USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 60
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Cotton's ascendancy seems to have been a purely personal one. Hub- bard speaks of his "insinuating and melting way." There is certainly little in his writings, as left to us, to fix our attention.6 The " walking library," as his grandson called him, " the father and glory of Boston," seems like
1 It purports to have been corrected and en- larged by several poems found among her papers after her death (1672). There was a third edition in 17 58.
2 It is interesting to note that her father's library contained one poem at least which may have gladdened her youthful muse, " Ye Vision of Piers Plowman."
8 John Harvard Ellis's introduction to his edition of her Poems, Charlestown, IS67. Cf. also Professor M. C. Tyler, Ilist. of Amer. Liter- ature, i. 278.
4 The poem went through eight American editions, beside some English ones. Its popu- larity is best tested by the actual destruction of the earlier issues in their gloomy service, so
that not a copy is known, according to Sibley, of the first three editions. Cf. J. W. Dean's Memoir of Wigglesworth in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1863, and separately, two editions ; Brinley Catalogue, No. 89; Sibley's Harvard Graduates ; Tyler's American Literature, &c. Some of Wig- glesworth's verses, not elsewhere printed, are in Muss. Ilist. Soc. Proc., May, 1871.
5 Longfellow, New England Tragedies, p. 15.
6 There is in the cabinet of the Massachu- setts IJistorical Society a MS. volume made by Captain Robert Keayne, 1639, entitled, " Mr. Cotton our Teacher, his Sermons or expositions upon the Bookes of the New Testament." Cf. Mass. Ilist. Soc. Proc., April, 186S.
7 Cotton Mather, MMagnalia.
462
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
one we would not know, when we read his defence of intolerance in his con- troversy with Roger Williams. His dismal scouring of the " Bloody Ten- ent " is curious as a study of the times, and is of some historical value, but unprofitable and almost unsupportable for all else. Of Hooker and Shepard Boston knew but little, except so far as Cambridge, so interlinked in all in- tellectual movements with the metropolis, lent a reflected light. Hooker comes down to us as a presence of mystical sanctity. What he wrote was clearly earnest, with not a little of the scholarly rhetoric of the Univer- sity. Shepard is a harsher and a darksome individuality.1
Tho: Shepard. Norton came later, and removed from Ipswich to Boston in 1653, to make good, as he might, the place of Cotton. He signalized his reverence for his predecessor in a Life and Death of that deservedly famous Man of God, Mr. Fohn Cotton, which he sent to London to be printed, in 1658. The admirer of a stalwart kind of chastisement finds all in him that could be desired. The gloomy sectary wonders at the terror he caused to the impenitent. What he wrote was as sulphurous and as dry as a tinder-box, but in it dogma and conceit, it must be confessed, werc at times somewhat amusingly jumbled.2
What Tyler3 calls the Dynasty of the Mathers began with Richard, of Dorchester (1636-1669), whom we have already connected with the Bay Psalm Book. The Mather race gained a craftier power in his son Increase, who preached his first sermon in 1657; and when he printed his first book, twelve years later (1669), he began to manifest that surprising fecundity which kept the presses of Boston, Cambridge, and London busy for more than a lifetime.+ For nearly sixty years Increase Mather well-nigh ruled in the Boston, if not in the New England, theocracy. He was the first born on her soil to succeed to a power even greater than that of the early fathers. Springing from the times, he could never rise above their level. The son, Cotton (who falls, as an author, within the next period), proved a less vital force ; for the father was the clearer and abler writer, and in affairs much the stronger head. But both were unfortunately deficient in all that makes men able to lead their fellows to a higher plane. When we contemplate the power they possessed, we can but regret it was not spent to better advantage. Boston and New England were never lifted to any height, be it intellectual
1 Ilis autobiography is printed in Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts, and had previously been printed by Nehemiah Adams, D.D., in a little volume in 1832. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. ii. 493.
" There is quite enough printed of the ser- mons of the time without going to the common- place books of John Hull and others, which have preserved abstracts of many more. Hull's noles are in the Prince collection.
