"They wring their hands, their caitiff-hands and gnaw their tongues for horrour. Christ pities not your cry: Depart to Hell, there may you yell, Sad to relate, the poem was as popular in its day (and its day lasted a hundred years) as the Psalm of Life has been in ours. Of some thirty pre-revolutionary writers of verse whose names stand recorded in the more elaborate histories of our literature, one more may be mentioned here. Thomas This was Thomas Godfrey, a watchmaker's apprentice of Philadelphia, who died in the South in 1763 His poems were published at the age of twenty-seven. two years later. The most notable among them was The Prince of Parthia, a blank-verse tragedy, which, though like the rest crudely juvenile, points at least to an intimate acquaintance with the dramas of Shakespeare. The imitation is sometimes very bald. These lines, for example, are a clear echo of Horatio's: "E'en the pale dead, affrighted at the horror, As though unsafe, start from their marble jails, And these, of Lear's: "Dead! she's cold and dead! Her eyes are closed, and all my joys are flown Break! break, tough heart!"* But there are also passages that show a power quite inde pendent of imitation, and Thomas Godfrey deserves to be See Hamlet, J., i., 115; Lear, IIL, ii, remembered as the first of America's few adventurers into the dramatic field. His drama was a closet drama only. The first native play to be regularly staged and acted was (probably-it is never safe to be positive about such matters) Royall Tyler's satirical comedy, The Contrast, 1786. THEOLOGY History, poetry, and theology,-these three were the forms in which colonial literature chiefly enshrined itself, and the greatest of these was theology. The Puritans who settled New England were practically religious refugees, men seeking a land where they should be free to worship as their consciences dictated. Their government was essentially theocratic-God was their great law-giver and the Bible their chief statute-book. The New England Primer was half catechism and prayer-book. The church, or meetinghouse, was the centre of the community, and the ministers were the most learned men. It was inevitable that literature, which always reflects the highest intellectual and spiritual interests of a people, should take on a strong theological cast. This theology-by which of course is meant, not religion itself, but a special system and doctrine of religion (in this case chiefly Calvinism)—appears first in the unlovely guise of controversy. The persecution which the Puritans had endured had not chastened them. They could be as intolerant of those who did not agree with them as ever their own persecutors had been, and in their course they saw no inconsistency. The profound conviction that they alone were right justified them-left, indeed, no other course open. In 1637 the Synod of Massachusetts took a definite stand against religious toleration. In the same year Anne Hutchinson was banished for heresy; and Roger Williams, the great apostle of toleration, had been banished two years before. Heresy became the crime of the age, and ministers thundered from the pulpit, while laymen poured out vials of printed wrath. Nathaniel Perhaps the most striking book of this earlier period was Nathaniel Ward's Simple Cobbler of Agawam, published at London in 1647. Ward had himself been driven out of England for heresy by Archbishop Laud, and, to judge from his book, he found solace in America by attacking everything that offered a fair mark, from the doctrines of the Baptists to the Parisian millinery of the women. "I dare take upon me to be the herald of New England so far as to proclaim to the world, in the name of our colony, that all Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists, and other enthusiasts, shall have free liberty-to keep away from us; and such as will come to be gone as fast as they can, the sooner the better. To tell a practical lie is a great sin, but yet transient; but to set up a theoretical untruth is to warrant every lie that lies from its root to the top of every branch it hath, which are not a few!" Such proclamations would hardly win converts the spirit is too warlike to be Christian. Yet the force and picturesqueness of the style suit well with the independence of the opinions, and it is easy to see behind them the earnestness of the man. 1585-1652. Roger (?) 1604-1683. Greater men than Ward took part in this theological conflict. There was John Cotton, one of the greatest pulpit orators of the time, who had likewise been driven John Cotton, from England by Laud, and who came from the old Boston to the new, which was named in his honor. With little of Ward's fiery and controversial temper, he had yet attempted to justify the banishment of Roger Williams, and when the latter, in defence, published his Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience (1644), Cotton felt bound to reply to it with The Bloody Tenet washed and made white in the Blood of the Lamb (1647). Whereupon Williams naturally came forward again--but the very titles of the books are no longer worth reprinting. In some respects this theological literature grew in time. even more stern, less beautiful. An age of fanaticism followed, marked by several manifestations, such as the Salem witchcraft craze of 1692 and the great religious revival of 1740–1745. It almost seems as if the Puritans, left to themselves in the wilderness (for there were few recruits from the old world after 1640), were in danger of reverting to the gross superstitions of primitive peoples. Their history proves at least that there can be education without enlightenment. Toward the end of the seventeenth century we find such book-titles as Discourse Concerning Comets; Illustrious Providences; Memorable Providences relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, with a Discourse on the Power and Malice of Devils; Wonders of the Invisible World. All the books just named were written by Increase and Cotton Mather, father and son, both eminent divines, and both indefatigable writers. Cotton Mather, indeed, Cotton His stands clearly at the head of the writers of colonial 1663-1728. New England. His grandfathers, John Cotton and Richard Mather, had been, like his father, preachers and writers before him, and his son was a preacher and writer after him. He was a prodigy of learning, who spent ten hours a day in his study, and who published in one year fourteen books and pamphlets, and in his life-time nearly four hundred. great book, over which he prayed and fasted and wept, and which was published in folio-the only folio in our literature-in 1702, is entitled Magnalia Christi Americana; or, The Ecclesiastical History of New England from its First Planting in the Year 1620 unto the Year of our Lord 1698. It is primarily a church history, as the title and introduction indicate: "I WRITE the WONDERS of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, flying from the depravations of Europe, to the American Strand; and, assisted by the Holy Author of that Religion, I do with all conscience of Truth, required therein by Him, who is the Truth itself, report the wonderful displays of His infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness, and Faith fulness, wherewith His Divine Providence hath irradiated an Indian Wilderness.” The book is difficult to describe, difficult indeed to read, though as students of American literature we are bound to hold it in reverence; "the one single literary landmark," says Charles Francis Adams, "in a century and a half of colonial and provincial life-a geologic record of a glacial period." Our great New England writers have all been more or less familiar with it. Longfellow, for example, drew from it the legend versified in his poem, The Phantom Ship. But as a historical document it is quite untrustworthy in details; its chief value lies in the light which it throws upon the theological interests and the superstitious temper of the times. Its literary value, too, is slight. Beautiful and imaginative phrases may be found in it, but in a larger sense it can scarcely be said to have any style of its own, such a conglomeration is it of the fragmentary learning of all ages gathered together to embellish the plain statements beneath. All the pedantic vices of the fantastic school of folio writers are here in their most exaggerated form. The pages are sprinkled with learned allusions, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew phrases, quotations, italics, puns, Bible references, etc., etc Thus, for example, runs the account of the presidents of Harvard College: "After the death of Dr. Hoar, the place of President pro tempore, was put upon Mr. Urian Oakes, the excellent Pastor of the Church at Cambridge; who did so, and would no otherwise accept of the place; though the offer of a full settlement in the place was afterwards importunately made unto him. Reader, let us now upon another account behold the students of Harvard-Colledge, as a rendezvous of happy Druids, under the influence of so rare a President. But, alas! our joy must be short lived; for, on July 25, 1681, the stroak of a sudden death fell'd the tree, Qui tantum inter caput extulit Mr. Oakes, thus being transplanted into the better world, the Presidentship was immediately tendered unto Mr. Increase Mather; but his Church, upon the application of the overseers unto omnes. |