Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather Part 13

The Reviewer takes exception to my statement, that the connection of the Mathers with the witchcraft business, "broke down" their influence in public affairs. What are the facts? It has been shown, that the administration of Sir William Phips, at its opening, was under their control, to an extent never equalled by that of private men over a Government. The prayers of Cotton Mather were fully answered; and if wise and cautious counsels had been given, what both father and son had so coveted, in the political management of the Province, would have been permanently realized. But, aiming to arm themselves with terrific and overwhelming strength, by invoking the cooperation of forces from the spiritual, invisible, and diabolical world, with rash "precipitancy,"

they hurried on the witchcraft prosecutions. The consequence was, that in six months, the whole machinery on which they had placed their reliance was prostrate. At the very next election, Elisha Cook was chosen and Nathaniel Saltonstall rechosen, to the Council; and, ever after, the Mathers were driven to the wall, in desperate and unavailing self-defence.

No party or faction could claim the Earl of Bellamont, during his brief administration, covering but fourteen months. Although the only n.o.bleman ever sent over as Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, more than all others, he conciliated the general good will. His short term of office and wise policy prevented any particular advantage to the Mathers from the dedication to him of the _Life of Phips_. During the entire period, between 1692 and the arrival of Dudley to the Government, the opponents of the Mathers were steadily increasing their strength. Opposition to Increase Mather was soon developed in attempts to remove him from the Presidency of Harvard College. In 1701, an Order was pa.s.sed by the General Court, "that no man should act as President of the College, who did not reside at Cambridge." This decided the matter. Increase Mather resigned, on the sixth of September following; and, the same day, the Rev. Samuel Willard took charge of the College, under the t.i.tle of Vice-president, and acted as President, to the acceptance of the people and with the support of the Government of the Province, to his death, in 1707--all the while allowed to retain the pastoral connection with his Church, in Boston.

Joseph Dudley arrived from England, on the eleventh of June, 1702, with his Commission, as Captain-general and Governor of the Province. On the sixteenth, he made a call upon Cotton Mather, who relates the interview in his Diary. It seems that Mather made quite a speech to the new Governor, urging him "to carry an indifferent hand toward all parties,"

and explaining his meaning thus: "By no means, let any people have cause to say that you take all your measures from the two Mr. Mathers." He then added: "By the same rule, I may say without offence, by no means let any people say that you go by no measures in your conduct but Mr.

Byfield's and Mr. Leverett's. This I speak, not from any personal prejudice against the gentlemen, but from a due consideration of the disposition of the people, and as a service to your Excellency."

Dudley--whether judging rightly or not is to be determined by taking into view his position, the then state of parties, and the principles of human nature--evidently regarded this as a trap. If he had followed the advice, and kept aloof from Byfield and Leverett, they would have been placed at a distance from him, and he would necessarily have fallen into the hands of the Mathers. He may have thought that the only way to avoid such a result, was for him to explain to those gentlemen his avoidance of them, by mentioning to them what Mather had said to him, thereby signifying to them, that, as a matter of policy, he thought it best to adopt the suggestion and stand aloof from both sides. Whether acting from this consideration or from resentment, he informed them of it; whereupon Mather inserted this in his Diary: "The WRETCH went unto those men and told them that I had advised him to be no ways directed by them, and inflamed them into implacable rage against me."

After this, the relations between Dudley and the Mathers must have been sufficiently awkward and uncomfortable; but no particular public demonstrations appear to have been made, on either side, for some time.

