AMERICAN LITERATURE. That the earliest literature of the part of America now comprising the United States should be distinctly English was inevitable. This was the case until near the close of the 17th c., when the vigorous and prolific Increase Mather came before the world with his theological works, numbering 85 in all. Mather was the first native writer of any considerable fame. He was the son of Richard Mather, a sturdy nonconformist divine, who came here in 1636, and was soon afterwards the pastor of a church in Dorchester, Mass., where Increase was born in 1639. The father lived to be 86 years old, and was in the ministry 66 years. But father and son were eclipsed by the more prolific and more famous son of Increase, Cotton Mather, the author of Magnalia Christi Americana, or Ecclesiastical History of New England from its First Planting in the year 1620 unto the year of our Lord 1698. He was an early and late believer in the reality of witchcraft, and opposer of it as a work of Satan; a theologian of the strictest Puritan type; an uncompromising defender of the religion of the day; while for fecundity lie rivaled the most famous of the authors of England. An incomplete catalogue of his works numbers 382 separate publications, and there remain six great folio volumes of closely written MSS. that no one has had courage to print, and few have had courage to read. He was b. in Boston, Feb. 12, 1663, and d. Feb. 13, 1728; was a graduate of Harvard college, and used his pen not only for religion and against Satan and the witches, but as an early advocate of temperance; he wrote and preached for seamen, instructed negroes, set an example of abolishing flogging in schools by substituting moral suasion in his own family, and wrote extensively upon historical subjects. He was named after John Cotton, another voluminous theological controvertist, whose daughter was Cotton Mather's mother, but John Cotton was English-born and 48 years old when lie came to America. He was noted for using the long and quaint title then in vogue among writers of religious tracts and books.
The earliest literary work in the English language in the colonies was a translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses, made in Virginia by George Sandys, the treasurer of the Virginia company. It was written in the earliest years of the settlement, probably begun in 1607, and printed in London in 1626. In coming before the public Sandys was anticipated by rapt. John Smith, who published in 1608 an account of the new colony; in 1612 a map of Virginia and description of the country; in 1616 a description of New England; and in 1620 New England's Trials.
The foundation of the literature of a new world was laid on the 28th of Oct., 1636, when the general court at Boston voted £400 toward a school ur college. Two years later John Harvard, an English clergyman of superior education, who had been scarcely year in the colony, gave twice as much money and a library of 320 volumes—a great collection for those times—in aid of the "school or college." Thus began Harvard college, at Cambridge, Mass., of which Increase Mather was the first native president. Around this venerable institution and its co-laborers, William and Mary, and Yale, and, later, Princeton and Columbia, cluster the names and the works that created American literature.
There are many curiosities that mark the early period, such as the Bay Psalm Book, the first volume of importance printed in the colonies, Cambridge, 1640. In this curious work the struggle between literal translation and what we should now call respectable English was disastrous only to the language. The reading of some of the psalms in church to-day would provoke laughter fit for a comedy theatre. Another curious work was The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America, etc., printed in London in 1646. The author was Nathaniel Ward, pastor of a church at Ipswich. His work was a caustic review of English state, church, and social affairs, with occasional hits nearer home. Other English-American writers before the Mathers were Thomas Hooper, the theologian; John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts, who wrote tolerable verses; William Bradford, also governor and versifier; Roger Williams, the champion of toleration and founder of Rhode Island and the Providence plantations; John Eliot, the "apostle to the Indians," who translated the Bible into the language of the native tribes; Anne Bradstreet, author of the first volume of poems published in New England (daughter of Thomas Dudley, the second governor of the Massachusetts colony); Peter Folger (maternal grandfather of Benjamin Franklin), who wrote in clumsy rhyme A Looking Glass for the Times, or the Former Spirit of New England rerired in this Generation; Michael Wiggles worth, theologian, author of quaint religious verse. Then came the Mathers, father, son, and grandson, where indeed " the last shall be first," under whose shadows march in dim eclipse a host of miscellaneous writers. The first name that stands forth on the list is that of Cadwallader Colden, quite out of the New England pale, a native of Scotland and a resident of the colony of New York, who left an excellent History of the Fire Indian ..Vations, and some works on scientific subjects.