3 History of American Literature.
4 See lists of his publications in Sibley's Harvard Graduates ; Sabin's Dictionary : The Prince Catalogue ; The Brinley Catalogue, i. and
ii., No. 2,659, &c .; Haven's Ante-Revolutionary Bibliography ; N. Paine's List of Mathers in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Library. Cf. Proceedings of this last Society, April 28, 1869, for Mather MSS., and the third part of the Prince Catalogue. The Mather papers have been printed by the Massa- chusetts Historical Society. Increase Mather's first book was The Mystery of Israel's Salvation ex- plained and applied ; or a Discourse concerning the General Conversion of the Israelitish Nation. . . . Being the substance of several Sermons preached by Increase Mather, M.A., Teacher of a Church in Boston in New England. London, 1669. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., November, 1874, P. 371.
463
THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
or spiritual, through the influence of the Mathers. So long as their influence prevailed, this people never saw the dawn of spiritual liberty ; and never had taught to them the distinction between cultivation and pedantry.
The only literature of the Colonial Period to be contemplated with much satisfaction is that which chronicles the history of its people, and tells the story of the " Empire in their brains," as Lowell phrases it. The Journal which Winthrop began on his embarkation and continued to his death, - the work of a grave, self-respecting gentleman, always moderate in expression, sometimes elevated, and not wholly free from incredible things vouched for by divers godly persons, - affords as noble a record of the beginnings of a people as any State could boast. The letter 1 of Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln (March 12, 1630) is replete with tendcrest interest; and the story which it tells of hope and endurance is noble in its simplicity, written as it was, " rudely, having yet no table nor other room to write in than by the fireside, on my knec, in this sharp winter." We may not account the narra- tive which Roger Clap wrote for his children as contributing anything of literary value, but we should miss much that we know of the time and its trials were it omitted from our inheritance. Wood, who came over in 1629, and published his New England's Prospect in 1634, showed not a little delicacy in his descriptive touches, and we cannot but recognize in his pages something of the flavor of literary book-craft.
There came over with Winthrop a Mr. Edward Johnson, who, after a Edward Johnfun little, returned to England. Again com- ing, he lived for a few ycars at Charles- town (1636-42), and then removed to Woburn, to become its chief founder. Mr. Poole argues that he wrote his Wonder-working Providences of Sion's Savior2 between 1649 and 1651, when he was a resident of Woburn; but he relies upon passages which might well have been inserted in a manuscript prepared as the events went on, as may be inferred from the marginal dates. It is only on this supposition that we can claim the book in part at least as a Boston cmana- tion, - a book which, if Poole is not over-confident in his estimate, is the most important record of New England's life which the first hundred years brought forth. As a writer he is certainly not lovable; he is awkward,
1 This first appeared in print in Massachu- setts, or the First Planters of New England, 1696, and is reprinted in Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. Another manuscript, somewhat more extended, was fol- lowed by Farmer in New Hampshire Hist. Coll. iv. ; in Force's Tracts, ii. ; and in Young's Chron- icles of Massachusetts.
2 Such is the running title, but A History of New England stands first on the title, - a sub- stitute very likely of the printer. The original edition was published at London, 1654. Tyler, American Literature, i. 137. What is known as the third (dated 1658) of the Gorges Tracts, is-
sued by the younger Ferdinando Gorges in 1659, under the title " America painted to the Life," purporting to be written by the elder and aug- mented by the younger Gorges, is held to be for the most part a fraudulent or ignorant issue of the sheets of Johnson's book, which was reprinted in 2 MMass. Hist. Coll. ii., ill., iv., vil., and viii .; and again, edited, with a valuable introduction, by W. F. Poole, Andover, 1867. Cf. Charles Deane in No. Amer. Rev., January, 1868, p. 319; E. A. Park in Congregational Quarterly, January, 1868; J. D. Washburn in Am. Antiq. Soc. Pro ... April, 1877.
464
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
grim, militant, but sturdy, and thoroughly representative. The book was issued anonymously, but there would appear to be the best reasons for ascribing it to Johnson.
Of the writings of Eliot and Gookin there is little need of mention here. Eliot, besides his connection with the Bay Psalm Book, and his translations into the Indian language, wrote somewhat in explanation and furtherance of his labors as a missionary ; but such writings belong for consideration to other connections. Gookin was not a resident of Boston, but his position as superintendent of the Indians, and as a high military officer, brought him naturally into relations with the magistrates, who centred in Boston. The fate of what he left in manuscript, however, has been told elsewhere.1
It is said that the first Latin book ever written in this country was the answer of John Norton to Appolonius of Zealand, printed in 1644.2
1 See the chapter on "The Literature of the Indian Tongue," by Dr. Trumbull, and that on "The Indians of Eastern Massachusetts," by Dr. Ellis.
