USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 2 > Part 28
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SAMUEL SEWALL THE DIARIST
If Mather was a priest, Judge Sewall was a man of the world. Yet the man of the world was sure of Salem witches' guilt when even Cotton Mather had his doubts. Though they wrote contemporaneously, one feels that Sewall belonged to a later century. Let us compare their style in relating their courtships :
"Sept. 30. [1720] Daughter Sewall acquaints Madam Win- throp that if she be pleased to be in at 3 p.m. I would wait on her. She answered she would be at home-Spake to
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her, saying my loving wife died so soon and so suddenly, 'twas hardly convenient for me to think of marrying again; however I came to this Resolution, that I would not make court to any person without first Consulting with her. Had a pleas- ant discourse, about 7 (seven) Single persons sitting in the Foreseat, 7th, 29th, viz .-- - "She propounded one and another for me; but none would do, said Mrs. Loyd was about her Age."
"Oct. 3. Waited on Madam W. again -- 'twas a little while before she came in-By and by came in Mr. Airs, Chaplain of the Castle, and hanged up his hat, which I was a little startled at, it seeming as if he was to lodge there. At last Madm W. came in too." His addresses were refused, but, nothing daunt- ed, he made a date for "this day sennight"-when, "Gave her Mr. Willard's Fountain Opened, with the little print and verses; saying, I hop'd if we did well read that book, we should meet together hereafter if we did not now," But there was nothing doing; and he returned in four days "to refresh her Memory as to Monday night; said she had not forgot it."
"Monday. Am treated with great courtesy. Wine, Mar- malades." The next day he wishes to make a date for 8 p.m. tomorrow. She "looked dark and lowering. Ask'd her to re- quit me of Rudeness if I drew off her glove. Enquiring the reason, I told her 'twas great odds between handling a dead Goat, and a living Lady. Got it off."
"She-could not leave her house, children-I told her she might do some Good to help and support me. Mentioning Mrs. Gookin, the widow Weld was again spoken of; (she) said I had visited Mrs. Denison. I said, if after a first and second Vagary, she would accept of me returning." Elsewhere he records: "My bowels yern towards Mrs. Denison-she would be very obliging. Told her the reason I came every other night was lest I should drink too deep draughts of Pleasure ; she had talked to me of Canary, her kisses were to me better than the best Canary."
"Oct.17. Visited Madm W. in the evening, who treated me courteously, but not in Clean Linen as sometimes"-
Oct. 19th., he sees her home from Mrs. Walley's; she "took
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occasion to speak pretty earnestly about my keeping a coach; I said 'twould cost £100 per an .; she said, but £40."
"Oct. 21. I ask'd when our proceedings should be made more publick; she said, they were like to be no more publick than they were already" and would not "send Juno to light him home." "I was weary and went to bed."
She wanted him [Nov. 4] "to wear a Wigg." And on Nov. 7th, "I excused my coming so late (near 8). She set me an arm'd chair and Cusheon; and so the Cradle with little Katie was between her arm'd Chair and mine-she gave me a glass of Wine. I think I repeated again that-I would en- deavour to contain myself and not go on to solicit her,- took leave of her-did not bid her draw off her Glove-her dress was not so clean as sometimes it had been. Jehovah jireh !"
So, July 15 [1721] "Call and sit awhile with Mad. Ruggles -shew'd my Willingness to renew my old acquaintance. She expressed her inability to be Serviceable. Gave me some Cider to drink. I came home."
But Jan. 11, 1722 he writes a letter to "Mary Gibbs, Widow, at Newtown: "Madam, your removal out of Town, and the Severity of the Weather, are the reason of my making you this Epistolary Visit-Whether you be willing that I should marry you now-Aged, and feeble, and exhausted as I am." He was 70. And so, after some delays about money settlements, they were "published" Feb. 16th. 1722.
