USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 2 > Part 27
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CONCLUSION
In other chapters of this volume various social phenomena of the half century before the Revolution are reviewed in town and country. Standing at the threshold of the Revolutionary period, and surveying the course which society had taken during the preceding decades, the direful prophecies made by the older generation of 1700 can be reviewed. Observing the sturdy vitality of that later day, the fears and predic- tions of those earlier men lose reality.
From the preceding discussion it is clear that the people of the early eighteenth century had already in large measure scrapped the moral code to which Winthrop's generation clung so tenaciously; and their successors later in the century certainly did not attempt to revive it. The fetters on social
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life which were permanently discarded were due to a concep- tion of God which had been outgrown. Life took on new forms and new colors. Men dared flatly to deny the existence of a Mosaic deity. Life was easier. The neck and neck race with starvation was now a thing of the past. Material comfort was vastly greater. It was a kinder, more sympathetic God that the eighteenth century had built up for itself, and it followed that He was a more lenient God.
Nor were material possessions the only thing that had been acquired. Through them and through political changes as well human contacts had widened their scope. New and more mature currents found their way into the main stream. By comparison, the simplicity of the old system seemed sterile, and the bulk of the people naturally, though doubtless in large measure unconsciously, turned to what they felt was more vital.
The Mathers' cause had come to be regarded as based on insincerity. Those Jeremiahs in their life time were treated as defenders of a vested interest, to whom questions of public welfare were secondary in importance. There was little in the way of pitched battles on social observances. Petty scuffles there had been all along the line; but on the whole the change had come gradually, following laws of its own. Province life became richer and more varied, more secular in tone. At the same time it acquired a new vitality; and later events were to show that its spiritual qualities had not evaporated or been crushed.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADAMS, JAMES TRUSLOW .- Provincial Society, 1690-1763 (New York, Mac- millan, 1927)-A good survey of society in all its aspects.
BENTON, JOSIAH HENRY .- Warning Out in New England (Boston, Clarke, 1911)-Discusses an interesting phase of Massachusetts's treatment of the problem of the poor.
BURNABY, ANDREW .- Travels through the Middle Settlements in North America (London, T. Payne, 1775)-Gives summary picture of Massa- chusetts in 1759-1760.
CUMMINGS, JOHN .- Poor-Laws of Massachusetts and New York (Amer. Economic Association, Publications, Vol. X, No. 4, N. Y., 1895)- Includes a discussion of the laws of the colonial period.
DUNTON, JOHN .- John Dunton's Letters from New England (Boston, Prince Society, 1867)-Edited by W. H. Whitmore. Entertaining, if not always reliable.
EARLE, ALICE MORSE .- Customs and Fashions in Old New England (New York, Scribner's, 1894)-A very readable survey ; but no references to the material used.
FORD, HENRY JONES .- The Scotch Irish in America (Princeton Univ. Press, 1915).
FOSDICK, LUCIAN J .- The French Blood in America (New York, Revell, 1906)-Includes an adequate account of the Huguenots in Massa- chusetts.
HAMILTON, ALEXANDER .- Hamilton's Itinerarium (Privately printed, St. Louis 1907)-Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart. A vivid picture of New England in 1744 as seen by Dr. Hamilton in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL, editor .- American History Told by Contempo- raries, (N. Y., Macmillan, 1897-1901)-Vol. II, contains classified extracts from the source materials.
HARVARD COLLEGE .- Corporation Records, 1636-1750 (Colonial Society of Mass., Publications, Vols. XV-XVI, Boston, 1925)-Invaluable rec- ords of the earliest American College.
HUTCHINSON, THOMAS .- History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1691. Until 1750 (Boston, Thomas and John Fleet, 1767)-The best contemporary account of the provincial period.
HUTCHINSON, THOMAS .- History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1749 to 1774 (London, John Murray, 1828)-Published post- humously.
KITTREDGE, GEORGE LYMAN .- The Old Farmer and His Almanack (Cam- bridge, 1920)-Abounds in valuable material on social life.
KNIGHT, MRS. SARAH (KEMBLE) .- The Journal of Madam Knight (Bos- ton, Small, Maynard, 1920)-Edited by Geo. P. W. Winship. One of the earliest and most delightful pieces of travel literature.
LAUBER, ALMON WHEELER .- Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of the United States (Columbia Univ. Studies in His- tory, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. LIV, No. 3, N. Y., 1913).
LOVE, WILLIAM DE LOSS .- The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1895)-An admirable extended discussion.
