The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-12-25

ing, to be cast into new moldS. Some
of them were slow to sink, and stub
bornly kept their antique shape amidst
the general fashion. Others foated In
sight as dross and Stag after their sub
stance was gone.
The most notable example of persistent
survival of old-time artificiality was the
ceaseless production of the Mathers. end
ing, apparently, only with their lives.
Increase Mather had just turned out his
.Elijahs Mantle" and Cotton his I'm
pressions Produced by Earthquakes"
when they both were translated to new
world, having discoursed on most ter
restrial and many celestial subjects here.
In verse Nicholas Noyes had attained the
heights of the fantastic in appropriate
elegies on contemporary worthless like
John Hgginson, who, he sang:
For rich array cared not a fig,
And wore Elisha's periwig,
Before he met among the dead
He children's cnildren's children had.
Or, like Joseph Green:
In Gods house we late did see
A green and growing olive tree.
His masters work he did so ply,
He did but just get time to die.
These masters of quibbling cOntortiOn
had admirers and imitators, who may all
be dismissed with other antique spinning
wheels of verse and prose to the store
room Oh colonial Cur10S1tieS.
"A new style came in with jeremiah
Drummer. The elders had great hopes
of him in the pulpit, but he was too fine
spun to follow their traditions. The ideas
of the seventeenth century We're getting
stale and its idols shop-worn The spir-
it of new era was in the air outside
the unventilated meeting house, and the
promising graduate of Harvard In the
class of SO two centuries ago got a sniff
OF it. He did his best to satisfy a Bos-
ton congregation, but an essay is not
sermon. Yet the essay had arrived, and
was henceforward to share attention with
the sermon. The first number of the
Spectator was about to be printed, and
the youthful prodigy, who had disap-
pointed critical listeners, found himself
IN London in time to read Addison's ac-
count Of his life In the issue of March
l. ITO. Henceforth, as agent of Massa
chusetts, his associations were with its
politics rather than it's theology, and in
MS letter TO a Noble Lord concerning
the late expedition to Canada, he makes
the translation from divinity to a states
manShip which was soon to become con-
spicuouS in America. To this he after
ward contributed his Defense of New
England Charters, a forerunner of the
state papers which preceded the declara-
ton OF independence. It was printed
thlrty~e1ght years later as applicable to
colonial issues in the days of the pre-
revolution controversy with Great Brit
ain.
All that need be said of it here is that
ITS style shows the authors acquaintance
with contemporary writings in England.
ana that he was willing to be taught by
them. His predecessors had not been
In separatist isolation they were a law
and pattern unto themselves and each
other through all the preceding century
with one or two exceptions they turned
their backs on polite literature and set
their faces as flint against Tudor and
Stuart bellies lettres. Mosaic in their
law, they became Hebraic in their litera-
fure When they laid the foundations
or empire in the stern righteousness OF
the Pentateuch they did well; but to build
a literature upon the archaic style of the
law and the prophets was to go back
twenty-five centuries. 1t is by no means
necessary TO confound these two achieve
ments, or to say that they won equal dis
tlnctlon in theocratic politics and In let
ters, or that their books will live except
as curiosities and as they may belong to
the building of nation. No doubt this
was higher occupation than creating an
immoral literature, but the one process is
not the other, nor often coincident with
the other. Good literature may follow
good government afar. 1t began to ap-
pear early in the eighteenth century. and
this jeremiah DUmrner was the prophet
Of It's coming, If not its pioneer. His as
sociaticns in London may not have been
fortunate, but he must have been as
open to literary influences from the works
of Dryden and Swift, Addison and Steele.
as to social and political sway by Lord
Bclinsbroke and the Tories
In any case, what he wrote is a pleas
ant contrast to contemporary writings
here, of which Cotton Mather's ESSAYS
to Do Good is likely to survive the
longest; since Benjamin Franklin ac-
knowledged his indebtedness to it. So
Benjamin Wadsworth's "Dissuasion
From Tavern Hunting and Excessive
Drinking" written for the benefit of the
Harvard students, may still have it's
value for their successors and for other
students by reason of its precepts rather
than for its literary value.
A mighty man in his day was John
Wise, the Ipswich parson, who scented
prelacy in the slightest suggestion of
Presbyterianism, and smashed a conspir-
acy against church independently with
single blow of his Thor hammer under
the mild title of 1.-THE Church's Quarrel
Exposed 1t is a fine example of sur.
VIKING Puritan polemics, containing
strong arguments enforced by strong
words.
1t is a comment on the joyousness of
our ancestors childhood that the preco,
cious Hannah Hill, an authoress at the
age of II, wrote Legacy for Children:
Last Expressions and Dying Words"
Fortunately that very year "The Origin
of the Whalebone Petticoat'' appeared,
satire by writer who did not dare to
affix his name to such a piece of unseemly
mirth. Moreover, it was not only
grave age, but warlike one. The fruit
full Mather was writing his second 'Luc-
tuosurn or Mournful Decade" on the re-
cent Indian wars, while Thomas Church
recorded Entertaining Passages Relat-
ing to Philips War;" such as chopping off
captives' heads and bringing them home
Thus, with solemn mirth and glad GRIM
ness, that generation fought and wrote
1t was a day when Mather knocked the
rhymed ends off the psalmody and made
it still more Hebraic by blank verse He
held, with some later critics. that rhyme
is a cheap device, not essential to poetry
a conclusion to which he might have been
driven by some of the discordant end
ings in the Bay Psalm Book. Relief
from its droning misery came to chill
dren-on week days only-in the publica-
ton of Mother Goose Melodies in 1719,
and for grownups once a week In the
Boston Gazette after Dec. q of that
year, and in the Weekly Mercury after
the next day in Philadelphia.
OF these papers the Boston News Let
tiers had for fifteen years been the only
predecessor in the country. Starting with
the beginning of the century it had mark
ed the entry of secular into a theolog-
zeal literary atmosphere. Now, after fif-
teen years, there Were signs of perma-
nence and growth for printed Journalism
But the indications of its future attain
ment were few and feeble in the leaflets
which contained little news, and old at