The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1902-05-03
Kate Stephens Writes of cool
Onial Prose and Poetry"
Interesting Books From Press
of T. Y. CrOweH & Co.
IN POPULAR DEMAND.
People Have Become Interested
in Work of the FOrefathers.
Many Items of Interest About
Current Literature.

W els
These three volumes answer at least
two requirements of the present time
one spiritual, the other material. For
in the great interest-a. moral as Wen
as mental interest-in our fOrefatherS'
life and work which has been waxing
among US Americans these late years
we have found it difficult to get at their
experiences told by themselves In
these three volumes we have such ma
terial carefully edited and prepared,
and in q handy. inexpensive form for
books of frequent reference-Which an
swers the second requirement. Only IN
the Oldest and largest libraries could
the old books be found. These volumes
are therefore q popularizing of matter
heretofore difficult to get at.
Interest in such lives and letters as
the old colonists' belonged formerly al
most wholly to the antiquarian or his
torian; people at large felt that the
matter to them made slight appeal.
Their own interests, or more beautiful
presentations of life, absorbed them.
The present day was enough. But
within the last twenty-five years a diff
feFent temper has been growing. Sons
Of the Revolution, and Daughters of the
Revolution, and countless other Organt-
cations which referred back to the hon
orable glories OF those other days-these
societies have been Epringing up and
growing like Jonahs gOurd under the
organizing impulse and social feeling Of
our time. 1t is these which have been
one great cause Of present interest in
the past. Every one who wished to
join one of the societies had to verify
his descent That personal matter of
his interested him, and led him farther
into the personal affairs of his pro-
genitors If you enter LenOx library,
noted for its Americana, or the New
York Historical library, or even the
more general Astor collection, you sec
men and Women-oftener it is a woman
-diggirA' and delving, tracing gene
alOg1eS and records sometimes fancIfuD
Of family persistence. Most of these
books are the depths of commonplace
as the records of every family, even a
Solomon's, or Colonna's. or
Guelph's must be. But that fact does
not hinder the blithe workers. They
now and then straighten their aching
neckS with conscious pride in another
link, and fall to other volumes. For it
is themselves and their unfolding they
are seeking.
It is our national self and our IN
folding we are seeking in turning to our
past as a race and as colonies. The
general tone and condition of life, and
the general ideals of the past, may be
caught from the pages of the chance
writer's of those days. In literary
nil All literary expression in their
hard and narrow lives was necessarily
cramped and distorted, lacking atmos-
phere for the growth of art, time and
environment necessary for artistic pro-
ductiOn. In the Puritan New England
colonies the people were too hard driven
with work of the hands; the Virginia
cavaliers too bent on the externals of
wealth and the show of a full purse.
But it is their life, their feeling for
ward, that we seek in their yellow
pages, just as in the beginnings of any
people it is the seed of what they later
become that We seek. In the early
Greek marbles, for instance, we do not
look for Phidian perfection, but we do
look to find the beginnings of that per
feet art sense to which later centuries
allowed development.
The first book Of these Colonial Prose
and Poetry" volumes has for its sub
title 1.-The Transplanting of Culture
1907 1885," and its PSF pages are filed
with extracts from the books of such
leaders as Capt. John Smith. William
Bradford, John Winthrop, Roger Viii
Hams OF sweet tolerance and human
love, Thomas Hooker, upon whose
death in 1647 the holy Mr.. Cotton wrote
his strong elegiac, Thomas Shepard, and
others. These names tell that the tine
ture of the theologian is strong in the
volume. We must remember that New
England was then a theocracy, and that
its controlling members, those of any
leisure in the hive, were clergymen
They were the aristocrats, the Brahmin
caste, as has been said; the rest were
hard working democrats who submitted
to their dlctation. Excerpts from the
Bay Psalm Book" the first book
printed in British America in Cam
bridge in 1910, are given; and better
also from Anne Bradstreet's book.
Mistress radstreet was known in her
day as THE Tenth Muse" and her
verses were published under that title
adding lately sprung up in America, -
etc To the edition of 1850 Nathaniel
Ward, the grim and humorous Simple
Cebblers of Agawana," prefxed lines IN
which he confesses-
THE auth'ress was a right Du Bartas
1T half revives my chill frost-bitten blood
To see p woman once do aught that's
And chode. by Chaucer's boots and Ho-
Let men look tot. lest women wear the
With the editors of Colonial Prose
and Poetry" we should take issue il
their Introductory statement, Except
for Milton. MARVEL. and a few less I'M
portant names, PuTitanism did ex-
tremely little for English poetry, not
much for English prose- AS to the
! poetic side, We viii let it rest on lex
cept for Milton, MARVEL" etc The
vastness of the influence of Milton upon
/ English poetry and prose has never
/ been traced And not much for Eng
] lisn prose- What then shall we say
Of the prose Of Defoe and its influences
/ Take one specimen of his marvellous
English and imaginative vigor alone
! take Robinson CFuSOe. Who can meas
! ure the influence Of Robinson CI-usoe' s
/ tale. or his terse, strong -Anglo-Saxon
! Much has been said about Queen Anne
/ and Addisonian English, but Defoe out
/ did all writer's of the time except Swift.
He has been the master of masters.
! ..Defoe was always my darling" says
! Charles Lamb. This perhaps Defoes
/ education explains, his training at
Newington Green academy by that Pc
/ lite and profound scholar Charles Nor
ton. who later enigrated to America
! and became pastor of a church in
! Charleston and vice president of Har-
ward college At this academy it was
1 Mr.. Mortonis custom to lecture in Eng
/ lish. contrary TO the usage of the time
and the consequence was. as has beer
said, no academy turned cut so many
scholars that were adopts in the mother
tongue. And if Puritanisna did nG1
/ much for English prose. what shall we
say of Bunyan, the most popular re-
lic-l11.-