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
LOVE, WILLIAM DE LOSS .- Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England (Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1900)-An excellent account of missionary activities among the Indians in the eighteenth century.
MCDOUGALL, MRS. MARION GLEASON .- Fugitive Slaves, 1619-1865 (Boston, Ginn, 1891)-Includes instances in Colonial Massachusetts.
MASSACHUSETTS (Commonwealth) .- Acts and Laws of His Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England (Boston, vari- ous dates of publication)-Fundamental basis of knowledge on many subjects.
MASSACHUSETTS (Commonwealth) .- Acts and Resolves, Public and Pri- vate, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay (21 vols., Boston, 1869-1922).
MASSACHUSETTS (Commonwealth) : PROVINCIAL CONGRESS .- Journals of each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, with an Appendix containing the Proceed- ings of the County Conferences, and Other Documents (Boston, 1838). Essential for the period.
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Collections .- Contain original ma- terial on every phase of Massachusetts life.
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Proceedings .- Published annually- An inexhaustible mine of material.
MATHER, COTTON .- Diary, (Mass. Historical Society, Collections, Seventh Series, Vols. VII-VIII Boston, 1911-12)-A perfect self-revelation of a commanding figure in Massachusetts life. Source for many extracts printed in the Commonwealth History.
MOORE, GEORGE H .- Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York, 1866)-Remarkably frank, in view of the date of its publication.
PERRY, WILLIAM STEVENS .- History of the American Episcopal Church, 1587-1883 (2 vols., Boston, Osgood, 1885)-Gives an excellent account of the struggles of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts.
PROPER, EMBERSON EDWARD .- Colonial Immigration Laws (Columbia Univ. Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. XII, No. 2, N. Y. 1900)-Authority in its field.
QUINCY, JOSIAH .- History of Harvard University (2 vols., Cambridge, Owen, 1840)-The most elaborate history of the College, up to 1828. ROWE, JOHN .- Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant, 1759- 1762, 1764-1779 (Boston, Clarke, 1903)-A vivid picture of Boston and to a lesser extent of Massachusetts as a whole in the third quarter of the eighteenth century.
SALMON, LUCY MAYNARD .- Domestic Service (N. Y., Macmillan, 1901)- Has good material on the indentured servant.
SCHOFF, WILFRED H .- The Descendants of Jacob Schoff, who came to Boston in 1752 (Phila., McGarrigle, 1910)-An admirable account of Massachusetts's experience with German immigration.
SEWALL, SAMUEL .- Diary (Mass. Historical Society, Collections, Fifth Series, Vols. V-VII, Boston, 1878-1882)-The classic for the period which it covers.
SEWALL, SAMUEL .- Letter-Book (Mass. Historical Society, Collections, Sixth Series, Vols. I-II, Boston, 1886-1888)-Further valuable views of this remarkable man.
CHAPTER X
MASSACHUSETTS LITERATURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
BY FREDERIC J. STIMSON Ex-Embassador to Argentina
THE LITERARY SPIRIT
Matthew Arnold's famous epigram on the Puritans may apply to what we call their Belles Lettres, but not to their more serious writing. Jonathan Edwards is as much litera- ture as Pascal; and the. Massachusetts Puritans certainly turned no key on their civic spirit. New Haven is sterner; but it remained for the so-called godless royal colony of New Hampshire (as one might guess) to produce the first story written definitely to amuse. The first adventurers were Eliza- bethan Englishmen and for the most part not even Puritans. As they died off, their tales of exploration and early New England history came to an end. No one remained in the Bay colony to essay literature for literature's sake. And even religious writing lost the first fervor of the Puritans and became formal, coldly argumentative and narrow.
For although Increase Mather in 1702 wrote his Ichabod; or, a Discourse Showing What Cause there is to Fear that the Glory of the Lord is Departing from New England; and in 1714, his Plain Discourse Showing Who Shall and Who Shall Not Enter Heaven; the victory on the whole remained with the orthodox party. Their church was the established religion of the Commonwealth. Theological writing went on. Most publications were of sermons; even that form of printed ex- pression gradually languished. For a conservative triumph tends always to narrowness, to stricter and straiter limits, until the human spirit languishes within its shell. Hence a dearth of all writing. Barrett Wendell says we had no litera-
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ture in the seventeenth century ; certain it is that more books of a literary nature were published in Massachusetts between 1650 and 1700 than between 1700 and 1750.
