In the early part of the seventeenth century England was all aglow with literary inspiration. Shakespeare was writing his noblest tragedies. Ben Jonson was writing plays, adoring his friend Shakespeare, and growling at him because he would not observe the rules of the classical drama. Francis Bacon was rising swiftly to the height of his glory as Chancellor of England and incidentally composing essays so keen and strong and brilliant that he seems to have said the last word on whatever subject he touches. There were many lesser lights, several of whom would have been counted great in any other age.

In all the blaze of this literary glory colonists began to sail away from the shores of England for the New World. They had to meet famine, cold, pestilence, hard work, and danger from the Indians. Nevertheless, our old friend, John Smith, wrote a book on Virginia, and George Sandys completed on Virginian soil his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. These men, however, were only visitors to America; and, important as their writings may be historically or poetically, they have small connection with American literature. It was on the rockbound coast of Massachusetts that our literature made its real beginning. The earnest, serious Pilgrims and Puritans disapproved of the plays and masques that were flourishing in England; pastoral verse was to them a silly affectation; the delicate accuracy of the sonnet showed a sinful waste of time and thought. They were striving to make an abode for righteousness, and whatever did not manifestly conduce to that single aim, they counted as of evil. Writing their own history, however, was reckoned a most godly work. "We are the Lord's chosen people," they said to themselves with humble pride. "His hand is ever guiding us. Whatever happens to us then must be of importance, and for the glory of God it should be recorded." With this thought in mind, Governor William Bradford of Plymouth, the "Father of American History," wrote his History of Plymouth Plantation, "in a plaine stile," as he says, and "with singuler regard unto ye simple trueth in all things." He tells about the struggles and sufferings of his people in the Old World, about that famous scene in Holland when "their Rev61 pastor falling downe on his knees, (and they all with him,) with watri cheeks comended them with most fervent praiers to the Lord and his blessing. And then with mutuall imbrases and many tears, they tooke their leaves one of an other; which proved to be ye last leave to many of them." Governor Bradford could picture well such a scene as this, and he could also write spicily of the lordly salt-maker who came among them. "He could not doe anything but boil salt in pans," says the Governor, "and yet would make them yt were joynd with him beleeve there was so great misterie in it as was not easie to be attained, and made them doe many unnecessary things to blind their eys, till they discerned his sutltie."

A second history, that of New England, was also written by a governor, John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Among his accounts of weightier matters he does not forget to tell of the little, everyday occurrences,—of the chimney that took fire, of the calf that wandered away and was lost, of the two young men on shipboard who were punished for fighting by having their hands tied behind them and being ordered to walk up and down the deck all day, of the strange visions and lights that were seen and the strange voices that were heard. It is such details as these that carry us back to the lives of our ancestors, their fears and their troubles.

While these two histories were being written, three learned men in Massachusetts set to work to prepare a version of the Psalms to use in church. A momentous question arose: Would it be right to use a trivial and unnecessary ornament like rhyme? "There is sometimes rhyme in the original Hebrew," said one, "and therefore it must be right to use it." Thus established, they took their pens in hand, and in 1640 the famous Bay Psalm Book was published in America, the first book printed on American soil. This was the version of Psalm xxxv, 5:—

The "Admonition to the Reader" at the end of the book declares that many of these psalms may be sung to "neere fourty common tunes," and indeed there seems no reason why a hymn like this should not be sung to one tune as well as another. Now these struggling poets were scholars; two of them were university They had lived in England during the noblest age of English poetry. Why, then, did they make the Psalms into such doggerel? The reason was that they were in agonies of conscience lest they should allow the charm of some poetical expression to lure them away from the seriousness of truth; and they declared with artless complacency and somewhat unnecessary frankness that they had "attended Conscience rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry."

A generous amount of verse was written in the colonies even in the early days. Many of the settlers were educated men, fully accustomed to putting their thoughts on paper, and they seemed to feel that it dignified a thought to make it into verse. Religion was the all-absorbing subject, and therefore they have left us many thousand lines of religious hopes and fears. Unfortunately, it takes more than study to make a man a poet, and hardly a line of all the accumulation can be called poetry.

(1631–1705)") ?>

The most lengthy piece of this early colonial rhyme was produced by the Reverend Michael Wigglesworth of Malden. It was called The Day of Doom, or, A Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment. It painted with considerable imaginative power the Last Judgment as the Reverend Michael thought it ought to be. After the condemnation of the other sinners, the "reprobate infants," the children who had died in babyhood, appear at the bar of God and plead that they are not to blame for what Adam did. They say:—

The answer is:—

The early colonists bought this book in such numbers that it may be looked upon as America's first and greatest literary success. The first year 1800 copies were sold; and it is estimated that with our increased population this would be equivalent to a sale of 2,000,000 copies to-day.

