USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 59
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1 Cf. the Ante-Revolutionary Bibliography of S. F. Haven, Jr., appended to the edition of Thomas's History of Printing issued by the American Antiquarian Society.
2 Bunyan himself speaks of this Boston edition when he says, -
" 'T is in New England under such advance,
Receives there so much loving countenance, As to be Trim'd, new Cloth'd, and Deck't with Gems."
The only copy which has been noted is one de- scribed by Henry Stevens as in the Brinley Col. lection (not yet, however, entered in its catalogue, so far as printed), with the imprint " Boston in New England, Printed by Samuel Green, upon assignment of Samuel Sewall, and are to be sold by John Usher of Boston, 1681." It was said to have the last leaf missing. Contributions to a Catalogue of the Lenox Library, pt. iv. pp. 7, S.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
years after the introduction of printing into the colony were carried to England for publication. When George Herbert wrote, -
" Religion stands on tip-toe in our land, Ready to pass to the American strand," ---
he failed to comprehend all that this well-remembered couplet meant.1 Cotton Mather indicated it when he said, "The Gospel has evidently been the making of our towns ;" and what has sprung from the New England town all who have studied the history of our old Theocracy and of our popular assemblies may very easily determine.2 John Adams told a Virginian that the Old Dominion could become what New England is, when they knew what town-meetings and training days are, when they had town schools, and when they looked up to an old aristocracy, such as the ministers were to the Puritans, to speak ill of whom was a crime. These olden traits may have now disappeared; but they have moulded a people.
It was not because of any insufficiency of intellect and scholarly training in the first comers that a literature in any true sense failed to be developed. Their virility created not so much letters as empire; it contributed to found a people rather than to stamp a literature.
It has been computed 3 that nearly one hundred University men came over from England to cast their lot in the new colony between 1630 and 1647; and of these two thirds came from Cambridge, particularly from Emanuel College, - the Puritan seed-plot. This had been the college of John Cot- ton. Wheelwright, who sponsored in the new Boston the controversy of the Antinomians, had been the contemporary of Cromwell at Sidney Sussex. John Harvard, Thomas Shepard, Roger Williams, Henry Dunster, and John Norton - all with influence emanating from or directed upon the settlement at the Bay-had trodden the banks of the Cam with John Milton and Jeremy Taylor. President Chauncey had been a Fellow at Trinity with the saintly George Herbert. Richard Mather, the founder of an almost royal line in our theocratic history, and Harry Vane, the champion of Anne Hutchin- son, had been students at Oxford. The memories of the University were likewise borne across the sea by Winthrop, Saltonstall, and Bradstreet, by Wilson and Eliot. Of the forty or fifty Cambridge or Oxford men who were in Massachusetts up to 1639, Mr. Dexter computes that one half were seated within five miles of Boston or Cambridge. It was this leaven that
1 On their familiarity with the writings of Her- bert, see NV. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., October, 1873, P. 347 ; and Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. Jan. 1867. 2 The relation of our New England towns to the growth and spirit of New England has been of late considerably studied. Cf. Joel Parker, "On the origin, organization, and influence of lowns," in Mass. Hist Soc. Proc., January, 1866 ; IIorace Gray, in Mass. Reports, 1857; Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April 27, 1870, and by R. Frothingham, Oct. 21, 1870, and his Hist. of Charlestown, p. 49; Palfrey, New England, i
381 ; Baylies, History of Plymouth Colony, i. 241 ; W. C. Fowler in "Local law historically con- sidered," in N. E. Ilist. and Geneal. Reg., July, 1871; De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Bowen's edition, i .; Poole's edition of Johnson's Wonder-working Providence, pp. xc., 175, and C. C. Smith's chapter on "Boston and the Colony " in the present work.
3 Professor F. B. Dexter on "The influence of the English universities in the development of New England," in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., ISSo. Cf. also James Savage, in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 246.
455
THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
determined the carly New England history; but it ran little into literature as such. Writing and book-making were but means to other ends than in- tellectual stimulation. Their aim was to define theological dogma, and to enforce observances rigidly. The mental activity of the time meant cogni- zance of error and intolerance of misbelief. Where education of that sort did not exist, there were no such cager promptings to the study of polemics, and the dead level of intellectual content often enforced charity. The neighboring colony of Plymouth had hardly any learned men. They waited long to set up a schoolmaster, while the Bay so promptly founded a college ; but they gave Roger Williams an asylum.1 They had noble men, if uneducated, who counselled toleration of the Quakers; and they hung no witches. It was indeed fortunate for the Bay that the older colony was what she was. Her milder spirit in the end permeated the stronger colony, and Massachusetts Puritanism took on the hue of the Pilgrims' nobler inde- pendency. Still Massachusetts came out the stronger for the tribulations, endured and enforced, of her scholarly divines. Its fruit, however, was in character rather than in letters.
