I. THE FIRST HALF OF THE CENTURY; THE PERSONAL TOUCH: SAMUEL SEWALL, MRS. KNIGHT, EBENEZER COOK, WILLIAM BYRD, JONATHAN EDWARDS.

IN the study of literature, there is nothing more gratifying than the discovery of an author who has unconsciously put himself visibly into his book. Two or three American writers wrote thus amiably at this period of our colonial history, and their works form an interesting and welcome group.

Samuel Sewall, 1652-1730.

The most prominent of these was Judge Samuel Sewall, who arrived in America in 1661 and settled at Newbury. He was a conspicuous man in the Massachusetts colony and became the Chief-justice of Massachusetts. Like his friend, Cotton Mather, he was involved in the witchcraft delusion and was one of the judges who condemned the victims to death. His repentance, his dramatic confession of error and his annual fast are familiar tradition. It should be remembered, also, that in a little book, The Selling of Joseph (1700), Judge Sewall wrote the first published argument against slavery. From 1673 to 1729, Samuel Sewall kept a diary -- and thereby left for generations of readers to come one of the most frank and unconventional records of the time. The publication of this journal shows that it is worthy of a place with that of Samuel Pepys (pronounced Peps), of London, whose celebrated Diary covers the decade of 1659-69. The social life of colonial New England is most happily illustrated in Sewall's memoranda; and the stiff stateliness of the stern old Puritan type loses at least its solemnity when we read the Judge's record of his unavailing suit for the hand of Madam Winthrop.

[Oct. 6, 1720.] "A little after 6 P.M. I went to Madam Winthrop's. She was not within. I gave Sarah Chickering the Maid 2^s., Juno, who brought in wood 1^s. Afterward the Nurse came in, I gave her 18^d having no other small Bill. After a while Dr. Noyes came in with his Mother [Mrs. Winthrop]; and after his wife came in: They sat talking, I think, till eight a'clock. I said I fear'd I might be some interruption to their Business; Dr. Noyes reply'd pleasantly: He fear'd they might be an Interruption to me, and went away. Madam seemed to harp upon the same string [she had previously declared that she could not break up her present home]. Must take care of her children; could not leave that House and Neighborhood where she had dwelt so long. I told her she might doe her children as much or more good by bestowing what she laid out in House-keeping, upon them. Said her son would be of Age the 7th of August. I said it might be inconvenient for her to dwell with her Daughter-in-Law, who must be Mistress of the House. I gave her a piece of Mr. Belcher's Cake and Ginger-Bread wrapped up in a clean sheet of Paper; told her of her Father's kindness to me when Treasurer, and I Constable. My daughter Judith was gone from me and I was more lonesome -- might help to forward one another in our journey to Canaan. -- Mr. Eyre came within the door; I saluted him, ask'd how Mr. Clark did, and he went away. I took leave about 9 a'clock."

The Judge's suit did not prosper.

"8^r, 21 [October 21.] Friday, My Son, the Minister, came to me p.m. by appointment and we pray one for another in the Old Chamber; more especially respecting my Courtship. About 6 a-clock I go to Madam Winthrop's. Sarah told me her Mistress was gone out, but did not tell me whither she went. She presently ordered me a Fire; so I went in, having Dr. Sibb's Bowells with me to read. I read the first two Sermons, still no body came in: at last about 9 a-clock Mr. Jn.^o Eyre came in; I took the opportunity to say to him as I had done to Mrs. Noyes before, that I hoped my visiting his Mother would not be disagreeable to him; he answered me with much Respect. When it was after 9 a clock He of himself said he would go & call her, she was but at one of his Brothers: A while after I heard Madam Winthrop's voice enquiring something about John. After a good while and Clapping the Garden door twice or thrice, she came in. I mentioned something of the lateness; she bantered me, and said I was later. She received me Courteously. I asked when our proceedings should be made public: She said They were like to be no more public than they were already. Offer'd me no Wine that I remember. I rose up at 11 a'clock to come away, saying I would put on my coat, She offer'd not to help me. I pray'd her that Juno might light me home, she open'd the Shutter, and said it was pretty light abroad; Juno was weary and gone to bed. So I came home by Starlight as well as I could. At my first coming in, I gave Sarah five shillings. I writ Mr. Eyre his name in his book with the date October 21, 1720. It cost me 8.^s Jehovah jireh."

Sarah Kemble Knight, 1666-1727.

Among the most interesting personal narratives of this period is the Journal of Sarah K. Knight, which contains a lively account of a journey from Boston to New York made by this adventurous lady in 1704. Madam Knight was thirty-eight years of age -- a native of Boston. She made the trip on horseback and was five days on the way between Boston and New Haven; the distance between New Haven and New York occupied two days. The story is eloquent of the inconvenience and peril to which colonial travelers were subject, but the charm of the narrative is due to the vivacious personality of its author, and to her abounding sense of humor which broadly illuminates the oddities of human nature encountered in the wilderness.

To the student, as to the general reader, these bright and lively narratives of actual life are far more attractive than essays in more formal history; in their power to revive the past they are far superior. The South as well as the North is represented thus in this same period.

William Byrd, 1674-1744.