Mr. Willard died on the twelfth of September, 1707; and the great question again rose as to the proper person to be called to the head of the College. The extraordinary learning of Cotton Mather undoubtedly gave him commanding and pre-eminent claims in the public estimation; and he had reason to think that the favorite object of his ambition was about to be attained. But he was doomed to bitter disappointment. On the twenty-eighth of October, the Corporation, through its senior member, the Rev. James Allen of Boston, communicated to the Governor the vote of that body, appointing the "Honorable John Leverett" to the Presidency; and, on the fourteenth of January, 1708, he was publicly inducted to office. The Mathers could stand it no longer; but, six days after, addressed, each, a letter to Dudley, couched in the bitterest and most abusive terms.--[_Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society's Collections, I., iii., 126._] No explosions of disappointed politicians and defeated aspirants for office, in our day, surpa.s.s these letters. They show how deeply the writers were stung. They heap maledictions on the Governor, without any of the restraints of courtesy or propriety. They charge him with all sorts of malversation in office, bribery, peculation, extortion, falseness, hypocrisy, and even murder; imputing to him "the guilt of innocent blood," because, many years before, he had, as Chief-justice of New York, presided at the Trial of Leisler and Milburn; and averring that "those men were not only murdered, but barbarously murdered."

It is observable that some of the heinous crimes charged upon Dudley, occurred before his arrival as Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1702; and that, in these very letters, they remind him that it was, in part, by their influence that he was then appointed, and that a letter from Cotton Mather, in favor of his appointment, was read before "the late King William." Both the Mathers were remarkable for a lack of vision, in reference to the logical bearing of what they said. It did not occur to them, that the fact of their soliciting his appointment closed their mouths from making charges for public acts well known to them at the time.

Dudley says that he was a.s.sured by the Mathers, on his arrival, that he had the favor of all good men; and Cotton Mather, in his letter, reminds him that he signalized his friendly feelings, by giving to the public, on that occasion, the "portraiture of a good man." It is proved, therefore, by the evidence on both sides, that, well knowing all about the Leisler affair and other crimes alleged against him, they were ready, and most desirous, to secure his favor and friends.h.i.+p; and to identify themselves with his administration.

In alluding to these letters, Hutchinson (_History, ii., 194_,) says: "In times when party spirit prevails, what will not a Governor's enemies believe, however injurious and absurd? At such a time, he was charged with dispensing _summum jus_ to Leisler and incurring an aggravated guilt of blood beyond that of a common murderer. The other party, no doubt, would have charged the failure of justice upon him, if Leisler had been acquitted."

Dudley replied to both these extraordinary missives, in a letter dated the third of February, 1708. After rebuking, in stern and dignified language, the tone and style of their letters, reminding them, by apt citations from Scripture of the "laws of wise and Christian reproof,"

which they had violated, and showing upon what false foundations their charges rested, he says: "Can you think it the most proper season to do me good by your admonitions, when you have taken care to let the world know you are out of frame and filled with the last prejudice against my person and Government?" "Every one can see through the pretence, and is able to account for the spring of these letters, and how they would have been prevented, without easing any grievances you complain of." He makes the following proposal: "After all, though I have reason to complain to heaven and earth of your unchristian rashness, and wrath, and injustice, I would yet maintain a christian temper towards you. I do, therefore, now a.s.sure you that I shall be ready to give you all the satisfaction Christianity requires, in those points which are proper for you to seek to receive it in, when, with a proper temper and spirit, giving me timely notice, you do see meet to make me a visit for that end; and I expect the same satisfaction from you." He offers this significant suggestion: "I desire you will keep your station, and let fifty or sixty good Ministers, your equals in the Province, have a share in the Government of the College and advise thereabouts, as well as yourselves, and I hope all will be well." He concludes by claiming that he is sustained by the favor of the "Ministers of New England;" and characterises the issue between him and them thus: "The College must be disposed against the opinion of all the Ministers in New England, except yourselves, or the Governor torn in pieces. This is the view I have of your inclination."

Dudley continued to administer the Government for eight years longer, until the infirmities of age compelled him to retire. Both Hutchinson and Doctor John Eliot give us to understand that he conducted the public affairs with great ability and success, with the general approval of all cla.s.ses, and particularly of the Clergy. His statement that he had the support of all the Ministers of New England, except the Mathers, was undoubtedly correct. It is certainly true of the Ministers of Boston. In his Diary, under the year 1709, Cotton Mather says: "The other Ministers of the Town are this day feasting with our wicked Governor. I have, by my provoking plainness and freedom, in telling this Ahab of his wickedness, procured myself to be left out of his invitations. I rejoiced in my liberty from the temptations wherewith they were enc.u.mbered." He set apart that day for fasting and prayer, the special interest of which, he says, "was to obtain deliverance and protection" from his "enemies," whose names, he informs us, he "mentioned unto the Lord, who had promised to be my s.h.i.+eld."

