Literary Culture in Early New England.

Published in Memory of

Thomas Goddard Wright.

Copyright 1920 by

Yale University Press.

Contents.

THOMAS GODDARD WRIGHT, the author of this book, was born at Fort Ann, New York, the seventeenth of August, 1885. He was the son of the Reverend William Russell Wright and Alma (Boardman) Wright. He was graduated from the Hartford Public High School in 1903, and then entered Yale University, where he received the degree of B.A. in 1907, M.A. in 1908, and Doctor of Philosophy in 1917. On the seventh of June, 1913, he was married to Mabel Hyde Kingsbury, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Edward N. Kingsbury, of Woonsocket, Rhode Island. From the year 1908 he had served first as Assistant, and later as Instructor in English in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University.

This book is in his favourite field of study, and is in part representative of his special research therein covering a period of five or six years. While primarily intended for the use of scholars in history and literature, it is by no means without interest for the general reader.

In the death of Dr. Wright, Yale University suffers a severe loss from the ranks of its scholars and teachers. He was intensely beloved both by his colleagues and by his pupils. His character and personality had an extraordinary charm; he was modest, generous, unselfish, faithful and pure in heart. I never knew a man more free from the meaner vices of self-interest and self-importance. The advancement of his rivals pleased him more than his own achievements. No one could know him without feeling a sense of elevation. His high-minded and unassuming devotion to his work was an example to us all, and his influence will be permanently fruitful.

William Lyon Phelps.

Yale University, Tuesday, 3 June, 1919.

THE subject of the study which follows was suggested to me by Professor Henry A. Beers, to whom I owe more than I can express for his wise guidance and sympathetic encouragement throughout the preparation of this work. I wish to acknowledge also the assistance of Professor William Lyon Phelps, under whose supervision the work was carried on after the retirement of Professor Beers from active teaching.

I owe much to Professor Keogh and Messrs. Gruener and Ginter of the Yale University Library, and Mr. Sanborn, formerly of the Library, all of whom I have found invariably responsive to any demands which I have made upon them for help in finding material for this work. I wish to acknowledge also the kindness of Mr. Julius H. Tuttle of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Mr. Clarence S. Brigham of the American Antiquarian Society, and Messrs. William C. Lane and Walter B. Briggs of the Harvard University Library, who assisted me in my search for material. To Mr. Albert Matthews of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts and Professor Charles M. Andrews of Yale, who kindly read my manuscript, I am indebted for many valuable suggestions.

Finally to those who, in connection with the various historical and antiquarian societies of New England, have gathered and made accessible a wealth of valuable material I owe an inestimable debt; without the fruits of their labor my task would have been an impossible one.

T. G. W.

MOST students of our colonial literature devote themselves primarily to the appraisal of its value as literature. The pages which follow will not attempt to weigh colonial literature, either to condemn or defend it (although at times they may endeavor to correct impressions which, to the writer, seem erroneous), but rather will attempt to determine that which lies back of any literature, the culture of the people themselves, and to study the relation between their culture and the literature which they produced. In the attempt to determine the culture of the people of New England the writer has made a study of their education, their libraries, their ability to obtain books, their use and appreciation of books, their relations with political and literary life in England, and their literature. In the course of the study certain generally accepted notions of the low estate of colonial culture will be shown to be incorrect or exaggerated. There were in New England as in Old England many people who were without culture and even illiterate; but the general state of culture in the colonies will be shown to be higher than it has usually been rated.

This study has been limited approximately to the first one hundred years of colonial life, and to the New England colonies with Boston as their center. These colonies form a distinct unit, akin to each other, and differing from any other colony, or group of colonies, in both antecedents and interests. That much more is said of those who settled on Massachusetts Bay than of those elsewhere in New England is due partly to the greater comprehensiveness and accessibility of the extant records of that region, and partly to the fact that Boston was the literary and cultural center as well as the chief city of these colonies. It must have a predominant

place in this discussion, just as London would in a similar study of the literary culture of England.

It is not easy to divide the first century of colonial life into cultural periods which have definite limits. To attempt to discuss conditions according to generations, first, second, third, is impossible, because of the range of age of the first settlers, and their varying longevity. Brewster, Hooker, and Winthrop all died in the forties; John Norton and John Wilson lived into the sixties, the latter almost outliving the Reverend John Eliot, Jr., who had been born in New England. For convenience the one hundred years will be discussed as if divided into three periods, the first of fifty years, the second of thirty, and the last of twenty. The first, ending about 1670, covers the years during which those who came to America as settlers, men born and educated in England, were in control of the affairs of the colony, and determined its culture. By 1670 practically all of these men had died, and government, education, and culture were in the hands of men reared and trained in the New World. The second period ends with the seventeenth century, partly because the century mark makes a convenient terminal, and partly because there are certain differences in the life of the colonists before and after the opening of the century. The third period covers the rest of the one hundred years. It must he remembered, however, that the limits of the periods arc approximate, not exact; the last period, for example, instead of stopping absolutely at 1720, includes a discussion of certain events in the half-dozen years immediately following that date.

The writer recognizes that his study is incomplete. It never can be complete because too many of the records have perished. Certain records which are preserved but which have been inaccessible might throw more light upon the subject; but presumably these would merely add detail and in no way affect the main conclusions.