Nor were the books they brought with them more promising for us than those they wrote. A few lists of such are preserved. One is that bequest of three hundred and twenty volumes by which John Harvard, in 1638, laid the foundations of the great library at Cambridge. Another is a list of forty books which Governor Winthrop contributed to the same collection. Edward Everett could well congratulate his friend, the author of the Life of Fohn Winthrop, while communicating the list from the college archives, that the honored magistrate had not transmitted the books to his descendant.2
Whatever of production there was, however, it was not for a long time
The Rev. Mr. Glover left the permitted to Boston to print her own books. old country for New England in 1638, hav- ing with him on shipboard a press and one Stephen Daye to work it. Glover died on the voyage. Daye, with the consent of the
Stephen Dage
magistrates set up the press in Cam- bridge, which Glover's widow continued to own. In October, 1638, Hugh Peter
1 They were not sorry, however, when he left then. Williams, though an amiable man, was a disputatious one, and such men are always disa- greeable. His defenders rightly say much in his praise, and his detractors have great grounds for condemning his forward and militant discon- tent. He was not a comfortable man to have in one's neighborhood.
2 The list of Harvard's books is preserved in the College Archives. Quincy, History of Har. vard University, i. 10, gives a few titles ; they were all burned with the College Library in 1764, save one book, which is still religiously preserved. R. C. Winthrop, Life of John Winthrop, gives
the other list. A list of books left by Governor Thomas Dudley is given in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1858, p. 355. The titles of ninety books borrowed in 1647 by Richard Mather are given in 4 Mass. Ilist. Coll. viii. p. 76. Palfrey 1e- grets that we are not furnished with an invoice of the books which Dunton, the London book- seller, brought to Boston on a venture in 1686; and Mr. Whitmore, in his edition of Dunton, p. 314, supplies its place as well as he can with the list of what was another bookseller's stock-in- trade in 1700. A catalogue of Rev. Michael Wigglesworth's library is appended lo J. W. Dean's Sketch of his life, 1863.
450
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
wrote to Bermuda, "Wee have a printery here and thinke to goe to worke with some speciall things."1 In March, 1639, the press was at work. An almanac, and a broadside oath2 for freemen to subscribe were the initial issues ; and then followed the well known Bay Psalm Book, as it was called.3 The Henry Dunghr widow Glover now married Dun- ster, the first president of the College, and the substantial con- trol of the press passed into his hands, the sanction of the College being given by implication to what the press brought forth. In 1648-49 Samuel Green 4 succeeded Daye as the printer. In 1660 Mar- Samuel Soon maduke Johnson was sent over by the Corpora-
Marmaduke Johngen. tion for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Indians. He brought a new press, with new type, and was set to work in printing books for the natives to read. The government control of production was more definitely fixed when, in 1662, licensers were named ; and to keep the matter still further in control, it was ordered in 1664 that no printing should be al- lowed in any town but Cambridge. This order held good for ten years longer, till, May 27, 1674, the General Court " granted that there may be a printing press elsewhere than at Cambridge." Under this permission John Foster set up to be the first Boston printer. He was a Dorchester boy, had graduated at the College John foster. in 1667, and then for a few years had taught school in his native town. In December, 1674, the "Sign of a Dove" was hung out for his office, where he took in work for the press which he had just bought. It was natural enough, considering the times, that his first author and his last should be Increase Mather, and in the short interval - 1674-81 -during which Foster ran the press, Mather furnished the copy for about fifteen of the imprints. This first Boston printer was but thirty-three when he died; 5 and on his foot-stone it
1 Winthrop papers in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 99. Cf. the notice of Glover in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April 28, 1875, or N. E. Hist and Geneal. Reg., January, 1876, p. 26.
2 This was the oath established in 1634. No copy of this first broadside is known. The text of the oath can be found in Childe's New Eng- land's Jonas cast up in London, 1647; in Felt's Ipswich ; in Charters and Laws of Massachusetts Bay ; in N. E. Ilist, and Geneal. Register, Jan- uary, 1849. This oath took the place of an earlier one, which, with a list of freemen, is given in the Register, iii. 89.
