The Bay Psalm Book

If poetry be rare among our forefathers, it is nevertheless true that the first English book printed in America passed for poetry with them, and for poetry of an edifying and noble type. “The Whole Booke of Psalmes”, commonly known as the “Bay Psalm Book”, was printed on the new press at Cambridge in 1640. This work, designed to provide a metrical version of the Psalms of David, to be used in the churches, contains the joint efforts of three New England ministers -- Richard Mather of Dorchester, Thomas Welde, and John Eliot of Roxbury. “Bay Psalm Book” served its sacred purpose in the New England churches for more than a century.

Anne Bradstreet, 1613-72.

From the midst of the crude and sombre compositions of Puritan verse-makers, there arose one writer for whom in some measure the poetical gift may be claimed. This was Anne Bradstreet. In 1650 the first volume of her poems was published in London. The quality of her mind is shown in her prose, but it was as a poet that she found fame. In her verse, she is influenced by the devotional poems of John Donne; of the Puritan poet, George Wither; and the deeply spiritual poetry of the saintly George Herbert. The verse of these minor English poets who flourished in the time of James and Charles I -- the period of Anne Bradstreet's girlhood and early womanhood -- was characterized by an unusual and fantastic style of thought and diction. These men are sometimes called the "metaphysical poets," because of this artificial quality and on account of their grotesque conceits. The work of the "Tenth Muse" shows the influence of this taste for a strained and laborious ingenuity of expression. Her longer works are didactic; so filled with the eager purpose to instruct and edify that the natural Puritan scruples regarding a woman's practice of the literary art were in large degree forgotten. “The Four Elements” and “The Four Seasons” are in the form of dialogue, wherein the speakers individually maintain their claims to preeminence; these poems are mechanical and heavy compositions, but show a facility of phrase and rhythm quite new to the readers of colonial verse. “The Four Monarchies”, her most ambitious poem, is a rhyming chronicle based upon Sir Walter Raleigh's “History of the World”. When Anne Bradstreet's poems were published, in 1650, they were received with extravagant praise in America; and following her death, not a few of her admirers essayed to express their appreciation in flattering verse.

Her best known and most attractive poem is “Contemplations”. It was written late in her life and is properly described as "a genuine expression of poetic feeling in the presence of nature."

Michael Wigglesworth, 1631-1705.

While Mrs. Bradstreet's verse at its best exhibits the highest poetical accomplishment of seventeenth-century Puritanism in New England, there was one other Puritan versifier whose inspiration appealed yet more strongly to contemporary minds. This most popular of early American poets was Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, a minister and author of a tremendous and dismal epic. This masterpiece of Puritan theological belief is entitled “The Day of Doom”; it was published in 1662. This long and desolate composition is an imaginative account of the Last Judgment. The voice of the trumpet is heard summoning the living and the dead before the dreadful bar. Much of Wigglesworth's vision is too lurid to be described; such raw strength as he applied in painting the details of his fiery picture but intensifies the horror of it and increases our wonder that such conceptions could have prevailed.

THE FIRST HALF OF THE 18^th CENTURY. 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 the 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. He was a conspicuous man in the Massachusetts colony and became the Chief-justice of Massachusetts. 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 social life of colonial New England is most happily illustrated in Sewall's memoranda.