Then, in the dying out of the great religious revival, the revival of mundane interest began, and with it a renascence of literary interest, and far more of political interest-under the stimulus of the coming Revolution. It is only after that event that people began to think of writing to amuse us. Royall Tyler of New Hampshire was perhaps the first writer of light literature. Charles Brockden Brown of Philadelphia came second. Both published at the very end of the eighteenth century.
Whitcomb's Outlines mentions about one hundred books written by Massachusetts men in the eighteenth century. Of these, hardly forty could under any classification be called literature. There were no essays, no drama; no long poems, save one on the siege of Louisbourg, and various elegies on Hanoverian monarchs. No novel, till the century's end; no popular verse, except such effusions as the Ballad of Pig- wacket, until, in 1782, John Trumbull published his famous "epic"-McFingal.
DIARIES
Thus it happened that for the literary life of the Massa- chusetts people, outside theology and religious concerns, we have to rely very largely on diaries. Fortunately we are well provided with these. J. Winthrop lived from 1587 to 1649; Endicott from 1589 to 1665; Cotton Mather wrote from 1660 to 1721; Sewall from 1673 to 1729; Nathaniel Ames (the younger) from 1756 to 1821; and although the latter's writ- ings are still mainly unpublished, the interest in comparing his work with that of those more highly placed will justify departure from the usual rule of noting only published writ- ings. For, though our historical societies have cabinets crammed with unpublished diaries and letters of the highest interest, nothing modern can properly be considered literature until printed. Harriet M. Forbes' catalogue of New Eng- land diaries from 1602 to 1800 fills 413 pages and enumerates more than a thousand manuscripts or publications.
Diaries may certainly be considered literature. Witness
K EEP thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the iffues of life. L IARS fhall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimftone.
M ANY are the afflictions of the right- ous, but the LORD delivereth them out of them all.
Z TOW is the accepted time, now is the day of falvation:
0 UT of the abundance of the heart the mouth fpeaketh.
P RAY to thy Father which is in fecret ; and thy Father which fees in fecret Thali reward thee openly.
Q UIT you like men, be ftrong, ftand faft in the faith.
R EMEMBER thy Creator in the days of thy youth.
S Eeft thou a man wife in his own conceit, there is more hope of a fool than of him. RUST in God at all times, ye people, pour out your hearts before him.
[PON the wicked, God fhall rain an horrible tempeft.
WTO to the wicked, it fhall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands fhall be given him.
From the Harvard College Library
A PAGE OF MORAL ADVICE FROM The New England Primer
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DIARIES
the English Pepys; yet of the five diaries above mentioned, only Cotton Mather really deserves to be accounted literature. And he was too persistently introvert-too solely concerned with the state of his own soul-to make his dour record a part of world literature; though some of his later writings, notably the Magnalia, are unquestionably literature. A slice of some of the five Tranches de la vie-and we shall get a better notion of Massachusetts life. After all is not that the aim of all literature, even poetry,-which Matthew Arnold called a criticism of life? Better read diaries than sermons, elegiac poems, or some of the many chronicles of captivity among the Indians.
Let us take a sample from each of our main diarists to see what the writers were like. Endicott, Winthrop chronicled facts; they were pragmatical; so did Dr. Ames, but with many lively comments, criticisms, expressions of opinion, often sar- castic; Mather is the only colonial contemporary of Pepys who can be compared with him; though far too much space seems to us to be given to the matters of his soul-which was not Pepys' chief concern.
COTTON MATHER THE DIARIST
Barrett Wendell's Cotton Mather-the Puritan Priest will remain a classic, and to it we advise all readers to go for an understanding of his character and environment. Let us take one of the few lighter episodes-namely, his courtship of a lady whom he never names-to show his style. It is in February, 1703: "One Day, considering how frequently and foolishly Widowers miscarry, and by their Miscarriage dis- honour God, I earnestly with Tears besought the Lord, that he would please to favour me, so far as to kill me, rather than to leave me into anything that might bring any remarkable Dishonour unto His Holy Name." [Note the "His."] "Within a few Minutes, I found myself grow very ill ;- I suspected that the Lord was going to take me at my own Word. But now I perceived it was nothing but vapours."
