83

Chapter V: The Production of Literature.

AS the preceding chapters have shown that the culture of New England in its earlier years did not differ greatly from that of England during the same period, it is necessary to discuss and explain the seeming inferiority of New England’s literature to contemporary English literature. To do this it will be necessary not only to consider the literary production of the colonists,—its kind, its extent, and its quality,—but also to compare it with that of the English Puritans and account for such actual differences as are found.

An indication of the nature of the literary activity during this period may be obtained from the following tabulation of the output of the press at Cambridge from its establishment through the year 1670.¹

Total number of publications	157
Almanacs (many contained verse)	26
Books in the Indian language	19
Religious books (prose)	58
Religious books (verse)	5
Lists of Harvard theses	12
Laws and official publications	22
School books	3
Poetry	4
History, Biography, etc.	8

This list, however, fails to give an accurate impression of the extent of their production of books. It must be remembered that the colonists thought of themselves as Englishmen primarily,² and in any important book would wish to

83

address their countrymen who still lived in England as much as, if not more than, their New England neighbors. All books before the press was established at Cambridge in 1638, and the more important books after that time, were sent to London for publication. Roger Williams’ “The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience,” written by Williams while visiting in London, was published there in 1644. A copy soon reached the library of John Cotton in Boston, who saw fit to reply to it. The reply, “The Bloody Tenet washed and made white in the Blood of the Lamb,” was sent to London, where it appeared in 1647. When this reached Williams in Rhode Island he wrote a second book to reply to Cotton’s argument, “The Bloody Tenet yet more Bloody, by Mr. Cotton’s Endeavor to wash it white in the Blood of the Lamb.” This also crossed the ocean for publication in 1652. Thus did men living within fifty miles of each other argue over a range of six thousand miles because they were writing for all Englishmen to read. Similarly, elegies and books of religious verse for local use, such as “The Bay Psalm Book,” were printed at Cambridge; but the first volume of poetry written with literary intent, Anne Bradstreet’s “The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America,” was sent to London for publication in 1650.

To the productions of the press at Cambridge, then, must be added the many books published abroad. These were fewer in number, but really amounted to more, since many of the Cambridge volumes were merely sermons, or thin pamphlets, whereas the books sent to England were generally full-fledged books.

Religious books were numerous among those printed in England, but were perhaps exceeded by a class of books almost unknown to the Cambridge press, descriptions of America or of life in America. These range from such discussions of the natural history of the region as Wood’s “New England’s Prospect” and Josselyn’s “New England’s Rarities Discovered,” to such defenses against those who published unfavorable

84

reports of conditions, either physical, political, or religious, in New England as Winslow’s “Good News from New England” and Johnson’s “Wonder-Working Providence.”

To the products of the presses on both sides of the ocean certain other writings must be added if we are to get a fair estimate of the activity of New England pens during these years. Several books, among them some which rank highest in modern estimates of the period, were not printed until years or even centuries had passed. Such are Bradford’s “History of Plymouth Plantations,” Winthrop’s “Journal,”³ and Mason’s account of his fight with the Pequots at Mystic. Considerable verse also escaped publication, some until Cotton Mather wrote his “Magnalia Christi,” and more until antiquarian interest set people to hunting through ancestral records.

In quantity, it is evident, the literary output of the early colonists was considerable. Its quality is less marked, how much less depending upon the standards by which it is tested. Tested in comparison with the best which England produced in the seventeenth century, it is certainly deficient. Tested in comparison with the bulk of the writings of English Puritans during the same period, its deficiency is not very marked. Surely the latter test is the fairer one, and William Prynne a more typical author with whom to compare the New Englander than John Milton.

If we eliminate poetry from the discussion, the best that New England produced is not greatly inferior to Milton’s work. In Governor Winthrop’s “Journal” there are many eloquent passages, in spite of the fact that much of it was evidently written in great haste at odd moments. Governor Bradford’s style in his “History” is remarkably simple and direct, and the same may be said of Winslow’s in his narratives.⁴ Roger Williams and John Winthrop, Jr., also wrote

85

effective prose. As for religious literature, it is impossible to distinguish between that produced in the colony and in the mother country, partly because so many of the leading divines preached and published their sermons with equal satisfaction to hearers and readers in either country. That so many books written in New England were published in London is further evidence that a voyage to America did not affect either the ability or the popularity of a writer. If no great literature was produced by the Puritans in New England, it may be not because they were in New England, but because little great literature was produced by the Puritans anywhere.