It is due to the memory of Madam Winthrop to add that a few years since the late Robert C. Winthrop published an amusing refutation of Judge Sewall's account of the court- ship of his ancestress, which was privately printed and is now unprocurable.
SAMUEL SEWALL THE POET
Sewall alone among the Puritans was an observer of nature. He always tells you when "Swallows proclaim the Spring." And he had some poetry in him, and much charity.
"Once more our God vouchsafe to shine Correct the Coldness of our Clime"-
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"Give the poor Indians Eyes to see
The Light of Life-
So Asia and Africa
Europa with America
All four, in Consort joined shall Sing
New Songs of Praise to Christ our King."
His poem on Mrs. Conry's funeral contains a rare couplet-
"Three Sons, two Johns, and one good Tom Bore Prudent Mary to her Tomb."
Like Cotton Mather, like Endicott, who hacked St. George's Cross out of the flag, he was intolerant; he writes of the famous silver cross at Louisburg fort .- As a matter of fact, it was looted there, and became the property of Harvard Col- lege, only to be clandestinely acquired by a riotous student so- ciety a century and a half later, and afterwards restored.
Here is another example of his rugged verse: "The bawdy, bloudy Cross, at length Was forced to taste the flame; The cheating Saviour, to the fire Savoury food became."
or, in his more decorous Latin,
"Crux atrox tandem flammam sentire jubetur ; Ipsa Salus fallax igne probata perit."
"Jan. 2, 1701-2. Just about Break-of-Day Jacob Amsden and 3 other Trumpeters gave a Blast on the Common-Bell- man said these verses, which I printed and gave them. .. . " The pretty custom still prevails annually in Boston at the break of the New Year.
"Oct. 23. Mr. Increase Mather said at Mr. Wilkin's, If I am a servant of J. C. some great Judgment will fall on Cap- tain Sewall." He was Captain of the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company and then weighed 178 pounds. Twenty years later when courting Madam Winthrop, he weighed 228.
"I feel myself dull and heavy and listless as to Spiritual Good; carnal, Lifeless; I sighed to God that He would quicken me." [The next day.] "My House was broken into and Twenty Pounds worth of Plate stolen. I said, is not this an Answer of Prayer?"
He tells of the Pirates captured and hanged at Eastern
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Point by Major Sewall "landing in a Gally and shallop"; but next day records that "The Singing of Birds is come."
A bill is brought in making marriage or fornication criminal between whites and negroes or Indians. Owing to his efforts, the Indians were left out.
In 1716, "The Lt. Govr comes to my house in the morn and shows me the accusation of Sir Alex Brand against Mr. Agent Dummer-he had made the Knight drunk and picked his pock- et of 26 guineas and brought in two Lewd Women into the Cross Keys &c. I presently thought on the Soldiers set to guard our Saviour's Tomb their tale; and said if Sir Alex- ander were drunk, how could he tell who picked his pocket? "May 13th. In the Evening I had an Inkling that two Merchants came from Ipswich" [on Sunday, when to travel was criminal] "I said, how shall I do to avoid fining them? Admonish them as young and strangers and let them go." It turned out that they were "some sib to his wife!"
"1716, Oct. 16, [calling in Roxbury.] Madam Dudley had given me beer as I chose; G. Dudley would have me divide a Glass of very good Wine; and made a Faint [feint] of having the horses put in to draw me, but withal said how many hun- dred times he had walked over the Neck. I told him I should have a pleasant journey; and so it prov'd, for coming over with Mrs. Pierpoint, whose maiden name was Gore, had divert- ing discourse all the way-'Twas quite night before we got to our House." Yet he eschewed frivolity; the next month there was a "Ball designed at Euston's in the evening, prayed to prevent the Govr. being there." Mather records that they heard the horrid "Noise" of the music all night.
