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and gave to literature the story of Pocahontas, thereby disclosing a new world to the imagination of writers;
(2) William Strachey, who outranks contemporary colonial writers in describing the wrath of the sea, and who
may even have furnished a suggestion to Shakespeare for _The Tempest_; (3) two poets, (a) George Sandys,
who translated part of Ovid, and (b) the unknown author of the elegy on Nathaniel Bacon; and (4) Robert
Beverly and William Byrd, who gave interesting descriptions of early Virginia.
The chief colonial writers of New England are: (1) William Bradford, whose History of Plymouth Plantation
CHAPTER II 24
tells the story of the first Pilgrim colony; (2) John Winthrop, who wrote in his Journal the early history of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony; (3) the poets, including (a) the translators of the Bay Psalm Book, the first volume
of so-called verse printed in the British American colonies, (b) Wigglesworth, whose Day of Doom, was a
poetic exposition of Calvinistic theology, (c) Anne Bradstreet, who wrote a small amount of genuine poetry,
after she had passed from the influence of the "fantastic" school of poets; (4) Nathaniel Ward, the author of
The Simple Cobbler of Agawam, an attempt to mend human ways; (5) Samuel Sewall, New England's greatest
colonial diarist; (6) Cotton Mather, the most famous clerical writer, whose Magnalia is a compound of early
colonial history and biography, sometimes written in a "fantastic" style; (7) Jonathan Edwards, America's
greatest metaphysician and theologian, who maintained that the action of the human will is determined by the
strongest motive, that the substance of this universe is nothing but "the divine Idea," communicated to human
consciousness, and who could invest spiritual truth with the beauty of the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the
valleys.
The New England colonist came to America because of religious feeling. His religion was to him a matter of
eternal life or eternal death. From the modern point of view, this religion may seem too inflexibly stern, too
little illumined by the spirit of love, too much darkened by the shadow of eternal punishment, but unless that
religion had communicated something of its own dominating inflexibility to the colonist, he would never have
braved the ocean, the wilderness, the Indians; he would never have flung the gauntlet down to tyranny at
Lexington and Concord.
The greatest lesson taught by colonial literature, by men like Bradford, Winthrop, Edwards, and the New
England clergy in general, is moral heroism, the determination to follow the shining path of the Eternal over
the wave and through the forest to a new temple of human liberty. Their aspiration, endeavor, suffering,
accomplishment, should strengthen our faith in the worth of those spiritual realities which are not quoted in
the markets of the world, but which alone possess imperishable value.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORICAL
ENGLISH HISTORY.--In either Gardiner's _Students' History of England_, Walker's Essentials in English
History, Andrews's History of England, or Cheney's Short History of England, read the chapters dealing with
the time of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., the Commonwealth, Charles II., James II., William and Mary,
Anne, George I. and II. A work like Halleck's History of English Literature, covering these periods, should be
read.
AMERICAN HISTORY.--Read the account from the earliest times to the outbreak of the French and Indian
War in any of the following:--
Thwaites's The Colonists, 1492-1750.
Fisher's Colonial Era.
Lodge's A Short History of the English Colonies in America.
Doyle's The English in America.
Hart's Essentials in American History.
Channing's _A Students' History of the United States_.
Eggleston's A Larger History of the United States of America.
CHAPTER II 25
James and Sanford's American History.
For an account of special colonies, consult the volumes in American Commonwealths series, and also,
Fiske's Beginnings of New England, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, Old Virginia and Her
Neighbors.
LITERARY
Tyler's A History of American Literature during the Colonial Time, 2 vols.
Otis's American Verse, 1625-1807.
Richardson's American Literature, 2 vols.
Trent's A History of American Literature, 1607-1865.
Wendell's History of Literature in America.
Narratives of Early Virginia, edited by Tyler.
Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation. New edition, edited by Davis. (Scribner, 1908.)
Winthrop's Journal ("History of New England"). New edition, edited by Hosmer, 2 vols., (Scribner, 1908.)
Chamberlain's Samuel Sewall and the World He Lived in.
Lodge's "A Puritan Pepys" (Sewall) in Studies in History.
Campbell's Anne Bradstreet and her Time.
Twichell's John Winthrop.
Walker's Thomas Hooker.
Wendell's Life of Cotton Mather.
Allen's Life of Jonathan Edwards.
Gardiner's _Jonathan Edwards, a Retrospect_.
SUGGESTED READINGS
The following volumes of selections from American Literature will be referred to either by the last name of
the author, or, if there are more authors than one, by the initials of the last names:--
Cairns's Selections from Early American Writers, 1607-1800. (Macmillan.)
Trent and Wells's Colonial Prose and Poetry, 3 vols., 1607-1775. (Crowell.)
Stedman and Hutchinson's A Library of American Literature, 1608-1890, 11 vols. (Benjamin.)
CHAPTER II 26
Carpenter's American Prose Selections. (Macmillan.)
Trent's _Southern Writers: Selections in Prose and Verse_. (Macmillan.)
At least one of the selections indicated for each author should be read.
JOHN SMITH.--The Beginnings of Jamestown (from A True Relation of Virginia, 1608); The Religious
Observances of the Indians (from A Map of Virginia, published in 1612), Cairns, pp. 2-4, 10-14; The
Romance of Pocahontas (from The General History of Virginia, 1624), S. & H., Vol. I., pp. 10-17; T. & W.,
Vol. I., pp. 12-22.
WILLIAM STRACHEY.--Read the selection from A True Repertory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir
Thomas Gates, in Cairns, 19-26.
POETRY IN THE VIRGINIA COLONY.--For George Sandys, see pp. 51-58 in Vol. I. of Tyler's A History
of American Literature during the Colonial Time.
For the elegy on the death of Nathaniel Bacon, see Tyler, Vol. I., 78, 79; Cairns, 185-188; T. & W., II.,
166-169; S. & H., I., 456-458; Trent, 12-14.
DESCRIPTIONS OF VIRGINIA.--The best selection from Beverly's History and Present State of Virginia
may be found in T. & W., II., 354-360. See also Trent, 16-18; S. & H., II., 270-272.
For selections from Byrd's History of the Dividing Line, see Cairns, passim, 259-272; Trent, 19-22; T. & W.,
III., 23-32; S. & H., II., 302-305.
WILLIAM BRADFORD.--The Voyage of the Mayflower, Cairns, 31-35; Early Difficulties of the Pilgrim
Fathers, T. & W., I., 42-45; The Communal System Abandoned, T. & W., I., 46-49; The Landing of the
Pilgrims and their Settlement at Plymouth, S. & H., L, 124-130.
JOHN WINTHROP.--Twenty-five entries from his Journal or History of New England are given in Cairns,
44-48, and fourteen in T. & W., I., 99-105.
His famous speech on Liberty may be found in T. & W., I., 106-116; in S. & H., I., 302-303; and in Cairns,
50-53.
EARLY NEW ENGLAND VERSE.--The selection in the text (p. 38) from the Bay Psalm Book is sufficient.
For Wigglesworth's Day of Doom, see Cairns, 166-177; T. & W., II., 54-60; S. & H., passim, II., 3-16.
Anne Bradstreet's best poem, Contemplations, may be found in Cairns, 154-162; T. & W., I., 280-283; S. &
H., I., 314, 315.
WARD'S SIMPLE COBBLER OF AGAWAM.--His view of religious toleration is given in Cairns,
113-118, and T. & W., I., 253-259. For the satiric essay on women's fashions, see Cairns, 119-124; T. & W.,
I., 260-266; S. & H. I., 276-280.
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