Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/539

AMERICAN LITERATURE. Virginians wmte to convey information to their friends at lionie and to eneonrage emigration; the Puritans wrote for tliese reasons and also to defend and expound their theokigy and to train ui> the new generations in the ways of the old. For literary Mvt in itself, or indeed for any art, the}' had little care; but when, as not infre- quently hapjjened, the men who wrote were in- teresting or even gieat in their private or pub- lie capacities, they managed to impart some of their own finer qualities to their writings, which may not exactly live, but are, at least, worthy of remembrance if not of perusal by the reader in- terested in the history of his country.

The portion of this early literature produced by the Southern and Middle colonies is com- paratively meagre. Captain Smith'.s works, which culminate in the composite (Irneral Uin- tory of Virginia, Xew England and the Hummer Isles (1624), are quaint and crude but full of their adventurous and magniloquent author's en- ergy. William Strachey's account of the famous wreck of Sir Thomas Gates (1610) may possibly, some think probably, have given Shakespeare hints for his description of the storm in The Tempest. Nothing so interesting was in all prob- ability produced in Virginia until 1649, when a certain Colonel Norwood narrated to his relative. Sir William Berkeley, the adventures that had befallen him during and after his shipwreck. The same picturesque Governor Berkeley is one of the protagonists in the next Virginian tract of impor- tance — the so-called Bunnell Papers, descriptive of Bacon's Rebellion (1670). Only two interest- ing books are credited to Maryland during this eentury,-John Hammond's Lcn/i and Raehcl { 1656) and George Alsop's quaint Charaeler of the Province of Maryland (1660). The Carolinas were settled too late to produce anything of consequence. The same thing is true of the mid- dle colo7iies. although Daniel Denton's Brief De- seription of Xeii: York (1670) is not uninterest- ing, and Gabriel Thomas's Aeeount of Pennsyl- vania and Vei(j Jersey (1698) does not lack sprightliness.

An abundance rather than a lack of writings confronts the student of the Seventeenth Century New England, but few books and writers need mention here. The histories composed by Gov- ernor William Bradford of Plymouth and Gov- ernor .John Winthrop of ^Massachusetts have many merits, but are on the whole fatiguing reading. The sermons and theological treatises of such representative divines as Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, John Cotton, Peter Bulkeley, and their compeers furnish interesting passages for our anthologies, but are rarely read in extenso. The works of Roger Williams are probably treated in a similar fashion; but the loss falls upon the reader as well as upon the fame of that truly great man. Another writer who deserves more attention than he receives is Daniel Gookin, who wrote two books about the Christian Indians, for whom he labored in conjunction with that famous apostle, John Eliot. But unquestionably the most interesting book in prose produced in New Eng- land during the seventeenth century was Na- thaniel Ward's Sitnple Cobbler of Agateam (1647) — a whimsical compound of satire and in- vective that is almost without parallel. .John Josselyn's yew England's Rarities Discovered (1672) and his Account of Two Voyages (1674) deserve mention also as almost turning credulity into artistic virtue.

But tlie early New Englanders wrote verse as well as prose — especially verse of an elegiac na- ture, in 1640 appeared the astonishingly crude Bay Psalm Booh. Ten years later Mrs. Anne Bradstreet's Tenth Muse Lately >Sprung up in America was published in London, accompanied by poetical pancgj'rics that made the modest woman blush. Mrs. Bradstreet was not without genuine powers, as her later works showed; but she followed bad models, had no eye for the beau- ties of nature, and is in consequence almost un- readable to-day. This fate has not befallen Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom (1662) — a New England Inferno which long continued to be popular. Its quaint stanzas are perused to-day with sensations quite different from those pro- duced by them two hundred years ago ; but they are still read, and even quoted for amusement, a fortune not accorded to the amiable Wiggles- worth's other performances. Wigglesworth is, however, almost a great poet when he is com- pared with contemporaries like Peter Folger, Franklin's grandfather, whose Looking-Glass for the Times (1077) is almost the ne plus ttltra of doggerel. Perhaps the only poems of any decided merit composed in America during the seventeenth century are an anonymous epi- taph on Bacon, given in the Burwell Papers, and an Elegy on the Rev. Thomas Shepard (1077), by the Rev. Uriah Oakes, President of Harvard.

The close of the seventeenth century in New England is marked for us by the famous persecu- tions for witchcraft which have given so sinister a reputation to many good men, especially to the two Mathers, Increase and Cotton. ' These are in some ways the most important divines of early New England, although they mark the de- cline of the theocracy rather than its culmina- tion. Both were voluminous writers, and both treated in particular the two topics uppermost in the New England mind : to wit, the struggles of the saints against witches and fiends and against the savage Indians. All the dominant ideas of the times are found embodied in the younger Mather's encyclopaedic Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), a chronicle which is not alto- gether authoritative as to facts, but is typical of its fantastic author and of the Brahmin caste he represented. Typical of the old order that was passing, and of the new that was coming in, is Judge Samuel Sewall's Diary, which ran from 1673 to 1729. Sewall is the'Pepys of his time, and many a quaint page can be e.xtracted from his jottings; but he should also be remembered as perhaps our first abolitionist, his short tract. The Selling of Joseph, dating from 1700. Another early diarist is Mrs. Sarah Kemble Knight, who wrote a sprightly account of a journey she took on horseback in 1704 from Boston to New York. Even in New England, secular writing became more popular as the eighteenth century advanced, which is what one might expect, since the colonies were growing prosperous and were being aflfected by the utilitarian tendencies of the epoch. There is a considerable amount of verse, none of it of much consequence, and there is quite a mass of history, particularly of narratives dealing with Indian atrocities. Probably the most important poets are the Rev. Mather Byles and his contemporary, Joseph Green, but they succeeded best in trifles. The most scientific historian of the period is the Rev. Thomas Prince; the most interesting is the quaint Scotchman,