"1717, Apr. 29. Pirate Captain Bellamy of the Whishaw wrecked at Wellfleet, 23 guns and 133 men. Only one English- man and an Indian saved-100 bodies on shore." On April 11th, Good Friday, he gives a dinner "unawares. Was far from any design to affront the Church." It will be re- membered Mather about this time turned his apprehensions from the Arminians to the Church of England.
In 1719 he finishes a poem on the Merrimack river and presents the Governor with "a gold ring of 4 2 gr. cost 4s. making, with this Poesy, 'Post Matrem diligo Natam.' [After the mother I favor the daughter] meaning that his Exs would
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not favour New England but in subordination to the Crown." That same year he chronicled "The Frier Ralle's railing letter to Captain Moody" and, with gusto, the massacre of that priest and his mission on the Kennebec.
"Jan. 21. The Wind blew down the Southernmost of my Cherubim's Heads at the Street Gate." They have never been recovered. By this time, he was growing liberal-a point never reached by Cotton Mather.
"1720, May 3. Dr Mather sends me Mr. Daniel Neal's His- tory of New England. It grieves me to see N. E's Nakedness laid open in the business of the Quakers, Anabaptists, Witch- craft-" and he records earlier his famous confession. Yet in 1722 he objects to adjourning the court for Christmas, to Governor Dudley-"His Excellency said, All keep Christmas but we; I suggested King James I-how he boasted what a pure church he had; and they did not keep Yule nor Pasch. The Govr said, they adjourned for Commencement and Artil- lery. But then 'tis by agreement-I said, the Dissenters came a great way for their Liberties, and now the Church had theirs, yet they could not be contented except they might Tread all others down. Govr said he was of Ch. of Eng." But (Dec. 25) "Shops open and sleds come to town as aforetimes."
"1724. Dec. 26. Lord's Super. Deacon Checkley Deliv- er'd the Cup first to Madam Winthrop and then gave me a Tankard. 'Twas humiliation to me." Yet (April 21) "The swallows unanimously and cheerfully proclaim the Spring." There we may leave him. He died in 1729.
NATHANIEL AMES, DIARIST
Coming now to Ames, we find full modernity. Theological doubts had quite ceased to vex his soul. Of course he was of somewhat lower social standing; he kept an inn in Dedham (yet that remained quite an aristocratic occupation for the local squire down till the nineteenth century)-but he went to Harvard College, was a doctor, and wrote the famous al- manacs.
"1759. Dec. 2. Miss Prentice brought to bed of a boy.
"Jan. 1. Ticonderoga and Crown Point taken.
14, 15. A lazy life. [He was at Harvard.]
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"March 18. Agreed about the ladies.
"Sept. 6. Wolfe by name behaves almost as if he were one by nature. But Amherst goes slow and sure. News that 30 of the King of Prussia's guards were taken and he escaped very narrowly, being on a good horse.
"Jan. 13 [1760] Acted Tancred and Sigismund for which we are like to be prosecuted.
"Feb. 23. Made Punch.
"May 12. Our Smith got a child W. L.
"Sept. 11. Deviltry carried on in College.
"Oct. 17. Danced at [erased] till 12 o'clock, got home 1/2 past !
"1761 March 23. Peter and Craft and I went Dedham with Fisher, Jerrould, Starr with P dr. 2 Bs 2 Ds & S [the ladies' names are veiled] had a Dance at Dean's which being over Peter waited on one of the Bs and returned on foot to our house about Day.
"24 . . Took a walk to Metcalf's Pond & on our return set out for Cambridge-arrived at College about dark this ends the history of our Frolick."
It might well be a frolic of 1927!
"1763. Jan. 30. Mrs. Haven got a son. (proves a mere Cubb. 1812).
"March 27. Vocatus Ecclesiâ causa ganandi." (Gambling at cards. )
"Apr. 5. Time for transplanting trees.
"July 17. Gay evening in Cambridge.
"Oct. 12. Mr Benjamin Franklin here.
