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 crtensu. The works of Roger Williams are probably treated in a similar fashion; but the loss falls upon the reader as well a.A 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 Simple Cobbler of Agawam (1647)—a whimsical compound of satire and in vective that is almost without parallel. John Josselyn's New England's Rarities Discovered (1672) and his Account of Two Voyages (1674) deserve mention also as almost turning credulity into artistic virtue.
But the early New Englanders wrote verse as well as prose—especially verse of an elegiac na ture. In 1640 appeared the astonishingly crude Buy Psatm Book. Ten years later Mrs. Anne Bradstreet's Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America was published in London, accompanied by poetical panegyrics 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 Wiggle,sworth'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; hut they are still read, and even quoted for amusement, a fortune not accorded to the amiable Wiggles worth's other performances. Wiggleswo•th however, almost a great poet when he is com pared with contemporaries like Peter Fulger, Franklin's grandfather, whose Looking-Glass for the Times (1677) is almost the ve plus ultra 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 (1677), 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 Magnolia 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 extracted from his jottings; hut he should also he remembered as perhaps our first abolitionist, his short tract, The Selling of Joseph, dating from 1700. An other 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 be came more popular as the eighteenth century ad vanced, which is what one might expect, since the colonies were growing prosperous and were being affected 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 deal ing with Indian atrocities. Probably the most important poets are the Rev. Slather Byles and his contemporary, Joseph Green, but they succeeded best in trifles. The most scientific his torian of the period is the Rev. Thomas Prince; the most interesting is the quaint Scotchman, William Douglass, whose Summary dates from 1747-51.
lint theology did not vanish from New Eng land with the weakening of the theocracy. The Rev. John Wise, with his Churches' Quarrel Es poused (1710) and his Vindication of the Gov of New England Churches (1717) showed himself to be the peer of any of his fore runners, and gave lessons in statesmanship to the Revolutionary leaders who were to follow him. Greater than Wise was Jonathan Edwards, the most original theologian and metaphysician that the New World has produced. In his juvenile papers Edwards anticipated Berkeley; in his personal memoranda and occasionally in his for mal treatises, he showed that he was a poet-mys tic and a lover of nature rare for his times; in his Narrative of Surprising Conversions (1736), he displayed a remarkable psychological acumen. Ile is, of course, best known to-day by his Freedom of the Will (1754), which is still a powerful piece of exposition, although its con clusions seem monstrous and untenable, and by his minatory sermons, which, like the famous one preached at Enfield, Conn., held his awestruck hearers suspended over the very mouth of hell. Edwards's theology is now antiquated, but his works contain the germs of nearly all subsequent theological speculations, and they are a well of inspiration to thoughtful readers.