buildings in some mysterious way influenced the President of Harvard to shorten one of his long prayers, and gravely adds, "that if the devotions had held three minutes longer, the Colledge had been irrecoverably laid in ashes." One does not feel sure that Mather saw the humor in this demonstration of practical religion. It is also doubtful whether he is intentionally humorous in his most fantastic prose, such, for instance, as his likening the Rev. Mr. Partridge to the bird of that name, who, because he "had no defence neither of beak nor claw," took "a flight over the ocean" to escape his ecclesiastical hunters, and finally "took wing to become a bird of paradise, along with the winged seraphim of heaven."

Such fantastic conceits, which for a period blighted the literature of the leading European nations, had their last great exponent in Cotton Mather.

Minor writers still indulge in these conceits, and find willing readers among the uneducated, the tired, and those who are bored when they are required to do more than skim the surface of things. John Seccomb, a Harvard graduate of 1728, the year in which Mather died, then gained fame from such lines as:--

"A furrowed brow, Where corn might grow,"

but the best prose and poetry have for a long time won their readers for other qualities. Even the taste of the next generation showed a change, for Cotton Mather's son, Samuel, noted as a blemish his father's "straining for far-fetched and dear-bought hints." Cotton Mather's most repellent habit to modern readers is his overloading his pages with quotations in foreign languages, especially in Latin. He thus makes a pedantic display of his wide reading.

He is not always accurate in his presentation of historical or biographical matter, but in spite of all that can be said against the _Magnalia_, it is a vigorous presentation of much that we should not willingly let die. In fact, when we read the early history of New England, we are frequently getting from the _Magnalia_ many things in changed form without ever suspecting the source.

JONATHAN EDWARDS, 1703-1758

LIFE AND WRITINGS.--Jonathan Edwards, who ranks among the world's greatest theologians and metaphysicians, was born in 1703 in East Windsor, Connecticut. Like Cotton Mather, Edwards was precocious, entering Yale before he was thirteen. The year previous to his going to college, he wrote a paper on spiders, showing careful scientific observation and argument.