The bitterness with which Mather felt exclusion from power is strikingly ill.u.s.trated in a letter addressed by him to Stephen Sewall, published by me in the Appendix to the edition of my _Lectures_, printed in 1831. I subjoin a few extracts: "A couple of malignant fellows, a while since, railing at me in the Bookseller's shop, among other things they said, 'and his friend Noyes has cast him off,' at which they set up a laughter." "No doubt, you understand, how ridiculously things have been managed in our late General a.s.sembly; voting and unvoting, the same day; and, at last, the squirrels perpetually running into the mouth open for them, though they had cried against it wonderfully. And your neighbor, Sowgelder, after his indefatigable pains at the castration of all common honesty, rewarded, before the Court broke up, with being made one of your brother Justices; which the whole House, as well as the apostate himself, had in view, all along, as the expected wages of his iniquity."

"If things continue in the present administration, there will shortly be not so much as a shadow of justice left in the country. Bribery, a crime capital among the Pagans, is already a peccadillo among us. All officers are learning it. And, if I should say, Judges will find the way to it, some will say, there needs not the future tense in the case." "Every thing is betrayed, and that we, on the top of our house, may complete all, our very religion, with all the Churches, is at last betrayed--the treachery carried on with lies, and fallacious representations, and finished by the rash hands of our Clergy."

That Cotton Mather continued all his subsequent life to experience the dissatisfaction, and give way to the feelings, of a disappointed man, is evident from his Diary. I have quoted from it a few pa.s.sages. The Reviewer says it "is full of penitential confessions," and seems to liken him, in this respect, to the Apostle of the Gentiles. Speaking of my having cited the Diary, as historical evidence, he says: "Such a use of the confessional, we believe, is not common with historical writers."

I do not remember anything like "penitential confessions," in the pa.s.sages from the Diary given in my book. The reader is referred to them, in Volume II., Page 503. They belong to the year 1724, and are thus prefaced:

"DARK DISPENSATIONS, BUT LIGHT ARISING IN DARKNESS."

"It may be of some use to me, to observe some very dark dispensations, wherein the recompense of my poor essays at well-doing, in this life, seem to look a little discouraging; and then to express the triumph of my faith over such and all discouragements." "Of the things that look dark, I may touch of twice seven instances."

The writer, in the _Christian Examiner_, November, 1831, from whom I took them, omitted two, "on account of their too personal or domestic character."

I cannot find the slightest trace of a penitential tear on those I have quoted; and cite now but one of them, as pertinent to the point I am making: "What has a gracious Lord given me to do for the good of the country? in applications without number for it, in all its interests, besides publications of things useful to it, and for it. And, yet, there is no man whom the country so loads with disrespect, and calumnies, and manifold expressions of aversion."

This is a specimen of the whole of them--one half recounting what he had done, the other complaining, sometimes almost scolding, at the poor requital he had received.

President Leverett died on the third of May, 1724. His death was lamented by the country; and the most eminent men vied with each other in doing honor to his memory. The Rev. Benjamin Colman called him "our master," and p.r.o.nounced his life as "great and good." "The young men saw him and hid themselves, and the aged arose and stood up." Dr. Appleton declared that he had been "an honored ornament to his country. Verily, the breach is so wide, that none but an all-sufficient G.o.d (with whom is the residue of the Spirit) can repair or heal it." The late Benjamin Peirce, in his _History of Harvard University_, says that "his Presidency was successful and brilliant." He was honored abroad, as well as at home; and his name is inscribed on the rolls of the Royal Society of London. Mr. Peirce says: "He had a great and generous soul." His natural abilities were of a very high order. His attainments were profound and extensive. He was well acquainted with the learned languages, with the arts and "sciences, with history, philosophy, law, divinity, politics." Such, we are told, were "the majesty and marks of greatness, in his speech, his behaviour, and his very countenance," that the students of the College were inspired with reverence and affection.

