History of American Literature Part 4

This paper has been called "one of the rarest specimens of precocious scientific genius on record." At fourteen, he read Locke's _Essay on the Human Understanding_, receiving from it, he says, higher pleasure "than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold from some newly discovered treasure." Before he was seventeen, he had graduated from Yale, and he had become a tutor there before he was twenty-one.

Like Dante, he had a Beatrice. Thinking of her, he wrote this prose hymn of a maiden's love for the Divine Power:--

"They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that great Being who made and rules the world, and there are certain seasons in which this great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on Him, that she expects after a while to be received up where He is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven, being a.s.sured that He loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from Him always. She will sometimes go about from place to place singing sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her"

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEMORIAL TABLET TO JONATHAN EDWARDS (First Church, Northampton, Ma.s.s)]

Jonathan Edwards thus places before us Sarah Pierrepont, a New England Puritan maiden. To note the similarity of thought between the Old Puritan England and the New, let us turn to the maiden in Milton's Comus:--

"A thousand liveried angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision, Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heav'nly habitants Begin to cast a beam on th'outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal."

Unlike Dante, Edwards married his Beatrice at the age of seventeen. In 1727, the year of his marriage, he became pastor of the church in Northampton, Ma.s.sachusetts. With the aid of his wife, he inaugurated the greatest religious revival of the century, known as the "Great Awakening,"

which spread to other colonial churches, crossed the ocean, and stimulated Wesley to call sinners to repentance.

Early in life, Edwards formed a series of resolutions, three of which are:--

"To live with all my might, while I do live."

"Never to do anything, which, if I should see in another, I should count a just occasion to despise him for, or to think any way the more meanly of him."

"Never, henceforward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether G.o.d's."

He earnestly tried to keep these resolutions until the end. After a successful pastorate of twenty-three years at Northampton, the church dismissed him for no fault of his own.

Like Dante, he was driven into exile, and he went from Northampton to the frontier town of Stockbridge, where he remained for seven years as a missionary to the Indians. His wife and daughters did their utmost to add to the family income, and some contributions were sent him from Scotland, but he was so poor that he wrote his books on the backs of letters and on the blank margins cut from newspapers. His fame was not swallowed up in the wilderness. Princeton College called him to its presidency in 1757. He died in that office in 1758, after less than three months' service in his new position. His wife was still in Stockbridge when he pa.s.sed away. "Tell her," he said to his daughter, "that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual, and therefore will continue forever." In September of the same year she came to lie beside him in the graveyard at Princeton.

In 1900, the church that had dismissed him one hundred and fifty years before placed on its walls a bronze tablet in his memory, with the n.o.ble inscription from _Malachi_ ii., 6.

As a writer, Jonathan Edwards won fame in three fields. He is (1) America's greatest metaphysician, (2) her greatest theologian, and (3) a unique poetic interpreter of the universe as a manifestation of the divine love.

His best known metaphysical work is _The Freedom of the Will_ (1754). The central point of this work is that the will is determined by the strongest motive, that it is "repugnant to reason that one act of the will should come into existence without a cause." He boldly says that G.o.d is free to do only what is right. Edwards emphasizes the higher freedom, gained through repeated acts of the right kind, until both the inclination and the power to do wrong disappear.

As a theologian, America has not yet produced his superior. His _Treatise concerning the Religious Affections_, his account of the Great Awakening, called _Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of G.o.d_, and _Thoughts on the Revival_, as well as his more distinctly technical theological works, show his ability in this field. Unfortunately, he did not rise superior to the Puritan custom of preaching about h.e.l.l fire. He delivered on that subject a sermon which causes modern readers to shudder; but this, although the most often quoted, is the least typical of the man and his writings.

Those in search of really typical statements of his theology will find them in such specimens as, "G.o.d and real existence is the same. G.o.d is and there is nothing else." He was a theological idealist, believing that all the varied phenomena of the universe are "constantly proceeding from G.o.d, as light from the sun." Such statements suggest Sh.e.l.ley's lines, which tell how

"... the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear."

Dr. Allen, Edwards's biographer and critic, and a careful student of his unpublished, as well as of his published, writings, says, "He was at his best and greatest, most original and creative, when he described the divine love." Such pa.s.sages as the following, and also the one quoted on page 51, show this quality:--

"When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see His love and purity.

So the green trees and fields and singing of birds are the emanations of His infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of His beauty and loveliness."