It is only when we turn to conscious literature, to belles-lettres and especially to poetry, that we find any decided inferiority in New England. Milton, Marvell, and Wither have no rivals there, although the worst of Wither has perhaps nothing to distinguish it from the better colonial poems. But we must not forget that to compare Anne Bradstreet with Milton may be unfair; it would seem more just to compare her with Mrs. Katharine Philips (Orinda), her English contemporary. If it is true that Mrs. Bradstreet is remembered only as a curiosity of American literature, it seems just as true that Mrs. Philips is not remembered at all. This is not to imply that the poetry of Mrs. Bradstreet or of her neighbors is good poetry, but to warn the reader against the common tendency to rate it lower than it deserves in comparison with the general output of Puritan poetry in England at the same time.

Funeral elegies were a custom of the time, a custom faithfully observed in both New and Old England.⁵ Of English

86

elegies of the period most of us know only “Lycidas” and perhaps Marvell’s “Poem upon the Death of his Late Highness the Lord Protector,” and when we read the colonial elegies we compare them with these, forgetting that these are quite exceptional. And the fact that the colonial elegies (because so many of them were preserved for us by Morton in his “New England’s Memorial” and by Cotton Mather in his “Magnalia Christi,” whereas much fugitive poetry undoubtedly perished) form an abnormally large part of the whole body of colonial poetry gives us a false impression of the whole. It might be fairer to disregard them entirely in our estimates of colonial poetry, as we practically do disregard the English elegies of the same period when we consider English poetry of the seventeenth century.⁶ But if we must consider them, let us compare them with similar elegies produced in England. The colonial ministers wrote elegies not because they felt themselves to be poets, but because it was the fitting way to pay tribute. English ministers did the same for the same reason. Did they succeed any better? To get some answer to this question, I examined the works of an English Puritan divine, well known and popular both as a preacher and as a writer and perhaps typical, to see whether he ever attempted verse or not. I discovered that Richard Baxter had not only written but published a volume of verse which went through three editions in the seventeenth century, and was reprinted in 1821. One of the first poems I read was an elegy, part of which I venture to copy here for comparison with one of the colonial elegies which Professor Tyler⁷ used as an example of the “elaborate

87

and painful jests” and the “ingenuities of allusion” which characterized them.

Upon the Sight of Mr. VINES his Posthumous Treatise on the Sacrament, Octob. 18, 1656, who dyed a little before.

While thou grew’st here, thy fruit made glad The hearts that sin and death made sad: Lest we would surfeit of thy fruit, Thy Life retired to the root. Desiring with us first to keep, A Passover before thy sleep:* Weary of Earth, thou took’st thine Ease, Passing into the land of Peace: The threatned Evil we foresee, But hope to hide our selves with Thee. Though thou art gone, while we must fight, We’ll call it Victory, not Fight. When God hath taken up this VINE, We thought no more to taste its Wine, Till in the Land of Salem’s King, We drink it new, even from the Spring: But unexpectedly we find, Some Clusters which are left behind: This Mantle from thy Chariot fell; We know it by the pleasant smell: Who knows but from this little seed Some more such fruitful Vines may breed? The Tree of Death bears precious Fruit, Though in the Earth it have no Root. The Soul imboided [imbodied] in those Lines, Doth make us say, that, This is VINES: And if our Hearts with you could be; Our Lord would say, that there are we. But as according to desert, The Heavens have got thy better part;

88

And left us but some of the Wine, Whilst they have taken up the Vine: So we look up, and wait, and pray, And yet still feel, we live in Clay. Here we are keeping sin’s account, While some small sparks do upward mount, Crying “How long, Holy and True.” Till we are taken up to you. Thus also we must follow LOVE*, To find our HEAD and LIFE above. He that is made by the New-Birth, A Burges of the Church on Earth, And then by Faith can rise so high, In Divine LOVE to live and die, Shall be translated to your soil, Remov’d from sin, and fear, and toil; And from this House of Worms & Moles Unto that Element of Souls. Where every Branch becomes a VINE; And where these clods like stars will shine God is not there known by the Book! You need not there the pruning-hook: There you have Wine without the Press; And God his praise without distress.