In his earlier and later life, he had been connected with the College, as Tutor and as President; and in the intermediate period, he had filled the highest legislative and judicial stations, and been intrusted with the most important functions connected with the military service. I am inclined to think, all things considered, a claim, in his behalf, might be put in for the distinction the Reviewer awards to Cotton Mather, as "doubtless the most brilliant man of his day in New England."

President Leverett was buried on the sixth of May. Cotton Mather officiated as one of the Pall-bearers, and then went home, and made the following entry in his Diary, dated the seventh: "The sudden death of that unhappy man who sustained the place of President in our College, will open a door for my doing singular services in the best of interests. I do not know that the care of the College will now be cast upon me; though I am told it is what is most generally wished for. If it should be, I shall be in abundance of distress about it; but, if it should not, yet I may do many things for the good of the College more quietly and more hopefully than formerly."

As time wore away, and no choice of President was made, he became more and more sensible that an influence, hostile to him, was in the ascendency; and, on the first of July, he writes thus, in his Diary: "This day being our insipid, ill-contrived anniversary, which we call Commencement, I chose to spend it at home, in supplications, partly on the behalf of the College, that it may not be foolishly thrown away, but that G.o.d may bestow such a President upon it, as may prove a rich blessing unto it and unto all our Churches."

In the meanwhile, he renewed his attendance at the meetings of the Overseers; having never occupied his seat, in that Body, with the exception of a single Session, during the whole period of Leverett's presidency. The Board, at a meeting he attended, on the sixth of August, 1724, pa.s.sed a vote advising and directing the speedy election of a President. On the eleventh, the Corporation chose the Rev. Joseph Sewall of the Old South Church; and Mather records the event in his Diary, as follows: "I am informed that, yesterday, the six men, who call themselves the Corporation of the College, met, and, contrary to the epidemical expectation of the country, chose a modest young man, Sewall, of whose piety (and little else) every one gives a laudable character."

"I always foretold these two things of the Corporation: First, that, if it were possible for them to steer clear of me, they will do so.

Secondly, that, if it were possible for them to act foolishly, they will do so. The perpetual envy with which my essays to serve the kingdom of G.o.d are treated among them, and the dread that Satan has of my beating up his quarters at the College, led me into the former sentiment; the marvellous indiscretion, with which the affairs of the College are managed, led me into the latter."

Mr. Sewall declined the appointment. On the eighteenth of November, the Rev. Benjamin Colman, of the Brattle-street Church, was chosen. He also declining, the Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth, of the First Church, was elected, in June, 1725, and inaugurated on the seventh of July.

It thus appears that Dr. Mather was pointedly pa.s.sed over; and every other Minister of Boston successively chosen to that great office.

Of course he took, as Mr. Peirce informs us, no further part in the management of the College. While he considered, as he expressed it, the "senselessness" of those entrusted with its affairs, as threatening "little short of a dissolution of the College," yet he persuaded himself that he had never desired the office. He had, he says, "unspeakable cause to admire the compa.s.sion of Heaven, in saving him from the appointment;" and that he had always had a "dread of what the generality of sober men" thought he desired--"dismal apprehension of the distresses which a call at Cambridge would bring" upon him.--He was sincere in those declarations, no doubt; but they show how completely he could blind himself to the past and even to the actual present. Mr. Peirce explains why the Corporation were so resolute in withholding their suffrages from Mather: "His contemporaries appear to have formed a very correct estimate of his character." "They saw, what posterity sees, that he was a man of wonderful parts, of immense learning, and of eminent piety and virtue." "They saw his weakness and eccentricities." "It is evident that his judgment was not equal to his other faculties; that his pa.s.sions, which were naturally strong and violent, were not always under proper regulation; that he was weak, credulous, enthusiastic, and superst.i.tious. His conversation is said to have been instructive and entertaining, in a high degree, though often marred by levity, vanity, imprudence and puns." For these reasons, he was deemed an unsuitable person for the Presidency of the College.