3 Winthrop's Journal, March, 1639-40.
4 There is a note on Green's family in Sewall Papers, i. 324.
5 Judge Sewall, Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist Coll., v. 49, gives his death Sept. 9, 1681, as docs his
grave-stone in the old burying-ground at Up- ham's Corner, Dorchester : "The ingenious mathematician and printer, Mr. John Foster, aged 33 years, dyed Septr. 9th, 1681." On his foot-stone Ovid's " Ars illi sua census erat " is translated as in the text .- Epitaphs from the Old Burying-ground in Dorchester, Boston, 1869, p. II. The title (on the opposite page) of the first book he printed is somewhat reduced from a copy bought in 1879 from the Brinley Collec- tion by the Public Library of Boston. It was a presentation copy from its author to "ye Revd Mr. Higginson in Salem," and is so inscribed. It cost the library $92.50; and another copy, in exquisite binding, brought at the same sale, $140. Cf. Brinley Catalogue, No. 1,046; Sibley's Har- vard Graduates, i. 440 ; Nathaniel Paine's Muther Publications, p. 23.
457
THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
is quaintly said of him, "Skill was his cash," -a very good capital for a printer in these days as in those.1 After Foster's death the care of the press was committed by the magistrates to Samuel Sewall, and it does not appear to have been altogether a nominal one. He remained in charge of it till 1684,2 working himself at the case, as it would seem.
Boston, if she did not print, had certainly much to do with the production The Wicked mans 'Portim. of the first Anglo-Amer- ican book, --- the Psalms OR turned into metre, as Gov- crnor Winthrop described A SERMON it; the Bay Psalm Book,3 ( Preached at the Letture in Bofon in Newv. England the 18 th day of the > Moneth 1674. when two men Were executed. who had murthered their Mafter.) Wherein is fhewed or the New England Version of the Psalms, as it has been at different times called. The version of Sternhold and Hop- Thancxceffe in wickedness doth bring untimely Death. kins made a part of the Puritans' Bible ; + but By INCREASE MATHER, Teacher of a Church of Chrift. there seems to have been a feeling among them that the words of Scrip- Prov. 10. 27. The fear of the Lord prolongeth dayes, Ent The years of the wicked fall be foortmed. ture lost something of sanctity in the transmu- Eph. 6. 2. 3. Honour thy Father and thy Morber (which is the fo-) Commandments with premi(e) that it may be well with shee, and show mayft live long on the Earth. tations of that version. One cannot say how far Pana ad paucos, metus ad omnes. this dissatisfaction may have arisen by an inci- BOSTON, Printed by John Foffer. 1675 dent which Josselyn re- cords. That traveller speaks, in 1638, of his arrival in Boston, and of TITLE OF THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED IN BOSTON. his calling upon John Cotton, and of delivering to him " from Mr. Francis Quarles, the poet, the translation of the 16th, 25th, 57th, 88th, 113th, and
1 Sibley, in the second volume of his Har- vard Graduates, now in press, gives an account of Foster. The first type he used was pica ; but he did his best work with a long-primer font, bought in 1678. A list of the works printed by him is given in the Boston Daily Advertiser, May 9, 1875. Cf. Brinley Catalogue, No. 2669; Shurtleff's Boston, p. 284; Ilist. of Dorchester, pp. 244, 492.
2 N. E. Hist. and Gencal. Reg., 1855, p. 287. There is, unfortunately, a gap in Sewall's Diary for these years. Cf. Colony Records, v. 323, Oct. 12, 16SI. The order appointing him printer is given in 5 Mass. Ilist. Coll., v. 57, where is also VOL. J .- 58.
the order, Sept. 12, 1634, releasing him from the charge of the press.
8 This designation seems to have been cur- rently applied to this book, whose title reads The whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English metre. As the Plymouth people used the Ainsworth Psalter, the designation was a natural one. Cf. Palfrey's New England, ii. 41; Samuel E. Staples on "The Ancient Psalmody and Hymnology of New England," in Worcester Soc. of Antiq. Proc. 1879.
+ The first American edition of Sternhold and Hopkins was not issued till 1693, at Cam- bridge.
458
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
137th l'salms into English metre for his approbation." What return Mr. Quarles got we know not; but whatever it was we may well believe it gave the key to what others in New England thought of it. Roger Williams said that, in the opinion of some people, "God would not suffer Mr. Cotton to err." Governor Bradford records of him in his level verse, -
"It's hard another such to find."