(1612–1672)") ?>

The praise of Michael Wigglesworth was as naught when compared with the glory of one Mistress Anne Bradstreet, who abode with her husband and eight children in the wilderness of Andover and therein did write much poetry. People were in ecstasies over her compositions, and they did not accuse her publisher of exaggeration when he wrote on the of her book, "Severall Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight." She was called "The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America." Learned Cotton Mather declared that her work "would outlast the stateliest marble." However that may be, it was certainly the nearest approach to poetry that the colonies produced during their first century, and now and then we find a phrase with some little poetic merit. In her poem Contemplations, for instance, are the lines:—

One cannot help wondering a little what the children found to read in colonial days, for the youngest baby Pilgrim was an old man before it occurred to any one to write a child's book. Even then, it was a book that most of the boys and girls of to-day would think rather dull, for it was a serious little schoolbook called the New England Primer. No one knows who wrote it, but it was published by one Benjamin Harris at his coffee-house and bookstore in Boston, "by the Town-Pump near the Change," some time between 1687 and 1690. It contained such knowledge as was thought absolutely necessary for children. After the alphabet came a long list of two-letter combinations, "ab, eb, ib, ob, ub; ac, ec, ic, oc, uc," etc.; then a list of words of one syllable; and at last the child had worked his way triumphantly to "a-bom-i-na-tion" and "qual-i-fi-ca-tion." There were several short and simple prayers, and there was a picture of the martyr, John Rogers, standing composedly in the flames while his family wept around him, and the executioner grinned maliciously. There was a second alphabet with a rhyme and a picture for every letter. It began:—

In the course of countless reprints, many changes were made. It is said that in one edition or another the couplet for every letter in the alphabet was changed except that for A; but the Puritan never gave up his firm grasp upon the belief in original sin. For a century these two lines were a part of every orthodox child's moral equipment, and they were the keynote of the greater part of the prose and rhyme produced in America during the colonial period.

(1663–1728)") ?>

Even if almost all the colonial books were written for the grown folk, the children and their future were not forgotten. How to make sure of educated ministers for them and for their children's children was the question. It was settled by the founding of Harvard College in 1636, only sixteen years after the little band of Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. One of its most famous graduates during the colonial days was the Reverend Cotton Mather. He took his degree at fifteen, and three years later he was already so famous for his learning that he received an urgent call to become a pastor in far-away New Haven. He refused, became his father's assistant at the North Church in Boston; and at the North Church he remained for more than forty years. Preaching, however, was but a small part of his work. He had the largest library in the colonies, and he knew it thoroughly. He could write in seven languages; he was deeply interested in science; he kept fasts and vigils innumerable. He was grave and somewhat stern in manner, and people were seldom quite at ease with him; but he had a tender spot in his heart for boys and girls, and whenever he passed through a village, he used to beg a holiday for the children of the place. He was horrified at the severity shown in the schools of the day; and among his own flock of fifteen there was rarely any punishment more severe than to be forbidden to enter his presence. One of his sons wrote that their father never rose from the table without first telling them some entertaining story, and that when a child had done some little deed that he knew would please the stately minister, he would run to him, and say, "Now, father, tell me some curious thing."

With all his other occupations, he did an immense amount of writing. Nearly four hundred books and have been published, and there are still thousands of pages in manuscript. His best-known book is his Magnalia Christi Americana, or The Ecclesiastical History of New England. Like Bede's Ecclesiastical History, it is much more entertaining than one would think from its ponderous title. Cotton Mather's aim was to record the dealings of God with his chosen people, and the character of those people. He followed the fashion of dropping in bits of Latin and Greek, and making intricate contrasts and comparisons that sometimes remind the reader of John Donne—without Donne's genius. He begins the book with an imitation of the Æneid, which he and his early readers probably thought extremely effective. But there is much besides a Virgilian preface in his work. There are enthusiastic descriptions of the men whom he admired, written with many a touch of beauty and sincere tenderness. Then, too, the book is a perfect storehouse of all sorts of wonder-tales: the story of the "ship in the air" which Longfellow made into a rhyme, using often the very words of the old chronicler; that of the two-headed snake of Newbury, of which Whittier wrote; and many others. Among the pages that bristle with august phrases from the dead languages, we find here and there some simple story like the following, which is told of Winthrop, and which makes us feel that Mather in his wig and bands and Winthrop in his exasperatingly untumbled ruff are not so unlike men of to-day, and would be exceedingly interesting people to know:—

In a hard and long Winter, when Wood was very scarce at Boston, a Man gave him a private Information, that a needy Person in his Neighbourhood stole Wood sometimes from his Pile; whereupon the Governour in a seeming Anger did reply, Does he so? I'll take a Course with him; go, call that Man to me, I'll warrant you I'll cure him of stealing! When the Man came, the Governour considering that if he had Stoln, it was more out of Necessity than Disposition, said unto him, Friend, It is a severe Winter, and I doubt you are but meanly provided for Wood; wherefore I would have you supply yourself at my Wood-Pile till this cold Season be over. And he then Merrily asked his Friends, Whether he had not effectually cured this Man of Stealing his Wood?