His favorite text was, "I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the valleys," and his favorite words were "sweet and bright."

ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD

The great English writers between the colonization of Jamestown in 1607 and the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754 are: (1) JOHN MILTON (1608-1674), the great poetic spokesman of Puritan England, whose _Comus_ is addressed to those, who:--

"... by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of eternity,"

whose _Sonnets_ breathe a purposeful prayer to live this life as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye, and whose _Paradise Lost_ is the colossal epic of the loss of Eden through sin; (2) JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688), whose _Pilgrim's Progress_ addressed itself in simple, earnest English to each individual human being, telling him what he must do to escape the City of Destruction and to reach the City of All Delight; (3) JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700), a master in the field of satiric and didactic verse and one of the pioneers in the field of modern prose criticism; (4) ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744), another poet of the satiric and didactic school, who exalted form above matter, and wrote polished couplets which have been models for so many inferior poets; (5) the essayists, RICHARD STEELE (1672-1729) and JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719), the latter being especially noted for the easy, flowing prose of his papers in the _Spectator_; (6) JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745), a master of prose satire, whose _Gulliver's Travels_ has not lost its fascination; (7) DANIEL DEFOE (1661?-1731) whose _Robinson Crusoe_ continues to increase in popularity; (8) SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761), and HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754), the two great mid-eighteenth-century novelists.

The colonial literature of this period was influenced only in a very minor degree by the work of these men, for a generation usually pa.s.sed before the influence of contemporary English authors appeared in American literature.

In the next chapter, we shall see evidences of the influence of Pope.

Benjamin Franklin will tell us how Bunyan and Addison were his teachers, and the early fiction will show its indebtedness to the work of Samuel Richardson.

LEADING HISTORICAL FACTS

Virginia and Ma.s.sachusetts produced the most of our colonial literature.

There were, however, thirteen colonies stretched along the seaboard from Georgia (1733), the last to be founded, to Canada. Although these colonies were established under different grants or charters, and although some had more liberty and suffered less from the interference of England than others, it is nevertheless true that every colony was a school for a self-governing democracy. No colonies elsewhere in the world had the same amount of liberty. This period was a necessary preparation for the coming republic.

We must not suppose that there was complete liberty in those days. Such a state has not been reached even in the twentieth century. The early government of Virginia was largely aristocratic; that of Ma.s.sachusetts, theocratic. Virginia persecuted the Puritans. The early settlers of Ma.s.sachusetts drove out Roger Williams and hanged Quakers. New York persecuted those who did not join the Church of England. The central truth, however, is that these thirteen colonies were making the greatest of all world experiments in democracy and liberty.

The important colony of New Netherland (New York) was settled by the Dutch early in the seventeenth century. They established an aristocracy with great landed estates along the Hudson. The student of literature is specially interested in this colony because Washington Irving (p. 112) has invested it with a halo of romance. He shows us the st.u.r.dy Knickerbockers, the Van Cortlands, the Van Dycks, the Van Wycks, and other chivalrous Dutch burghers, sitting in perfect silence, puffing their pipes, and thinking of nothing for hours together in those "days of simplicity and sunshine." For literary reasons it is well that this was not made an English colony until the Duke of York took possession of it in 1664.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the colonists in the middle and northern part of the country divided their energies almost equally between trade and agriculture. At the South, agriculture was the chief occupation and tobacco and rice were the two leading staples. These were produced princ.i.p.ally by the labor of negro slaves. There were also many indentured servants at the South, where the dividing lines between the different cla.s.ses were most strongly marked.

Up to 1700 the history of each colony is practically that of a separate unit. Almost all the colonies had trouble with Indians and royal governors.

Pirates, rapacious politicians, religious matters, or witchcraft were sometimes sources of disturbance. All knew the hard labor and the privations involved in subduing the wilderness and making permanent settlements in a new land. History tells of the abandonment of many other colonies and of the subjugation of many other races, but no difficulty and no foe daunted this Anglo-Saxon stock.

In 1700 the population of New England was estimated at about one hundred and ten thousand. In 1754, the beginning of the French and Indian War, Connecticut alone had that number, while all New England probably had at this time nearly four hundred thousand. The middle colonies began the eighteenth century with about fifty-nine thousand and grew by the middle of the century to about three hundred and fifty-five thousand. During the same period, the southern group increased from about ninety thousand to six hundred thousand. By 1750 the thirteen colonies probably had a total population of nearly fourteen hundred thousand. Since no census was taken until 1790, these figures are only approximately correct.