"1764 Aug 30. Alarming duties and taxes laid on America. Secretary Oliver appointed Distributor of Stamps for this Province. Secretary loses the Favour of the People by accept- ing this arduous office of Stamp Distributor.
"1765 Family prejudices soon vanish when there is a Venus in chase. Strife among sensual lovers for want of preliminary articles.
"Aug. 30. Meadows flooded, hay lost." Then describes the erection of the leaden bust of William Pitt on the church green in Dedham.
"1767 Aug. 4. Went Medfield see Aunt Morse.
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"Pernoctavi Jucundissimé."-Today he'd "lose his Latin" if he invested in such constructions.
"Oct. 20. Am aet. 26."
26. The charms of Innocence displayed in full lustre."
"Dec. 16. Ladies came home from Boston in a Booby Hutch."
"1769 Apr 11. The Pillar of Liberty (Pitt's Head) over- thrown last night." [The leaden bust of Pitt disappeared : some say, made into bullets; but the stone momument, with Latin inscription to Pitt, is still on the Dedham green.]
"1770-April 7. Haven preaches vs. ebriety and Bundling."
"Jan. 14. I spent the Evening with pretty Patty Dwight at Fidelia's. (22) Rode in sleigh with promiscuous company. (March 1.) Dick Woodward cuts a flash Bridegroom. Sailed about the meadow and river, great freshett."
"July 7. Went into River first time this year. . . Sept. 4. Great floods, Hay destroyed. .. Nov. 3. Shooting turkeys. . . Dec. 1. This I write for revision 6 months hence, that I may try the Experiment of the Ardor of my Passion or of its Abatement by Absence, for a certain Mrs. Rewtia is at this with me very critical juncture the only object of my Wishes- sheds of tears-wants to die-purify my poor degenerate Soul-separate it from this vile polluted body of mine which immersed in Sensuality continually prompts the nobler part to unlawful Passions."
It will be seen, the Puritan still remains. There is much of this ; then-
"1773. Dec. 16. East India Company's Tea sunk by Per- sons called Narragansett Indians."
"1774 May 12. The Act of Parliament blockading Boston and arrival of General Gage as Governor occasioned terrible consternation in all America."
"July 14. Voluntary Fast."
"June [?] Boston very much distressed by the tyrranical Port Bill stopping up the Harbour, Ships of War lying off, and Soldiers on the Shore."
"Aug. 8. Appearance of civil war."
"Oct 12. The Fair Stranger here at my house said to be a German Princess in disguise."
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"1775. April 6. The Minute Men of Dedham all train here."
"April [19]. Grand battle from Concord and Charlestown -I went and dressed the wounded."
"Sept 1. Continual roar of cannon night and day."
"Nov 12 King Proclaims all America rebel-"
His account of Bunker Hill is brief indeed; but thereafter Dr. Ames's style grows more compendious. Yet enough has now been copied to shoy how widely he and his environment have departed from Cotton Mather, only a few years dead.
JONATHAN EDWARDS, THEOLOGIAN
The reaction against Puritanism was both retarded-and then accentuated-by the Great Revival, and by the work of Jonathan Edwards himself in carrying the cult of Calvinism to its logical perfection. The former occurred in 1740, simul- taneously with Whitefield's visit; in 1742, Edwards's Thoughts concerning the Present Revival. The year before, he issued his Sinners in the Hands of an angry God, and in 1754, his Freedom of the Will. He also wrote a Treatise on Original Sin; one on The End for Which God created the World; on the History of Redemption, and thereafter died (1758). His complete works, first published by Timothy Dwight in 1809, already seem as extinct as the mastodon or, a century later, the works of the leader of the adverse New England sect, Channing. Yet they are a marvelous piece of literature as well as a milestone of human thought.