(1652–1730)") ?>

During the greater part of Cotton Mather's life an interesting diary was being written by Judge Samuel Sewall. He tells of being comfortable in the stoveless meeting-house, though his ink froze by a good fire at home; of whipping his little Joseph "pretty smartly" for "playing at Prayer-time and eating when Returne Thanks;" of the lady who cruelly refused to bestow her hand upon the eager widower, even though wooed with prodigal munificence by the gift of "one-half pound of sugar almonds, cost three shillings per pound." Though the writings of the honest old Judge cannot strictly be called literature, their frank revelation of everyday life presents too excellent a background for the writings of others to be entirely forgotten.

(1703–1758)") ?>

In 1730 Judge Sewall died. In that year a young man of twenty-seven was preaching in Northampton who was to become famous for his original, clear, and logical thought and his power to move an audience. He had been a wonder all the days of his life. When he ought to have been playing marbles, he was reading Greek and Latin and Hebrew. He was deeply interested in natural philosophy, and even more deeply in theology. When he was fourteen, he read Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, and declared that it inexpressibly entertained and pleased him.

Such was Jonathan Edwards. He was the greatest clergyman of the first half of the eighteenth century, and some have not feared to call him the "most original and acute thinker yet produced in America." He was quite different from the earlier colonial pastors like Cotton Mather, men who were gazed upon by their flocks with wonder and humble reverence as recognized leaders in religion, learning, and politics. His time was devoted to theology. After twenty-four years in Northampton he went to the little village of Stockbridge and became a missionary to the Indians. Then there was such poverty in the Edwards family that fresh, whole sheets of paper were a rare luxury, and the thoughts of the keenest mind in the land were jotted down on the backs of letters or the margins of pamphlets. By and by these thoughts were published in book form. This book was The Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will. Then the modest missionary to the Indians became famous among metaphysicians the world over, for in acute, powerful reasoning he had no superior. It is small wonder that Princeton hastened to send a messenger to the little village in the wilderness to offer him the presidency of the college. He accepted the offer, but died after only one month's service.

Unfortunately, the passage of Edwards's writings that is oftenest quoted is from his sermon on "Sinners in the hands of an angry God," wherein even his clearsightedness confuses God's pitying love for the sinner with his hatred of sin. More in harmony with Edwards's natural disposition is his simple, frank description of his boyhood happiness when after many struggles he first began to realize the love of God. He wrote:—

The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast or appearance of divine glory in almost everything. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything: in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time; and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the mean time, singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunder-storm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, if I may so speak, at the first appearance of a thunder-storm; and used to take the opportunity, at such times, to fix myself in order to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder.

Such was the literature of our colonial days. Few names can be mentioned, but there were scores of minor writers. There was Roger Williams, that lover of peace and arouser of contention; John Eliot, one of the three manufacturers of the Bay Psalm Book, whose Indian Bible is a part of literature, if not of American literature. There was the witty grumbler, Nathaniel Ward, the "Simple Cobler of Agawam;" William Byrd, who described so graphically the dangers and difficulties of running a surveyor's line across the Dismal Swamp. There was John Woolman, the Quaker, so tender of conscience that he believed it wasteful and therefore wrong to injure the wearing qualities of cloth by coloring it; and of such charming frankness that he confesses how uneasy he felt lest his fellow Friends should think he was "affecting singularity" in wearing a hat of the natural color of the fur. Some of the paragraphs of his journal might almost have come from the pen of Whittier, so full are they of the poet's sensitiveness and shyness and his boldness in doing right. There were newspapers, the Boston News Letter the first of all. There were almanacs, the first appearing at Cambridge almost as soon as Harvard College was founded.

The colonial days passed swiftly, and the time soon came when the country was aroused and thrilled by an event that changed the aim and purpose of all colonial writings. In 1765 the Stamp Act was passed; and after that date, when men took their pens in hand, their compositions did not belong to the Colonial Period; for, consciously or unconsciously, they had entered into the second period of American literature, the literature of the Revolution.