2 William Emerson, History of the First Church, 94.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE INDIAN TONGUE AND ITS LITERATURE AS FASHIONED BY ELIOT AND OTHERS.
BY THE HON. J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL, LL.D. President of the Connecticut Historical Society.
T HE Indians of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Rhode Island, a great part of Connecticut, and the islands near the coast, spoke the same language, with considerable differences of dialcct; "yet so," said the Commissioners of the United Colonies in 1660, " as the natives well under- stand and converse with one another, throughout the whole country where the English have to do." The differences were no greater than are heard in provincial dialects of France or of England; between the popular speech of Devon and Lancashire, for instance, or between Somerset and Suffolk. The language was, in a larger sense, itself a dialect of the Algonkin, - a name first given by Champlain to a tribe living on the Ottawa River in Canada, and subsequently extended to a great family of nations and languages. In the first half of the seventeenth century, the Algonkin race had spread over a territory nearly half as large as Europe. Algonkin dialects were spoken on the Atlantic coast, from Hudson's Bay and northern Labrador to Cape Hatteras.
Rosier, who accompanied Waymouth to New England in 1605, and wrote a True Relation of the voyage, appended to it a brief list of " words which he learned of the Savages, in their Languages." These words, some of which are clearly in the Abnaki dialect, probably were obtained from the natives whom Waymouth kidnapped on the coast of Maine and carried back with him to England.
In 1634, William Wood printed, at the end of his New England's Prospect, " A small Nomenclator " of the language of the natives, "whereby such as have in-sight into the Tongues may know to what Language it is most inclining; and such as desire it as an unknowne Language onely, may reap delight, if they can get no profit." This Nomenclator comprises more than three hundred words and phrases. Wood had been living in New England about four years, and in the compilation of his vocabulary he may have been assisted by Roger Williams, who, before he left Salem, had made considerable progress in the Indian language.
VOL. 1 .- 59.
466
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
In 1643, Williams, while in England, published his Key into the Language of America. This was partly written on his passage, and was printed soon after he reached London. "I drew the materials, in a rude lump, at sea," he says in his prefatory address, " as a private help to my own memory, that I might not by my present absence lightly lose what I had so dearly bought ;" but, " remembering how oft I have been importuned by worthy friends, of all sorts, to afford them some helps this way, I resolved (by the assistance of the Most High) to cast those materials into this Key, pleasant and profitable for all, but specially for my friends residing in those parts." This Key has served, as its author hoped it might do, to "unlock some rarities concerning the Natives themselves," and many writers have been indebted to it for information respecting the manners and customs of the Indians of New England. As a vocabulary and phrase-book it is of considerable value to students of the language, though it is evident that the author had not penetrated the mysteries of Algonkin grammar.1
Before Williams's Key was published, the Rev. John Eliot, of Roxbury, had begun to study the Massachusetts language, and in October, 1646, had acquired sufficient knowledge of it to be able to preach to the Indians without an interpreter.2 A Catechism which he prepared for their instruc- tion was printed in Cambridge in 1654; and the next year his Indian ver- sions of Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew were printed at the same press. To these he added, before the end of 1658, translations of a few Psalms in metre. If a copy of any of these carliest works of Eliot is still in being, no American collector has been fortunate enough to discover and secure it.
The dialect of Western Connecticut (including all New Haven colony) differed more widely than the dialects of Narragansett and Plymouth from the Massachusetts. The Rev. Abraham Pierson, minister of Branford, near New Haven, after some years' study of the language, undertook to prepare an Indian Catechism "to suit these southwest parts" of New England. His work was ready for the press in 1657, and was sent to England to be printed at the charge of the Corporation for Propagating the Gospel. But the manuscript was lost at sea, and when Mr. Pierson had prepared another
1 The book is a small octavo, containing fourteen sheets, making 224 pages, the title-leaf included; but several mistakes were made in numbering the pages. It was printed by Gregory Dexter, who afterwards came over to settle in the colony Williams had founded, and became a prominent citizen of Providence. It was re- printed by the Massachusetts Historical Society in the third and fifth volumes of the first series of their Collections, and by the Rhode Island Historical Society in IS27. A literal reprint, even to the reproduction of typographical inac- curacies of the original, was printed (with an introduction and notes) in the first volume of the Narragansett Club's Publications, Providence, 1866. In 1827 the Massachusetts Historical Society's copy of the original edition was be-
lieved to be the only one in this country. Now there are perhaps twenty, certainly fifteen, copies in American libraries. The late Mr. John Car- ter Brown, of Providence, had fire copies ; there are two in the Lenox Library, New York, and two were in the late Mr. George Brinley's library, Hartford. But as copies have multi- plied the price has steadily advanced. In 1783 at the sale of Croft's library in London, the Key brought four shillings and sixpence ; in 1813 Gossett's copy sold for only four shillings ; in 1871 John Russell Smith offered two copies, - one at twelve guineas, and the other, newly bound, at thirteen guineas; neither had to wait long for buyers, and in 1879 one of Mr. Brinley's copies was sold for $105.
