The Republican journal., 1910-03-24

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OF the literature of his time. Cotton
Mather was born in 1868, and was the
third and greatest of the four Mathers
who morally and Intellectually dominated
New England for more than century.
His GRANDPA theirs epitaph is most sug-
gestive.
"under this stone lies Richard Mather
Who had son greater than his father
And exc grandson greater than either"
From his cradle he was petted and
spoiled into what his best critic calls "a
vast literary and religious coxcomb, , "
Higginson tells US. He was an Infant
prodigy" being Harvard Freshman at
IL, and a Master of Arts at IS. His 22nd
year found him associated with his IA
Their, Increase, as minister of the Second
Church in Boston, where he preached all
his life. He viewed everything from a
religious standpoint, keeping continual
fasts and vigils. In later life he had to
stand great deal of adverse criticism,
and fought the losing fight for Puritan
ASAAi1 Ia Wen eiS lol VIC VI
Harvard College. We are glad to know
that history has exonerated him, partial
ly, at least, from the witchcraft odium,
though as he was active in the work of
persecution he has been called treason
able prosecutor. Cotton Mather was an
extraordinarily voluminous writer, having
published IA books in one year, while a
list of his known publications contains
1888 title pages. His ''Magnalia Christi
Americana or the Ecclesiastical History
of New England, was his greatest book
and even that, which is really more a
plea for Orthodoxy than history, is
only read now by the occasional special
student. Professor Tyler gives vivid
word picture when he says of Mather:
He was the last, the most vigorous and
therefore most disagreeable representa-
tive of the fantastic school in literature:
he prolonged in New England the meth
DDS of that school even after his most
cultivated contemporaries there had out
grown them, and come to dislike them.
The expulsion of the beautiful from
thought, from sentiment, from language;
a lawless and merciless fury for the ode,
the disorderly, the grotesque, the violent;
strained analogies, unexpected images,
pedantries, indelicacies, freaks of allu-
sion, monstrosities of phrase these are
the traits of Cotton Mather's writing,
even as they are the traits common to |
that perverse and detestable literary
mood that held sway in different coun-
tries Of Christendom during the 18th and
18th centuries. Its birthplace was Italy;
New England was its grave Cot ton
Mather was its last great apostle" Al |
though Jonathan Edwards and Mather
were both defenders of the Calvinistic |
doctrine, that was almost their only point |
of similarity, for Edwards was modest |
and gentle and simple in himself, and his
lie reflected itself in his writings Born in |
1908 he took his Yale degree in 1920, and /
after that became college tutor, minis |
ter at Northampton, missionary ito the !
Stockbrldge Indians and finally president
OF Princeton College. He devoted his
HE to an imposition of rigid and stern
system of theology, which he expounded |
In the press and in the pulpit, but he new
ertheless furnished US with what has /
been called ''the high-water mark of /
Puritan prose- The secular writers
began to forge to the front in the..early
part OF the century, and among them the |.
diary was one of the favorite forms of |
expression. While the diaries of Madam
Sarah kemble Knight and of Judge Sam
uel Sewall, the latter Harvard gradu-
ate and chief justice of Massachusetts,
can hardly be called literature, they give
excellent pictures of the colonial.ife of
the time, and are still readable for their
human interest. Philip Freneau, who
has been called the first true American
poet, belongs to the group who furnish
the literature of the Revolution-a and
with him we think of Timothy Dwight,
Joel Barlow and Jonathan Trumbull,
whose 'McFugal," Revolutionary sat
ire, won more than passing fame.
AS Philadelphia was then the political
capital, it was natural that we should
lind there not only John Dickinson, whose
Letters from a Farmer stirred this
country and even attracted attention.
across the water, but little group which
included Thomas Paine, and the brilliant
Wing humorist, Francis Hopkinson.
There, too, our great Benjam Franklin
whose life history is familiar to all of us.
He may justly be called the first great
writer in America, the first to produce,
in his autobiography, a book now recog-
nized by the world as classic, and al
though that has a personal interest, he
is, perhaps, best known through "Poor
Almanac" A Philadelphian.
also, was Charles Brockden Brown, the
second American writer to command the
attention of trans Atlantic readers. For
while Brown studied law, but finding
himself irresistibly interested in litera-
ture he turned to letters as a means of
support at the age of about rs. "Wie-
land" his first novel, which was very