A Threnodia upon our churches second dark eclipse, happening July 20, 1663, by death’s interposition between us and that great light and divine plant, Mr. Samuel Stone, late of Hartford, in New England.⁸

Last spring this summer may be autumn styl’d, Sad withering fall our beauties which despoil’d; Two choicest plants, our Norton and our Stone,

89

Your justs threw down; remov’d, away are gone. One year brought Stone and Norton to their mother, In one year, April, July, them did smother. Dame Cambridge, mother to this darling son; Emanuel, Northampt’ that heard this one, Essex, our bay, Hartford, in sable clad, Come bear your parts in this Threnodia sad. In losing one, church many lost: O then Many for one come be sad singing men. May nature, grace and art be found in one So high, as to be found in few or none. In him these three with full fraught hand contested, With which by each he should be most invested. The largest of the three, it was so great On him, the stone was held a light compleat, A stone more than the Ebenezer fam’d; Stone splendent diamond, right orient nam’d; A cordial stone, that often cheered hearts With pleasant wit, with Gospel rich imparts; Whetstone, that edgify’d th’ obtusest mind; Loadstone, that drew the iron heart unkind; A pond’rous stone, that would the bottom sound Of Scripture depths, and bring out Arcan’s found; A stone for kingly David’s use so fit, As would not fail Goliah’s front to hit; A stone, an antidote, that brake the course Of gangrene error, by convincing force; A stone acute, fit to divide and square; A squared stone became Christ’s building rare. A Peter’s living, lively stone (so reared) As ’live was Hartford’s life; dead, death is fear’d. In Hartford old, Stone first drew infant breath, In New, effused his last; O there beneath His corps are laid, near to his darling brother,9 Of whom dead oft he sighed, Not such another. Heaven is the more desirable, said he, For Hooker, Shepard, and Hayne’s company. E. B.*

90

Both poems are unquestionably bad, and for the same chief cause, the tendency to overdo the fantastic. Of the two, I do not feel that the colonial poem is the worse, for it seems to me that it has more form and that the playing upon the word stone is better managed and more effective than that upon the word vine.

In another and even humbler form of verse, that which appeared in the almanacs of the day, a form generally, and perhaps deservedly, neglected by students of literature, the colonial writers were also not inferior to those of the mother country. A comparison of the incomplete file of seventeenth century British almanacs in the Massachusetts Historical Society library with the almanacs published in Massachusetts during the period under discussion, shows that more colonial almanacs in proportion contain verse, that they average more lines of verse per almanac, and that in general this verse exhibits more originality. No New England almanac maker found it necessary to repeat, with slight changes, the verses which he had used the year before, as Edward Pond did in his almanac for 1611, nor to reprint verse which he had used over twenty years before, as Ralph Partridge in 1705 drew upon his own “Merlinus Redivivus” of 1684. Most of the verse on both sides of the water is mechanical rhyming upon the trite topics of the changing seasons, the influence of signs of the zodiac, astrological advice, or the possibilities of the coming year. Three of the American almanacs, however, show some originality. Samuel Danforth’s “An Almanack for the Year of our Lord 1649” contains an eighty-eight line poem followed by an eight line prognostication, the whole planned to fit the almanac with eight lines at the head of each month. The poem is an elaborate and not ineffective (though not very poetical) allegorical account of the settlement of New England and the trials of the colonists. Hurricanes, Indian uprisings, the “antinomian” errors of Mrs. Hutchinson, plagues of pigeons and army worms, and even echoes of the troubles

91

in England, are brought into this account of the “Orphan” driven from “England’s armes” into the wilderness. Josiah Flint’s “Almanack” for 1666 contains a history of the Jews in rhyme. John Richardson’s “Almanack” for 1670 furnishes an example of a quality generally lacking in colonial literature—humor. “The Countryman’s Apocrypha,” as the main poem is called, is a satire upon the vulgar belief in and love of marvels. The satire is exaggerated and the humor is blunt;¹⁰ but there is nothing trite or conventional about the poem. Neither English nor colonial almanacs printed selections from real poetry at this time; that custom was not established until the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Those who depended upon the annual almanac for their literature had meager fare; but they were at no disadvantage if they lived in New England.

