Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/92

 60 Colonial literature. [1700-50 uncritical in their estimate of evidence, but are redeemed by their tone of glowing and hopeful patriotism, and by a dignity of diction belonging to those who have assimilated the English Bible till their speech in- stinctively adopts its form. To a modern reader the theology of New England, the sermons and the controversial treatises, can, with very rare exceptions, be nothing but a weariness. Their dogmatising is for the most part to us meaningless, buried under the successive strata of thought which three centuries have produced: their controversial fencing has the cumbrous elaboration and tortuousness which were the besetting vices of Elizabethan literature. Yet they claim our respect as written not only by men, but for men, who did not shrink from resolute study and serious thought. The type of writer of whom we speak passed away as New England changed its character. The New England of 1700, though still orderly, patient and labour-loving, was no longer the Christian Sparta, merciless in its discipline, crushing the individual into subjection to the State, yet strengthening him in the process, at which the founders of Massachusetts had aimed, not without a measure of success. As the life of Boston becomes more and more a reproduction of decorous middle-class English life, so the literature of New England becomes more and more a con- ventional copy of contemporary English models. We find colonial Steeles and Addisons and Popes without the redeeming graces of instinctive felicity of expression and simple elegance. One New England writer of the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards, stands out, it is true, above his fellows. His work is marked by a force and consecutiveness of thought, an exactness of expression, and a wealth of illustrative learning which give him a place among great thinkers. But he is isolated, and in no sense a typical representative of a contemporary school. In the colonies outside New England we have nothing that can be called a school of literature. We find men in whom colonial life had quickened the habit of observation, and who have left us vivid descriptions of what was striking in the physical life of the newly-discovered world. Virginia produced three writers who at least showed that a colonist could attain a high standard of culture and expression. Stith's history of Virginia, published in 174*7, the work of a Virginian clergyman, is fragmentary and uncritical; but it is never tame, and the style has a rolling dignity such as might have been begotten by a study of Clarendon. Beverley and Byrd, both Virginian squires, wrote, the former a history of the colony, the latter a narrative of his exploration in the backwoods, full of freshness and easy correctness. In journalism Boston, as might be expected, led the way, producing in 1704 the first American newspaper. By 1750 Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina all possessed newspapers of their own.