February [1702] begins with a very astonishing Trial. "There is a young Gentlewoman of incomparable Accomplish- ments. No Gentlewoman in the English America has had a
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more polite Education. She is one of rare Witt and Sense; and of a comely Aspect .. [she] first Addresses me with diverse Letters, and now makes me a Visit at my House Whereby she gives me to understand . . . that since my pres- ent Condition has given her more of Liberty to think of me, she must confess herself charmed with my Person, to such a Degree, that she could not but break in upon me, with most im- portunate Requests, that I would make her mine; and that the highest Consideration she had in it, was her ternal Salvation, for if she were mine, she could not but hope the Effect of it would be, that she should also be Christ's. . . . "
"I was in a great Strait, how to treat so polite a Gentle- woman, thus applying herself unto me. I plainly told her, that . .. if I could not make her my own, I should be glad of being in any way Instrumental to make her the Lord's. . . . With as exquisite Artifice as I could use, I made my Essayes to engage her young Soul into Piety.
"She is not much more than twenty years old. I know she has been a very aiery Person. Her Reputation has been under some Disadvantage."
"12d 12m [February 1702]. Being this Day forty Years old ... My sore Distresses and Temptations I carried unto the Lord. . . . The cheef of them lies in this. The well ac- complished Gentlewoman, mentioned, (tho not by Name) . . . Nature itself causes in me a mighty Tenderness and Respect for a person so very amiable. Breeding requires me to treat her with Honour and Respect . . . But Religion, above all, obliges me, instead of a rash rejecting her Conversation, to contrive rather, how I may imitate the Goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ in His Dealing with such as are upon a Conver- sion unto Him. For the other Side, I cannot but fear a fearful Snare, and that I may soon fall into some Error in my Con- versation, if the Point proposed unto me be found, after all, unattaineable. . . .
"18 day, 12 m Thursday. Yett such was my flexible Tender- ness as to be conquered by the Importunities of several, to allow some further Interviewes. But I resolved that I would make them turn chiefly upon the most glorious Design in the World. I did accordingly . . . with all the Charms I could imagine draw that witty Gentlewoman unto tearful Expres-
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sions of her Consent, unto all the Articles in the Covenant of Grace. . . . "
"March 6th. I am a most miserable Man. That young Gentlewoman of so fine Accomplishments . . . hath by the Disadvantages of the Company which has continually re- sorted to her unhappy Father's. House, gott but a bad Name- by an unhappy Coincidence . . . there is a Noise, and a mighty Noise it is, made about the Town, that I am engaged in a Courtship.
"The Design of Satan . . . has raised a horrid Storm of Reproache upon me, both for my Earliness in courting a Gentlewoman, and especially . . . of a Person so disagreeable to my Character . .
"12 d. . . . And now, a strange Thing is this Day come to pass . . . The House of Assembly . . . and as full a House as has been ordinarily known, unanimously, every Man of them, voted the most unworthy Man in the World to be Presi- dent of the Colledge in Cambridge."-This is probably John Leverett, who did not take office until 1707; but Mather was again disappointed in 1723-"Our miserable Colledge do again treat me (upon a fresh opportunity) with their ac- customed Indignity and Malignity." The trouble was that Benjamin Colman had been chosen president. This savage entry is preceded by the usual "G. D." which Mather prefixes to his good resolutions.
"15 d. And now, being after all due Deliberation, fully satisfied, that my countenancing the Proposals of coming one Day into Marriage with the Gentlewoman so often men- tioned-will not be consistent with my public Serviceable- ness; but that the Prejudices in the Minds of the People of God against it are insuperable . . . I sett myself to make unto the L. Jesus Christ a Sacrifice of a Person who for many charming Accomplishments has not many æquals in the Eng- lish America . . . My Victory over Flesh and Blood in this matter was no unhappy Symptom,I hope, of Regeneration in my Soul . .. Hopes that God would carry me well through my Sacrifice, in' preserving the Person addressing me from any Damage by her Fondness for me . .. I struck my Knife into the Heart of my Sacrifice by a letter to her Mother."
"April 3d. ... The Applications, which the Gentlewoman
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formerly mentioned in these Papers, has made unto me, have occasioned very many Misrepresentations of me among a foolish People. The coarse, though just, Usage that she has had from me will also putt her upon a thousand Inventions. I shall be continually every Week persecuted with some Noise and Nonsense carried about the Town concerning me. All the Friends I have in the World persuade me, that I shall have no Way to get from under these Confusions but by pro- ceeding unto another Marriage. Lord, help me, WHAT SHALL I do? I am a miserable man."
