Contrasting this impression with our hasty summary of English literature during this seventeenth century, the century in which England added to literature the names of Shakspere, of Milton, and of Dryden, — it seems at first as if America produced no literature at all. Glancing at our English summary a shade more carefully, however, we may observe a brief mention that in Elizabethan England along with supreme poetry there was also both lasting prose, like that of Hooker, of Bacon, and of Ralegh, and such minor prose records and annals as are typified by Hakluyt's “Voyages," together with a good deal of now forgotten religious writing. In English literature, these last sorts of writing are unimportant; they were generally produced not by men of letters, but either by men of action or by earnest, uninspired men of God. Now, the men who founded the colonies of Virginia and of New England were on the one hand men of action, and on the other, men of God. It is precisely such matter as their Elizabethan prototypes left in books now remembered only as material for history that the fathers of America produced throughout the first century of our national inexperience. If we seek in New England for traces of pure literature during the seventeenth century, indeed, we shall find our attention sadly or humorously attracted by such work as the "Bay Psalm Book," produced under the supervision of Richard Mather, Thomas Welde, and John Eliot, in 1640, the year which in England saw the publication of Carew's "Poems," and of Izaak Walton's "Life of Donne." An extract from the preface and from the Nineteenth Psalm will give a sufficient taste of its quality: "If therefore the verses are not alwayes so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them consider that God's Altar needs not our pollishings: Ex. 20. for wee have respected rather a plaine translation, then to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather then Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry, in translating the hebrew words into eng. lish language, and Davids poetry into english meetre; that soe we may sing in Sion the Lords songs of prayse according to his owne will; untill hee take us from hence, and wipe away all our teares, & bid us enter into our masters ioye to sing eternall Halleluiahs." "PSALME XIX To the chiefe Musician a psalme of David The heavens doe declare the majesty of God: also the firmament shews forth his handy-work abroad. 2 Day speaks to day, knowledge 3 There neither speach nor language is, 4 Through all the earth their line the utmost end of all the world, A Tabernacle hee in them pitcht for the Sun. 5 Who Bridegroom like from 's chamber goes 6 From heavens utmost end, his course and compassing; to ends of it, & from the heat The King James version of the same psalm, finally phrased not quite thirty years before, was perfectly familiar to the men who hammered out this barbarous imitation of a metre similarly used by Henry VIII.'s Earl of Surrey. This fact should give sufficient impression of the literary spirit which controlled the Puritan fathers. Twenty-two years later, in 1662, — the year when Fuller's "Worthies" was published, the year after Davenant's final version of "The Siege of Rhodes," and the year before the first part of Butler's "Hudibras," Cowley's "Cutter of Colman Street," and Dryden's "Wild Gallant," - Michael Wigglesworth, then minister of Malden, published his "Day of Doom, or, A Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment," which retained its popularity in New England for about a century. Of this the "Plea of the Infants," still faintly remembered, is example enough: "Then to the Bar, all they drew near Who dy'd in infancy, And never had or good or bad But from the womb unto the tomb (Or at the least e'er they transgrest) "If for our own transgression, or disobedience, We here did stand at thy left hand But Adam's guilt our souls hath spilt, And that alone hath overthrown, "Not we, but he ate of the Tree, How could we sin that had not been or how is his sin our Without consent which to prevent, we never had a pow'r?" Reprobate In- Rev. 20. 12, 15, 13. The plea extends to several stanzas more; then the Lord takes up the argument at great length, concluding as follows: "Am I alone of what's my own, no Master or no Lord? Or if I am, how can you claim Will you demand Grace at my hand, Will you teach me whom to set free, and thus my grace confine? Mat. 20. 15. Psl. 58. 3. Rom. 8. 29, 30, and put to silence. Rom. 3. 19, Mat. 22. 12, Behold the formidable state of all the ungodly, as they stand hopeless and helpless before an impartial Judge, expecting their final sentence. Rev. 6. 16, 17. "You sinners are, and such a share Such you shall have; for I do save Yet to compare your sin with their "A Crime it is, therefore in bliss the easiest room in Hell. Such work as this is more characteristic of seventeenthcentury America than the sporadic, avowedly literary verse of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, daughter of the elder Governor Dudley, whom Professor Tyler calls the first professional poet of New England. She died in 1672,-the year when Addison was born, and the year which gave to English literature, among other things, Dryden's "Conquest of Grenada" and "Marriage à la Mode," with his "Preface of Heroic Plays," Sir William Temple's "Observations on the Netherlands," and William Wycherly's "Love in a Wood." A few verses from her posthumous volume published in 1678,the year which gave us the "Pilgrim's Progress," the third part of "Hudibras," Dryden's "All for Love," Lee's “Mithridates," and South's "Sermons," will show her at her best: "I heard the merry grasshopper then sing, The black-clad cricket bear a second part, Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise? "When I behold the heavens as in their prime, And then the earth (though old) still clad in green, Nor age nor wrinkle on their front are seen; If winter come, and greenness then do fade, A Spring returns, and they more youthful made; But man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid. "By birth more noble than those creatures all, Yet seems by nature and by custom curs'd, Nor youth, nor strength, nor wisdom spring again, But in oblivion to the final day remain. "O Time, the fatal wrack of mortal things, That draws oblivion's curtains over kings, Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not, Their parts, their ports, their pomp's all laid in th' dust, Mrs. Bradstreet's family, as the career of her brother, Governor Joseph Dudley, indicates, kept in closer touch with England than was common in America; and besides she was clearly a person of what would nowadays be called culture." Partly for these reasons her work seems neither individual nor indigenous. In seventeenth-century New England, indeed, she stands alone, without forerunners or followers; and if you compare her poetry with that of the old country, you will find it very like such then antiquated work as the "Nosce Teipsum" of Sir John Davies, published in 1599, the year which gave us the final version of "Romeo and Juliet." In its own day, there seems little doubt, the little pure literature of seventeenth-century New England was already archaic. Apart from this, New England produced only annals, records, and far more characteristically writings of the class |