Such development serves to show the trend of coming events. This remarkable increase in population soon caused numbers to go farther west. This movement resulted in collision with the French, who were at this time holding the central part of the country, from the Gulf into Canada. One other result followed. The colonies began to seem valuable to England because they furnished a market for English manufactures and a carrying trade for English ships. The previous comparative insignificance of the colonies and the trouble in England had served to protect them, but their trade had now a.s.sumed a proportion that made the mother country realize what a valuable commercial a.s.set she would have if she regulated the colonies in her own interest.

SUMMARY

In this chapter we have traced the history of American colonial literature from the foundation of the Jamestown Colony until 1754. Before 1607 Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare had written, and before 1620 the King James version of the _Bible_ had been produced. England had, therefore, a wonderful literature before her colonies came to America. They were the heirs of all that the English race had previously accomplished; and they brought to these sh.o.r.es an Elizabethan initiative, ingenuity, and democratic spirit.

The Virginia colony was founded, as colonies usually are, for a commercial reason. The Virginians and the other southern colonists lived more by agriculture, were more widely scattered, had fewer schools, more slaves, and less town life than the New Englanders. Under the influence of a commanding clergy, common schools, and the stimulus of town life, the New England colony produced more literature.

The chief early writers of Virginia are: (1) Captain John Smith, who described the country and the Indians, and gave to literature the story of Pocahontas, thereby disclosing a new world to the imagination of writers; (2) William Strachey, who outranks contemporary colonial writers in describing the wrath of the sea, and who may even have furnished a suggestion to Shakespeare for _The Tempest_; (3) two poets, (a) George Sandys, who translated part of Ovid, and (b) the unknown author of the elegy on Nathaniel Bacon; and (4) Robert Beverly and William Byrd, who gave interesting descriptions of early Virginia.

The chief colonial writers of New England are: (1) William Bradford, whose _History of Plymouth Plantation_ tells the story of the first Pilgrim colony; (2) John Winthrop, who wrote in his _Journal_ the early history of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony; (3) the poets, including (a) the translators of the _Bay Psalm Book_, the first volume of so-called verse printed in the British American colonies, (b) Wigglesworth, whose _Day of Doom_, was a poetic exposition of Calvinistic theology, (c) Anne Bradstreet, who wrote a small amount of genuine poetry, after she had pa.s.sed from the influence of the "fantastic" school of poets; (4) Nathaniel Ward, the author of _The Simple Cobbler of Agawam_, an attempt to mend human ways; (5) Samuel Sewall, New England's greatest colonial diarist; (6) Cotton Mather, the most famous clerical writer, whose _Magnalia_ is a compound of early colonial history and biography, sometimes written in a "fantastic" style; (7) Jonathan Edwards, America's greatest metaphysician and theologian, who maintained that the action of the human will is determined by the strongest motive, that the substance of this universe is nothing but "the divine Idea," communicated to human consciousness, and who could invest spiritual truth with the beauty of the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the valleys.

The New England colonist came to America because of religious feeling. His religion was to him a matter of eternal life or eternal death. From the modern point of view, this religion may seem too inflexibly stern, too little illumined by the spirit of love, too much darkened by the shadow of eternal punishment, but unless that religion had communicated something of its own dominating inflexibility to the colonist, he would never have braved the ocean, the wilderness, the Indians; he would never have flung the gauntlet down to tyranny at Lexington and Concord.

The greatest lesson taught by colonial literature, by men like Bradford, Winthrop, Edwards, and the New England clergy in general, is moral heroism, the determination to follow the shining path of the Eternal over the wave and through the forest to a new temple of human liberty. Their aspiration, endeavor, suffering, accomplishment, should strengthen our faith in the worth of those spiritual realities which are not quoted in the markets of the world, but which alone possess imperishable value.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

HISTORICAL

ENGLISH HISTORY.--In either Gardiner's _Students' History of England_, Walker's _Essentials in English History_, Andrews's _History of England_, or Cheney's _Short History of England_, read the chapters dealing with the time of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., the Commonwealth, Charles II., James II., William and Mary, Anne, George I. and II. A work like Halleck's _History of English Literature_, covering these periods, should be read.

AMERICAN HISTORY.--Read the account from the earliest times to the outbreak of the French and Indian War in any of the following:--