XVIII.

COTTON MATHER'S WRITINGS AND CHARACTER.

While compelled--by the attempt of the writer in the _North American Review_ to reverse the just verdict of history in reference to Cotton Mather's connection with Salem Witchcraft--to show the unhappy part he acted and the terrible responsibility he incurred, in bringing forward, and carrying through its stages, that awful tragedy, and the unworthy means he used to throw that responsibility, afterwards, on others, I am not to be misled into a false position, in reference to this extraordinary man. I endorse the language of Mr. Peirce: "He possessed great vigor and activity of mind, quickness of apprehension, a lively imagination, a prodigious memory, uncommon facility in acquiring and communicating knowledge, with the most indefatigable application and industry; that he ama.s.sed an immense store of information on all subjects, human and divine." I follow Mr. Peirce still further, in believing that his natural temperament was pleasant and his sentiments of a benevolent cast: "that he was an habitual promoter and doer of good, is evident, as well from his writings as from the various accounts that have been transmitted respecting him."

If the question is asked, as it naturally will be, how these admissions can be reconciled with the views and statements respecting him, contained in this article and in my book on witchcraft, the answer is: that mankind is not divided into two absolutely distinct and entirely separated portions--one good and the other evil. The good are liable to, and the bad are capable of, each receiving much into their own lives and characters, that belongs to the other. This interfusion universally occurs. The great errors and the great wrongs imputable to Cotton Mather do not make it impracticable to discern what was commendable in him.

They may be accounted for without throwing him out of the pale of humanity or our having to shut our eyes to traits and merits other ways exhibited.

The extraordinary precocity of his intellect--itself always a peril, often a life-long misfortune--awakened vanity and subjected him to the flattery by which it is fed. All ancestral a.s.sociations and family influences pampered it. Such a speech as that made to him, at his graduation, by President Oakes, could not have failed to have inflated it to exaggerated dimensions. Clerical and political ambition was natural, all but instinctive, to one, whose father, and both whose grandfathers, had been powers, in the State as well as Church. The religious ideas, if they can be so called, in which he had been trained from childhood, in a form bearing upon him with more weight than upon any other person in all history, inasmuch, as they const.i.tuted the prominent feature of his father's reading, talk, thoughts, and writings, gave a rapid and overshadowing growth to credulity and superst.i.tion. A defect in his education, perhaps, in part, a natural defect, left him without any true logical culture, so that he seems, in his productions and conduct, not to discern the sequences of statements, the coherence of propositions, nor the consistency of actions, thereby entangling him in expressions and declarations that have the aspect of untruthfulness--his language often actually bearing that character, without his discerning it. His writings present many instances of this infirmity. Some have already been incidentally adduced. In his _Life of Phips_, avowing himself the author of the doc.u.ment known as the _Advice of the Ministers_, he uses this language: "By Mr. Mather the younger, as I have been informed." He had, in fact, never been _so informed_. He knew it by consciousness. Of course he had no thought of deceiving; but merely followed a habit he had got, of such modes of expression. So, also, when he sent a present of money and tracts to "poor and bad people," in Salem, with an anonymous letter to the Minister of the place, "desiring and empowering him to dispense the charity, _in his own name_, hoping thereby the _more to ingratiate his ministry with the people_," he looked only on one side of the proposal, and saw it in no other light than a benevolent and friendly transaction. It never occurred to him that he was suggesting a deceptive procedure and drawing the Minister into a false position and practice.

When, in addition, we consider to what he was exposed by his proclivity to, and aspirations for, political power, the expedients, schemes, contrivances, and appliances, in which he thereby became involved in the then state of things in the Colony, and the connection which leading Ministers, although not admitted to what are strictly speaking political offices, had with the course of public affairs--his father, to an extent never equalled by any other Clergyman, before or since--we begin to estimate the influences that disastrously swayed the mind of Cotton Mather.