2 [Cf. Dr. Ellis in Chap. VI. - ED.]
467
TIIE INDIAN TONGUE AND ITS LITERATURE.
copy, the Commissioners, considering " the hazard of sending, and difficulty of true printing it without a fit overseer of the press, skilled in the lan- guage," decided to have it printed by Green, in Cambridge. The first sheet (16 pages) was worked off before the end of December, 1658, and the imprint of the volume is of that year; but it was not all through the press before the fall or winter of 1659. It is a small octavo of five sheets and a half, -68 pages, including the title-leaf and a blank page at the end.1
The book is a curiosity in more respects than one. An English transla- tion of the Catechism is interlined throughout, and is not undeserving the study of missionary teachers, home and foreign, as an example of " how not to do it." The author begins with a demonstration of the existence and unity of God, which to the average Indian mind must have been as intelligible and satisfactory as the enunciation of a proposition in quater- nions, or Hegel's definition of the Idea. To the third question: "How do you prove that there is but one true God?" the Indian disciple is instructed to reply, inter alia : "Because singular things of the same kind when they are multiplied are differenced among themselves by their singular properties ; but there cannot be found another God differenced from this, by any such like properties," - and so on.2
We come now to the great work of Eliot and of the Cambridge press. In December, 1658, he had completed, except final revision, his translation of the whole Bible into the Massachusetts dialect.3 "Oh, that the Lord would so move," he prayed, " that by some means or other it may be printed." The Corporation in London supplied the means, and the first sheet of the New Testament was in type before Sept. 7, 1659.
1 " Some IIELPS FOR THE INDIANS Shew- ing theme How to improve their natural Reason, to know the True GOD, and the true Christian Religion. 1. By leading them to see the Divine Authority of the Scriptures. 2. By the Scrip- tures the Divine Truths necessary to Eternal Salvation. Undertaken At the Motion, and pub- lished by the Order of the COMMISSIONERS of the United Colonies. By ABRAHAM PIERSON. Ex- ammed and approved by Thomas Stanton Inter- preter-General to the United Colonies for the Indian Language, and by some of the most able Interpreters amogst [sic] us. Cambridg, Printed by Samuel Green 1658."
2 Mr. Pierson's Some Helps must be reck- oned among the rarest of American books. The Lenox Library in New York possesses the only known copy with the original title-page (as above): A copy in the British Museum has a different title-page, on which the author is de- scribed as " l'astor of the Church at Branford." The work appears to have been "Examined and approved by that Experienced Gentleman (in the Indian Language) Captain JOHN Scor," instead of by the " Interpreter-General," Thomas Stanton ; and " Printed for Samuel Green " is sub. stituted for " Printed by Samuel Green." From
what is known of Scot, it seems probable that he had this title-page printed and prefixed to one or more copies that he took with him to Eng- land, after the restoration of Charles the Second.
The first sheet, which was sent to England by the Commissioners in December, 1658, as a specimen of the work, was reprinted there by order of the Corporation, in the spring of 1659, at the end of a quarto tract entitled A further Accompt of the Progresse of the Gospel amongst the Indians, &c. This has, in place of the Cam- bridge imprint : " LONDON, printed by M. Sim- mons, 1659."
The Congregational Library in Boston pos- sesses a copy - possibly unique - of A Christian Covenanting Confession, printed on a single page, small 4to, in two columns, Indian and English. It is mentioned by Cotton Mather, - who quotes a few words from it in the Magnalia (bk. ini. 178), - as " a covenant with God which it was Eliot's desire to bring the Indians into." Probably it was printed before-but not long before - the gathering of the first Indian church, at Natick, in 1660.