Born on a beautiful estate at Westover, Virginia, William Byrd became one of the most prominent and useful of those who served that colony at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was also its wittiest writer if not its most accomplished scholar. His education he received in England -- as was customary with the youth of the South -- and he was admitted to the English bar. After further travel in Europe, he returned to Virginia. He filled various official positions and became famed as the master of Westover, where he maintained a princely hospitality. In 1729, his duties assigned him to an expedition which fixed the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina; and a narrative of this expedition Byrd wrote in the form of a journal. It was not until 1841, however, that the Westover manuscripts were published. The History of the Dividing Line, as its author called it, is a picturesque and racy account of an interesting experience. It was a laborious task -- this of running the line of division from a point on the coast six hundred miles westward through a country wild and almost unknown, and which traversed the Great Dismal Swamp. In the gayest of spirits, the journal records the daily experiences of the expedition, vivaciously describing the locality, with its denizens both wild and tame. An historical sketch of Virginia is included in the narrative wherein Byrd humorously sets off the shortcomings of the first colonists -- "about a hundred men, most of them reprobates of good families." Another journal entitled A Progress to the Mines contains the account of a trip taken in 1733. Histories.

There was no lack of historical writings in the colonies during this period of their growth. A young Virginian, Robert Beverley, studying in London, was shown the text of a work upon the British Empire in America; and was so disturbed by its inaccuracies that he himself prepared a History of Virginia which was honest and readable. Beverley's history was published in London in 1705, and again, enlarged and revised, in 1722. Rev. William Stith (1689-1755), president of William and Mary College, published in 1747 his first part of The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, bringing his narrative down only to 1624. He never carried the work further. It is based directly upon "the excellent but confused materials" of Captain John Smith, of whom Stith adds loyally: "I take him to have been a very honest man and a strenuous lover of truth."

The Sot Weed Factor.

One other book dealing with a picturesque aspect of southern life at this time is worthy of notice; it was one entitled The Sot Weed Factor; or, a Voyage to Maryland, published at London in 1708. The name of its author, Ebenezer Cook, appears on the title-page, but of him we know nothing; he may have been an American, he may have been merely an English visitor to our shores; however, his work is a lively contribution to the literature of the period and presents in rough and ready rhyme a coarse but realistic satire of the writer's adventures among the tobacco agents -- the "sot-weed factors" of Maryland. He asserts his purpose to describe "the laws, governments, courts, and constitutions of the country, and also the buildings, feasts, frolics, entertainments, and drunken humors of the inhabitants." His style may be inferred from these opening lines:--

"Condemned by fate to wayward curse
Of friends unkind and empty purse,--
Plagues worse than filled Pandora's box,--
I took my leave of Albion's rocks;
With heavy heart concerned, that I
Was forced my native soil to fly,
And the old world must bid good-bye.
... .... .... .
Freighted with fools, from Plymouth sound
To Maryland our ship was bound."

Returning to New England, we find once more the intellectual leader of his age among the ministers. Jonathan Edwards was not only a great scholar and one of the most noted theologians of the century in which he lived, but one of the most brilliant logicians that our country has ever produced; and in the literature of philosophical study, he is still a commanding figure. Edwards was born in Connecticut, and was graduated from Yale College at seventeen. After a brief connection with that institution as a tutor, he became pastor of the church in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he remained until 1750, when he resigned his charge and engaged in missionary work among the Indians in the western part of the colony. In 1758, he was called to the presidency of Princeton College, and died within a few weeks after his installation.

In the records of Edwards's precocious childhood, in the breadth of his interests and in the scope and energy of his scholastic labors there is much that recalls the phenomenal career of Cotton Mather, but there was no real resemblance in the men; Mather was ponderous, Edwards was profound.

A Scientific Student.

When a boy of twelve, Jonathan Edwards was an acute observer of nature and wrote for a naturalist in England an account of his observations on spiders. This interest in natural science he maintained in mature years. He advanced a theory of atoms, he demonstrated that the fixed stars are suns, he made interesting studies on the growth of trees and on the formation of river channels, he studied the principles of sound, the cause of colors, and the tendencies of winds, and anticipated Franklin's discovery of the nature of the lightning.

Theologian.

Edwards's sermons have acquired a fame, not altogether desirable, perhaps, but almost unique in the recognition of their power. His most noted sermon, preached at Enfield, Massachusetts, in 1741, on the theme Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, was so terrifying in its immediate effect that the people bowed in agony and the noise of their weeping and their cries obliged him to call for silence that he might be heard. Edwards became recognized as a defender of Calvinism at a time when strong opposition was developing against it. He was one of the conspicuous leaders in the great revival movement in the forties, known as the Great Awakening -- the religious movement in which the famous English preacher, George Whitfield, was a prominent figure.

The Freedom of the Will, 1754.

It is, however, as the author of an extraordinary book entitled An Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will, that Jonathan Edwards holds his position in American letters. This work is a defense of the Calvinistic doctrines of foreordination, original sin, and eternal punishment. It is a masterpiece of philosophical reasoning, and although in the broadening of men's minds the old theological ideas have been greatly modified, the Freedom of the Will is still recognized as a profound work, and has a definite place in the literature of theological discussion; it has been called "the one large contribution which America has made to the deeper philosophic thought of the world."

Personality.

Jonathan Edwards was intensely spiritual, an "intellectual saint." The presence of an inner light glows in his refined and delicate features. A deep poetical temperament underlies his spiritual thought. His imagination revels in beautiful figures. Holiness makes

"the Soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant flowers; enjoying a sweet calm, and the gently vivifying beams of the sun. The soul of a true Christian... appears like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing, as it were in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms, to drink in the light of the sun.

"So that, when we are delighted with flowers, meadows, and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanation of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see His love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanation of His infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of His beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of His favour, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of His glory and goodness; and in the blue sky, of His mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold His awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder-cloud, in rugged rocks, and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light with which the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of His spotless holiness and happiness and delight in communicating Himself."