In attempting to determine the quality of the literature produced by the people of New England it must not be forgotten that in so far as they were consciously writing, they were writing for their contemporaries, and that, in consequence, it should be judged by their standards. To us

92

much that they wrote seems absurd, and such effusions as “The Bay Psalm Book” and Wigglesworth’s “The Day of Doom” are held up for ridicule in almost every history or collection of American literature. Yet contemporary England found nothing absurd in them. “The Day of Doom” was twice reprinted in England,¹¹ and “The Bay Psalm Book” passed through eighteen editions in England, the last in 1754, and twenty-two editions in Scotland, the last in 1759.¹² The latter was popular in the mother country long after Tate and Brady’s version had supplanted it in some of the New England churches.¹³ Perhaps New England taste was not abnormal or even peculiar; perhaps it is only the popular taste of seventeenth century England on either side of the water which seems so strange, and which, met almost solely in the poetry of New England (since few read the equivalent poetry written in England, there being so much that is better), gives us a false impression of colonial taste and literary culture.

We expect too much of early New England literature, then, if we attempt to compare it solely with the best of contemporary literature; and we are also unfair to New England when we compare its production with that of all England—the colony in its earliest years with the mother country. It would be fairer to compare the colonies with some district of England,—to compare Boston in New England

93

and the district around it with Boston in Old England and the surrounding county of Lincolnshire. Thomas Fuller in his Lincolnshire section of “The Worthies of England” mentions the following as writers since the Reformation: Edmund Sheffeild, Peter Morwing, Anthony Gilby, John Fox, Dr. Thomas Sparks, Dr. Tighe, and Fines Morison. The editor of the 1840 edition of the “Worthies” adds a list of writers since Fuller’s time. The only names in that list which come within the period of the entire first century of colonial life are Susannah Centlivre and Sir Charles Cotterell, the translator of “Cassandra.” Such limited literary activity as these names represent would not indicate that New England was, by comparison, sterile soil for literature.

The preceding attempt to determine a fair standard by which to judge of the quality of colonial writings partly explains why the early colonists did not produce a finer literature than they did; they were producing the literature which, in general, their class in England produced. The earlier chapters have shown that their education and literary culture were not greatly affected by their removal to a new land. For just that reason their literary activity was little affected by their change. If no fine poetry was produced, it was because the Puritans had few poets of ability and of them none chose to come to New England. Poets of little ability seem to have been uninfluenced by emigration. John Wilson wrote much poor poetry in New England; but there seems to be no evidence that the volume which he published in England in 1626 before he came contained any better poetry. If a poet of real ability had come to Boston, he would not have ceased to be a poet. If John Milton, for instance, had been driven over by the Restoration, I see no reason why he could not have developed “Paradise Lost” as well as in England. There is a possibility that the busy life of a young colony might in some cases have militated somewhat against the production of poetry, but that would not

94

have affected Milton, whose blindness would have ensured to him the leisure necessary for his work.

The really remarkable thing about the literature of New England in its earliest days is that there is as much of it as there is, and that it is as good as it is. There were certainly many things which might have hampered and probably did hamper literary work. The lack of leisure time, already mentioned, might have hindered some, although the ministers and some of the wealthier men would have been free from this handicap. The necessity of sending all material, at first, to England for publication, and of sending much even after a press was established at Cambridge, may have been a restraining influence. Still another was the rigid censorship of the colonial press, little used during this period, as far as the records show, but nevertheless always in existence, as shown by the fining of Marmaduke Johnson for printing without authority in 1668,¹⁴ and by the stopping of a partially printed edition of Thomas à Kempis in 1669.¹⁵ The narrowness of some of the leaders may have had a repressing influence upon freedom of expression.¹⁶ There was no literary circle for the mutual encouragement of those who might be interested in the production of literature, and no

95

sufficient home market for any work of a purely artistic nature. In spite of all this, a great deal was written, and a large part of what was written was in the form of verse. Professor Tyler remarks,¹⁷ with perhaps unnecessary sarcasm, upon the almost universal tendency to attempt to write verse. If they did not succeed in writing much good verse, it was not for lack of effort. That they wrote some real poetry must be acknowledged.¹⁸

It seems safe to conclude that the early New England colonists wrote more than they would have written had they remained in England, and that the quality of their work was not lowered by their removal, or by any lack of opportunities for culture in the new home.

96

97

◄ Chapter IV   Directory of Files   Chapter VI ►