3 [Cf. Dr. Trumbull on the difficulties of translating the Bible, Amer. Antig. Soc. Proc., October, 1873. - ED.]
468
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
There were now two presses in Cambridge. One, purchased by the Rev. Josse Glover and brought over in 1638, was in the possession of Mr. Dunster, President of the College, who married Mr. Glover's widow. It was managed till about 1649 by Stephen Daye, afterwards by Samuel Green. The types that came with it were given to the College, and at the instance of the Commissioners of the United Colonies the Corporation in London had provided a new supply of new type for the Indian work. In the winter of 1657-58, Mr. Hezekiah Usher went to England as the agent of the Commissioners, and, before his return, he bought, with money furnished by the Corporation, a press, several fonts of type, and other printing mate- rials. The new press was set up in 1659, and was given in charge to Green.
Only a few sheets of the New Testament were worked off before the arrival, in the summer of 1660, of Marmaduke Johnson, a printer sent from London to assist Green in printing the Bible and other Indian books. Both presses were now kept busy, and when the Commissioners met in 1661 (September 5), the New Testament was " finished, printed, and set forth," and the impression of the Old had advanced to the end of the Pentateuch. The Commissioners "thought meet to present his Majesty," now happily restored, with a copy of the New Testament ; and a dedication - or, as they styled it, a "preface " -was drawn up, commending the work "To the High and Mighty Prince, Charles the Second," &c. The edition was about fifteen hundred copies. Of these perhaps five hundred in all were separ- ately bound. Twenty copies were sent to England, of which two, after " being very fairly bound up," were to be presented to the King and the Lord Chancellor ; five others, to Dr. Reynolds, Mr. Caryll, Richard Baxter, and the vice-chancellors of the two universities; and the remaining thir- teen were left to the disposal of Mr. Ashhurst and Richard Hutchinson (members of the Corporation).
An English title-page precedes the dedication, on a sheet inserted between the first blank leaf and the original Indian title : -
THE NEW | TESTAMENT | of our | Lord and Saviour | JESUS CHRIST. ] Translated into the | INDIAN LANGUAGE, | and Ordered to be Printed by the Commissioners of the United Colonies \ in NEW-ENGLAND, | At the Charge, and with the Consent of the | CORPORATION IN ENGLAND | For the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Indians | in New-England. | - | CAMBRIDG: | Printed by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson. | MDCLXI. |
WUSKU | WUTTESTAMENTUM | NUL-LORDUMUN | JESUS CHRIST | Nuppo- quohwussuaeneumun. | - [a lozenge-shaped ornament of printers' marks.] - ] Cambridge : | Printed by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson. | MDCLXI. |
Translated literally, this is: "New his-Testament our-Lord Jesus-Christ our-Deliverer." 1
ment and of both editions of the Bible have been more than once published, and need not be re- peated here. [Cf. Hist. Mag., Oct. 1858; Mar. 1859, &c. - ED.] The Testament, with English
1 Accurate collations of the Indian Testa- title and dedication, is a scarcer book than even the first edition of the Bible, though there are per- haps nine or ten copies of it in American libraries, -two in Cambridge (in the libraries of Harvard and the late Mr. George Livermore), one each
469
THE INDIAN TONGUE AND ITS LITERATURE.
The Old Testament was all printed and the Indian Bible complete before the Commissioners met in September, 1663. The Corporation had ordered a metrical version of the Psalms to be printed, to be bound with the Bible. September 18 the Commissioners wrote that they had directed Mr. Usher to present the Corporation, " by the next ship, with 20 copies of the Bible, and as many of the P'salms, if printed off before the ship's departure hence." Simon Bradstreet and Thomas Danforth were appointed to prepare "an epistle to the Indian Bible, dedicatory to his Majesty, and to cause the same to be printed."
An English title-page was printed on the same sheet with the " dedica- tory epistle," to be in- serted in the copies sent to England, and from most of these copies the Indian title - leaf was removed. They were bound in London by order of the Corpora- tion. The three " dedi- cation " copies which I have seen, in their orig- inal binding, - of which the Allen copy, once in the library of the late Mr. Brinley, is one, - are in uniform smooth dark-blue (nearly black) morocco, with gilt backs and sides and gilt leaves, and were furnished with clasps.
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