That John Cotton could be a critic in the belief of his contemporaries, as he could be and was an umpire in all else, admits of little doubt. We also know that if stirred, as he was when Thomas Hooker died in 1647, he could deliver himself of what passed with our Puritan Fathers for verse.
So in due time the preparation of a new version more literal than melo- dious, as the versifiers confessed, was entrusted to a committee. Richard Mather, who had arrived in 1635, and was
Richard mathe settled over the Dorchester parish, was the chief of them. He was a man with a " loud and big" voice, and, as Pro- fessor Tyler ! well says of him, possessed the " faculty of personal conspicu- ousness," - a trait which descended to the son and grandson. His, we may infer, was the guiding spirit ; and there exists to-day among the manuscripts of the Prince Library ? what appears to have been his rough draft of the preface to the book, in some memoranda on "The Singing of Psalmes in setting forth the praises of the Lord." It seems likely from the super- scription of the draft, "For my reverend brother, Thomas Shepard," that
I Auch to grove on in Showing what other things have Done attended to on, this Translation according to you Later w was road at Dortchafter-
the final plea, as it stands in the printed preface, may have had the revision of that Cambridge divine. The draft, as Mather leaves it, seems to indicate that Shepard would finish it from some memoranda which he had already presented. With Mather were The; well. . joined the two ministers of the Roxbury church, - Eliot, later to be known as the Apostle, and Thomas Weld, who did not remain long in the Colony.
As a specimen of English verse it is hardly possible to imagine any- thing much worse than this version. Grammar is tortured; the ear is filled with dissonance; the sense confused; and the printer kept company with
1 History of American Literature, where will
Literature, and Tarbox's article in the New be found a good description of the Bay Psalm Englander, March, ISSO. Book. See also Duyckinck's Cyc. of Amer.
2 Prince Library Catalogue, p. 158.
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THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
the authors in scattering his points with utter disregard of propriety. Shepard, if he had a hand in the final fashioning of the preface, could not wink at the bad metre of the " poets," as he called them, and flung a squib at them in the shape of a quatrain, which is well known: -
" Ye Roxbury poets, keep clear of the crime Of missing to give us very good rhyme ; And you of Dorchester, your verses lengthen, But with the text's own words you will them strengthen."
Still the work succeeded, by dictation if not by merit, and a second edition followed without much change, and Cotton was in due time able to write of it: " Because the former translation of the Psalms doth in many things vary from the original, and many times paraphraseth rather than translateth, besides divers other defects (which we cover in silence), we have endeavored a new translation of the Psalms into English metre, as near the original as we could express it; and those Psalms we sing both in our public churches and in private."1 It gradually, however, became apparent that a " little more art " was necessary even in translating the inspired Word ; and so, after ten years, the book was committed for revision to President Dunster, who had the assistance of a young scholar, just from England, Richard Lyon. This edition - the third - contains some " spiritual songs," and was issued in 1650. Cotton now prepared the way for it by publishing "Singing of Psalms a Gospel ordinance," in which he made a special plea for the "little more art." Dunster claimed that he had added " sweetness of the verse " to the " gravity of the phrase of sacred writ." The book after- wards went through numerous editions, and became in later ones a consid- erable favorite in the mother country, some of the dissenting churches in England using it as late as 1725,2 while in Scotland traces of it are found as late as the middle of the last century.3 In Boston and vicinity it
1 Cotton, Way of the Congregational Churches, p. 67.
" Mr. Charles Deane has a "fifteenth " edi- tion. London, 1725.
3 The original edition of 1640 is one of the books greatly coveted by collectors of Ameri- cana. The Prince Library ( Boston Public Lib- rary) had originally five copies. Two are now in it. A third, of peculiar interest as having been Richard Mather's own copy, passed by an understanding into the hands of the late Dr. Shurtleff. On the scattering of his effects, the deacons of the Old South Church, who are the owners in fee of the Prince Library, brought suit to recover this copy; but the statute of limitations prevented their getting it. It was accordingly sold in 1876, and was bought by Mr. C. Fiske Harris, of Providence, for $1,025. and has become the chief treasure of that gen- tleman's very extensive collection of American
verse. A fourth copy passed similarly into
the library of the late E. A. Crowninshield, and finally was lodged in the Brinley Collection; and when this was sold, March, 1879, it was bought by Mr. Vanderbilt for $1,200. A fifth (defective) copy passed from the Prince Library into the collection of the late George Livermore, where it now is. Prince Catalogne, p. 7. A literal reprint of this edition was made in 1862 under the supervision of Dr. Shurtleff. Memoir of George Livermore, by Charles Deane, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., January, 1869, p. 460. Brin- ley Catalogue, No. 848. It is not quite certain whether the second edition, 1647, was printed in Cambridge or in England. It is somewhat smaller in size, has some changes in spelling, but is not otherwise different from the 1640 edition. The only copy known passed at the Brinley sale, 1879, into the Carter Brown Library at Providence, bringing $435- Haven, Ante- Revolutionary Publications ; Brinley Catalogue, No. 850.