To us moderns-Catholics, Protestants, Deists alike-the attempt to explore and define the infinite-the end for which God created the world-seems almost impious, and bound to fail. The thesis that God, omnipotent, all-prescient, for His own glory called into being a world of men many or most of whom, as He from the beginning knew, would be destined to eternal torture, is repugnant alike to our faith and our reason. Or, if they had no free will, the blame is brought even more immediately upon the Creator. While, if they had free will, His prescience knew how each man would exer- cise it. Hence the dogma of predestination, and the elect, and the heresy of supposing that a man's works could alter a divine
From a copy, in the Copley Gallery, of the portrait by John Smibert JONATHAN EDWARDS
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decree. Could God, Himself, alter it? Or was He, too, subject to Anagké (that Destiny above God which both Nordic and Greek imagined), in which case not He, but something else that we veil under the x of Erda, Fate, was God. It is interesting that nowhere in Edwards's works does he consider whether God himself can change His mind-or, if He can, whether His omniscience must not know that He would do so from the beginning. That would seem the only road by which the predestined damned could become elect. Had not Dante clearly that idea?
But from Edwards's awful logic there was no escape except blind protest. In that day, when even Milton thought that man could justify the ways of God to man, Edwards went a full step farther and thought that he could explain them. Even the scientific know better now. The gibe that "God Himself can- not make two hills without a valley between" no longer carries, if we assume that hill and valley both exist only in our own minds, in a space of three dimensions, in the form of our thought. But Edwards had no Einstein. In his day his teaching would have had complete success in New England, were it not for the Arminians (who later become Unitarians) going to the other extreme, thus casting away all attempt to define Deity, and leading a successful revolt from the old New England Church.
THE GREAT AWAKENING (1740-1742)
The Great Revival was the first passionate attempt of New Englanders to escape from such doom, not by denying the doctrine, but by getting grace in the fields. Each hysterical cry in Whitefield's camp meetings meant that; it was not really hysteria but a sudden assurance of salvation.
Then the movement died out-and left reaction. Harvard and Yale and the ministers opposed Whitefield. Edwards alone sought to adopt it to his own cause. In his Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England, the preface says :
"The gracious influences of the Holy Spirit with which Northampton was so abundantly enriched and which spread through many towns in its vicinity, were soon followed by a
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very extensive revival all over the land. An extraordinary zeal was created in many gospel ministers. Itinerants travelled the country and preached daily ... Converts to Jesus were multiplied ... Religion became almost the only subject of concern. Many indulged the hope that the millennial glory was commencing. The glorious work had its opponents . . . (Mr. Edwards's) design was to vindicate it as undoubtedly a work of God ... "
But the "intelligentsia" did not think so. Harvard College in 1766 through its eight professors thus compliments White- field : "An enthusiast, sensuous, uncharitable person, deluder of the people . .. Rash and arrogant ." he is called; and it condemns "itinerant preaching . the people have been thence ready to despise their own ministers."
Yale followed suit; and in 1750 Edwards lost his parish and, after four years missionary work among the Indians, was called to preside over the infant college at Princeton, New Jersey, and died the following spring. Then gradually, often secretly, Massachusetts abjured his theology. How it stood in the last years of the century you may read in Mrs. Stowe's masterpiece, Oldtown Folks, which deals with life in Massachusetts in the years just following the Revolution; notice also the discussions-half serious, half amused-of his casuistry by a people who no longer really took it to heart. Moreover, just at Edwards's death, the first rumblings of the Revolution began and the Massachusetts Puritans turned their minds back to government by men of this world.
BELLES LETTRES
Before we come to our revolutionary writings, let us mention what we can find of pure literature in the Massachusetts of that day. First comes what is after all the most famous and lasting book of the time; Mother Goose! Mother Goose's Melodies was first published in 1719, attributed by Whitcomb to one Elizabeth Vergoose, but probably compiled by an uncertain Elizabeth Foster, who lived in Boston, and won the distinction of being the only unquestioned contribu- tor to English Literature in the large, from Massachusetts,
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before Jonathan Edwards, inasmuch as her book went through many London editions.