Vanity, flattery, credulity, want of logical discernment, and the struggles between political factions, in the unsettled, uncertain, transition period, between the old and new Charters, are enough to account for much that was wrong, in one of Mather's temperament and pa.s.sions, without questioning his real mental qualities, or, I am disposed to think, his conscious integrity, or the sincerity of his religious experiences or professions.

But his chief apology, after all, is to be found in the same sphere in which his chief offences were committed. Certain topics and notions, in reference to the invisible, spiritual, and diabolical world, whether of reality or fancy it matters not, had, all his life long, been the ordinary diet, the daily bread, of his mind.

It may, perhaps, be said with truth, that the theological imagery and speculations of that day, particularly as developed in the writings of the two Mathers, were more adapted to mislead the mind and shroud its moral sense in darkness, than any system, even of mythology, that ever existed. It was a mythology. It may be spoken of with freedom, now, as it has probably pa.s.sed away, in all enlightened communities in Christendom. Satan was the great central character, in what was, in reality, a Pantheon. He was surrounded with hosts of infernal spirits, disembodied and embodied, invisible demons, and confederate human agents. He was seen in everything, everywhere. His steps were traced in extraordinary occurrences and in the ordinary operations of nature. He was hovering over the heads of all, and lying in wait along every daily path. The affrighted imagination, in every scene and mode of life, was conversant with ghosts, apparitions, spectres, devils. This prevalent, all but universal, exercise of credulous fancy, exalted into the most imposing dignity of theology and faith, must have had a demoralizing effect upon the rational condition and faculties of men, and upon all discrimination and healthfulness of thought. When error, in its most extravagant forms, had driven the simplicity of the Gospel out of the Church and the world, it is not to be wondered at that the mind was led to the most shocking perversions, and the conscience ensnared to the most indefensible actions.

The superst.i.tion of that day was foreshadowed in the ferocious cannibal of cla.s.sic mythology--a monster, horrific, hideous in mien, and gigantic in stature. It involved the same fate. The eye of the intellect was burned out, the light of reason extinguished--_cui lumen ademptum_.

Having always given himself up to the contemplation of diabolical imaginations, Cotton Mather was led to take the part he did, in the witchcraft proceedings; and it cannot be hidden from the light of history. The greater his talents, the more earnestly he may, in other matters, have aimed to be useful, the more weighty is the lesson his course teaches, of the baleful effects of bewildering and darkening superst.i.tion.

There is another, and a special, explanation to be given of the disingenuousness that appears in his writings. He was a master of language. He could express, with marvelous facility, any shade of thought. He could also make language conceal thought. No one ever handled words with more adroitness. He could mould them to suit his purposes, at will, and with ease. This faculty was called in requisition by the special circ.u.mstances of his times. It was necessary to preserve, at least, the appearance of unity among the Churches, while there was as great a tendency, then, as ever, to diversity of speculations, touching points of casuistical divinity or ministerial policy. The talent to express in formulas, sentiments that really differed, so as to obscure the difference, was needed; and he had it. He knew how to frame a doc.u.ment that would suit both sides, but, in effect, answer the purposes of one of them, as in the _Advice of the Ministers_.

He could a.s.sert a proposition and connect with it what appeared to be only a judicious modification or amplification, but which, in reality, was susceptible of being interpreted as either more or less corroborating or contradicting it, as occasion might require. This was a sort of sleight of hand, in the use of words; and was noticed, at the time, as "legerdemain." He practised it so long that it became a feature of his style; and he actually, in this way, deceived himself as well as others. It is a danger to which ingenious and hair-splitting writers are liable. I am inclined to think that what we cannot but regard as patent misstatements, were felt by him to be all right, in consequence, as just intimated, of this acquired habit.

His style is sprightly, and often entertaining. Neal, the author of the _History of the Puritans_, in a letter to the Rev. Benjamin Colman, after speaking with commendation of one of Cotton Mather's productions, says: "It were only to be wished that it had been freed from those puns and jingles that attend all his writings, before it had been made public."--_Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Collections, I., v., 199._--Mr.