460
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
remained in use quite as long. There exists a letter of a number of the first parish in Roxbury, addressed to their pastor in 1737, speaking of " The New England version of the Psalms, however useful it may formerly have been," as now " become, through the natural variableness of language, not only very uncouth, but in many places unintelligible." The letter sug- gests that the version of Tate and Brady be substituted.1 The change in this parish did not take place, however, till 1758, when Tate and Brady was first put in use; but the Church Records add, "Some people were much offended at the same." 2
There was, perhaps, a greater tendency in those days than even now to run into verse the record of daily occurrences, the outpouring of senti- ment, sympathy, and adulation. Allegory, anagram, and acrostic took everybody captive. The dead, memorable or not, must have their elegies. Every strange circumstance was a symbol of something to happen, or an in- terpretation of what had passed. If some credulous person reported to John Cotton upon a battle which had been witnessed between a snake and a mouse, the latter prevailing, the good teacher must find in it the conquest of the devil by the church. Interpretation, however, evinced the good man's skill far more than his verse; and even Cotton Mather found his grandfather's metrical lucubrations more sanctified with piety than elevated with poetry.
The most noted versifier of the Colonial Period which Boston may claim is one whose grave-stone at Roxbury speaks of him as a " learned school- master and physician, and the renowned poet of New England." 3 This was Benjamin Tompson,4 a Harvard graduate of 1662, who from 1667 to 1670 kept a school in Boston, but subse- quently removed from the town.
My Loyalty is slice les same Perfilher Juni os Cougo tRogamos Trueas a Drie to Go Sun > detko It Genot Thingupon Benj. Tompson
His name is kept alive by what is us- ually quoted as " Our Forefathers' Song," a bit of verse with a ra- ther lively swing to it,
picturing the privations of the earlier times, when
" The dainty Indian maize Was eat with clam shells out of wooden trays, Under thatched hutts without the cry of rent, And the best sauce to every dish, Content."
3 Shurtleff, Boston, p. 277, and F. S. Drake's chapter in this volume.
\ N. E. Ilist. and Gencal. Reg. iii. 132. 4 Cf. his family record in the N. E. Hist. 2 Drake, Roxbury, p. 296 and Geneal. Reg., xv. 112. 1Ie was also at one time a teacher in Charlestown. See Mr. Henry 1I. Edes's chapter in the present volume.
461
THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
Boston can hardly claim Madam Anne Bradstreet, except as a passing so- journer, though Foster's press brought out the first American edition of her poems in 1678.1 She may have fol- lowed her husband, Simon Bradstreet, Ame Bradstress and her father, Thomas Dudley,2 when, with Winthrop, they passed over to Shawmuit from Charlestown; but Cambridge, Ipswich, and Andover claim her as a resident, though according to Ellis,3 it is not at all unlikely her remains rest in the Dudley tomb at Roxbury, and John Norton, and Cotton Mather were but two of those who threw wreaths upon it in the shape of extravagant laudations. To the sulphurous production of Michael Wigglesworth, the Day of Doom, we may well be glad Boston lays no claim. Ezekiel Cheever, who after- wards became our famous schoolmaster, tutored the poet at New Haven ; Harvard educated him; Malden listened to his ministration, and all New
Iremain ye Faithful friend & fellow watchman in y Lord Michael Wigglesworth
England, with most constant so- licitude, hung upon his metric utterances.4
If the Day of Doom stands for the theology of the time, we have the same in a more dog- matie form in the sermons and warnings of Cotton, Norton, and the Mathers, of which the press was so prolific.
" I love to sweeten my mouth with a piece of Calvin," said John Cotton ; and when Laud drove him out of Lincolnshire and England, the
" Lantern of Saint Botolph ceased to burn When from the portals of that church he came To be a burning and a shining light Here in the wilderness." 5
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