However, only two months later-"God is going to build up my Family ... He showes me a Gentlewoman within two Houses of my own; of Piety and Probity, and a most unspot- ted Reputation; of good Witt, and Sense, and Discretion at ordering an Household, of incomparable Sweetness in her Temper, honorably descended and related; and a very comely person-left a Widow at thirty"; . . and, on July 14th, he makes "my first visit," and on the 10th of August, marries her. But twelve years later he makes a third marriage, not so fortunate. "After a thousand unrepeatable invectives, compelling me to rise at Midnight . . . she also got up in an horrid Rage, protesting that she would never live or stay with me and . . . went over to a Neighbour's House for a Lodging,-Doubtless with numberless Lies, which a Tongue sett on fire of Hell would make no conscience of."
COTTON MATHER THE AUTHOR
Cotton Mather printed more matter than any American writer before or since ; yet his magnum opus, in his own estima- tion, the Biblia Americana, despite all his prayers, still remains unpublished. In 1706 he had a "smile from Heaven" in the shape of a "very likely Slave, presented by . . . Some Gentle- men of our Church, a Negro of a promising Aspect and Temper." In 1711 he resolves to "improve the Time . . . to form some Thoughts of Piety which may be of some abasing Tendency : the Actions themselves carry Humiliations in them. By loathing of himself continually . . . a Christian does what is very pleasing to Heaven." In 1711 he has "some epistolar conversation with Mr. DeFoe" and wants the author
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of Robinson Crusoe to write "an History of the Persecutions which the Dissenters have undergone from the Church of Eng- land!" The same year he records :
"There is an horrid and very wicked Blade, a Finished Rake, who ... has treated me with all the Malignities and Indigni- ties that Hell could inspire . .. I have begg'd of my glorious Lord that He would pity and pardon this poor Man . Last night, I understand, that God had broken the Arm of the wicked Wretch." Yet we must do Mather justice: far more numerous are the entries of some service or charity given a neighbor, be he friend or enemy. And he was surely attrac- tive; for his second wife dying in November (1713) and he praying (Dec. 20th) that "the Lord will call me to spend the little Remainder of my Dayes in the single state," he adds : "Even the last Night, I have a foolish message from a Gentle- woman bro't unto me . . . I must watch against all internal Temptations of such a Tendency."
Nevertheless as we have seen, he watched in vain. In March, 1714, we find him courting Mrs. Lydia George. Wit- ness his letter to that lady: "My . . . [Inexpressible] I am afraid you been't well, because my Head has aked pretty much this afternoon.
"The pain of my Heart, will be much greater than that of my Head, if it be really so. But I imagine, you are growing well, because my Headake is going off. .
"One who Loves you Inexpressibly (and placilla most af- fectionately . . . )."
His mind is now "buffeted with terrible temptations to the Pauline heresy." But he never softened to Arminian or Arian, more than to the Salem witches, at whose execution he at- tended, though he objected to their being convicted on "spectral Representation."
In 1716, Mather tumbled out of a canoe into a Cambridge pond, and "must have been drowned, had the Vessel been further from the Shore." It is a safe inference that this man of vast experience could not swim. In 1716 (after the Scotch-Irish immigration) he had an angry correspondence with the church of Scotland, which refused to hold Communion with the Massachusetts church. In 1718 he writes about "the Day of senseless Diversions which they call, the Com-
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mencement at Cambridge." In 1721 he sees "a wonderful Token for good" in that "God has, in a marvellous Manner, and at a very critical Moment, smitten with an Apoplexy one who has been and would still have been the greatest Hinderer of good, and Misleader and Enchanter of the People." This alleged miscreant was the Rev. Dr. Oliver Noyes. Yet Mather grows broader, even kindlier, with age; in 1721 he intro- duces inoculation against the smallpox; and in 1723 is elected into the Royal Society, while at home he almost incurred martyrdom for his modernity. In 1724, he has "a strong apprehension that France is very near a mighty and won- drous Revolution"-but this only refers to the persecution of the Huguenots, for he publishes (at his own expense) an essay, Une Grande Voix du Ciel à la France, and applies him- self to "Methods of getting it conveyed into France."
We have seen this extraordinary man as he writes in English, French, Spanish, Latin, and (when describing the conduct of his third wife) in Greek. He confesses to the publication of more than 330 books. Yet a re-reading of his marvellous diary-reflecting, however subjectively, the events and people of his time-shows him full of prejudice and embittered, now against Arminianism, then against the Church of England, whose missionaries he terms "ignorant, debauched creatures." He sighs to think the " 'Man of Sins' M. CC. LX years are up, and then, I am sure, High Church must go down apace-" All this convinces us that, a far greater work than the Magnalia, this Diary may well be placed side by side with that of Pepys.
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