Sermons and elegiac poems of course continued, but in decreasing volume. Cotton Mather published (and preached) his Duodecennium Luctuosum-a history of the wars with Indians from 1702 to 1714-in which he wanders from his subject sufficiently to gloat over the death of the French king who "left off to make the world a wilderness and destroy the cities therein on the 21st of August, 1715." He also inserts a sermon on the Consequences of the prevailing Abuse of Rum"; but ended the volume with such mundane matters as inoculation, eclipses, and earthquakes. Yet one has only to read any of his sermons to see that he was a true orator : the sentences are short, and pointed, and fall like hammer strokes; even today's preachers might profit by his style.
Numerous rather sickening adulations of George I and the Hanoverian succession are an ignoble part of Colonial litera- ture. Roger Wolcott was writing love poems in Connecticut. But the commonest publications of all were the numerous accounts of capitivity among the Indians, of which the best known are William and Elizabeth Fleming's Narrative of Suf- fering and Deliverance (Lancaster) and John Williams' Re- deemed Captive (1707) arising out of the Deerfield Massacre. The well-known story of Goffe's saving Hadley is told in a chapter on the regicides in C. W. Janson's The Stranger in America, written by an Englishman who found nothing to admire in Boston in 1793, and who, on his return, wrote perhaps the first of the many elaborate works published by Englishmen in the first half-century after our Revolution in disparagement of the United States.
Mather Byles, a clergyman, was the leading Massachusetts poet of his era. He was a Tory, yet was good-humoredly allowed by a fond congregation to remain some time in Boston at the Revolution. In 1747 Samuel Niles wrote a Poem on the Reduction of Louisbourg. In 1761 Hopkinson produced an Ode to the Memory of George II, also a Pastoral Elegy on his death, and another (1762) Ode on the Accession of George III. Nevertheless, Massachusetts poets budded late : these effusions came long after Thomas Godfrey was writing poems and plays in Philadelphia. The first Massachusetts
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essay in dramatic form is Mercy (Otis) Warren's The Group, published in 1775; she wrote other poems and plays-one on The Sack of Rome; another called : The Ladies of Castile; and many poems on Harvard.
GENERAL LITERATURE
In history, the field is not so barren. Church's history of King Philip's War and the later wars against the Indians and French in Maine appeared in 1716. On this theme Pen- hallow, in Portsmouth, N. H., wrote a history from 1703 to 1726. Thomas Prince in 1736 began to publish a history of New England ... with an introduction Containing ... the most Remarkable Transactions and Events Abroad from the Creation. But his subject was too vast, and he only reached the year 1633. But there were good books on the Indians by David Brainerd, and by Samuel Hopkins, whose Historical Memoirs of the Housatunnuk (sic) Indians is the best work since John Eliot's. Finally, in 1764, appeared Volume I of Governor Hutchinson's classic history of Massachusetts- ending, sadly for him, in 1774.
Important biographies were issued. Jonathan Edwards wrote a Life of David Brainerd in two volumes, mainly from his diary, very interesting, but not so much so as the famous John Woolman's Journals, which it resembled; Woolman, though included in Charles W. Eliot's "Five-foot shelf" of books, is not of Massachusetts. Jane Turell-she was a pre- decessor of Opal Whiteley, though genuine-had her memoirs published in English and in Latin! In 1729 Samuel Mather wrote the life of Cotton Mather, as Cotton before him, pub- lished a life of his father, Increase Mather, in his Parentator (1724).
A curious book was Hoop Petticoats Contrary to Nature's Law and the Law of God (1726). More practical is Jared Eliot's Essays upon Field Husbandry, published in Killing- worth, Conn., in 1748, and almost a georgic for New Eng- land. And in 1722 Franklin loomed up surreptitiously, in his brother's newspaper-published his Silence Dogood Papers. These have only precocious merit, but since the style obviously imitates the Spectator they give perhaps the earliest assurance
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