Peirce, it has been observed, speaks of his "puns," in conversation. It is not certain, but that, to a reader now, these very things const.i.tute a redeeming attraction of his writings and relieve the mind of the unpleasant effects of his credulity and vanity, pedantic and often far-fetched references, palpable absurdities, and, sometimes, the repulsiveness of his topics and matter.

The Reviewer represents me as prejudiced against Cotton Mather. Far from it. Forty-three years ago, before my attention had been particularly called to his connection with alleged witchcrafts or with the political affairs of his times, I eulogized his "learning and liberality," in warm terms.--_Sermon at the Dedication of the House of Wors.h.i.+p of the First Church, in Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, 48._

I do not retract what I then said. Cotton Mather was in advance of his times, in liberality of feeling, in reference to sectarian and denominational matters. He was, undoubtedly, a great student, and had read all that an American scholar could then lay his hands on.

Marvellous stories were told of the rapidity of his reading. He was a devourer of books. At the same time, I vindicated him, without reserve, from the charge of pedantry. This I cannot do now. Observation and reflection have modified my views. He made a display, over all his pages, of references and quotations from authors then, as now, rarely read, and of anecdotes, biographical incidents, and critical comments relating to scholars and eminent persons, of whom others have but little information, and of many of whom but few have ever heard. This filled his contemporaries with wonder; led to most extravagant statements, in funeral discourses, by Benjamin Colman, Joshua Gee, and others; and made the general impression that has come down to our day. Without detracting from his learning, which was truly great, it cannot be denied that this superfluous display of it subjects him, justly to the imputation of pedantry. It may be affected where, unlike the case of Cotton Mather, there is, in reality, no very extraordinary amount of learning. It is a trick of authors.h.i.+p easily practised.

Any one reading Latin with facility, having a good memory, and keeping a well-arranged sc.r.a.p-book, needs less than half a dozen such books as the following, to make a show of learning and to astonish the world by his references and citations--the six folio volumes of Petavius, on Dogmatic Theology, and his smaller work, _Rationarium Temporum_, a sort of compendium or schedule of universal history; and a volume printed, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, at Amsterdam, compiled by Limborch, consisting of an extensive collection of letters to and from the most eminent men of that and the preceding century, such as Arminius, Vossius, Episcopius, Grotius, and many others, embracing a vast variety of literary history, criticism, biography, theology, philosophy, and ecclesiastical matters--I have before me the copy of this work, owned by that prodigy of learning, Dr. Samuel Parr, who p.r.o.nounced it "a precious book;" and it may have contributed much to give to his productions, that air of rare learning that astonished his contemporaries. To complete the compendious apparatus, and give the means of exhibiting any quant.i.ty of learning, in fields frequented by few, the only other book needed is Melchior Adams's _Lives of Literati_, including all most prominently connected with Divinity, Philosophy, and the progress of learning and culture, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and down to its date, 1615. I have before me, the copy of this last work, owned by Richard Mather, and probably brought over with him, in his perilous voyage, in 1635. It was, successively, in the libraries of his son, Increase, and his grandson, Cotton Mather. At a corner of one of the blank leaves, it is noted, apparently in the hand of Increase Mather: "began Mar. 1, finished April 30, 1676." According to the popular tradition, Cotton would have read it, in a day or two. It contains interesting items of all sorts--personal anecdotes, critical comments, and striking pa.s.sages of the lives and writings of more than one hundred and fifty distinguished men, such as Erasmus, Fabricius, Faustus, Cranmer, Tremellius, Peter Martyr, Beza, and John Knox. Whether Mather had access to either of the above-named works, except the last, is uncertain; but, as his library was very extensive, he sparing no pains nor expense in furnis.h.i.+ng it, and these books were severally then in print and precisely of the kind to attract him and suit his fancy, it is not unlikely that he had them all. They would have placed in easy reach, much of the ma.s.s of amazing erudition with which he "entertained"