Who may have been the writer of the document I have not discovered, and apparently no clue is to be found. Nicholas Gilman, whose name stands first in the list of members, left a diary from which extracts are printed in Arthur Gilman's Gilman Family, but such items as are there printed refer in no way to this society, and do not lead one to expect that a more careful examination of the diary, which is still unpublished and in private ownership, would reveal anything further. Of the members whose names are given at the bottom of the paper, arranged in the order of their classes (1724-1728), all are found in the Quinquennial Catalogue except Vaughan in the group from the Class of 1727. This is just too early to be identified from the Faculty Records in which the names of freshmen are given with some fullness, beginning with the Class of 1729. The name is included without initials in the list given by Mr. Matthews, where it appears as of the Class of 1726 and with the indication that he died while in College.1 Mr. Matthews tells me that he has been unsuccessful in his efforts to identify Vaughan, but has found two allusions to him, one of which shows why he was in the list assigned to the Class of 1726, while the other describes his death and funeral. The first extract, dated October 2, 1725, is from the Faculty Records: Vaughan, Junior Sophister, having petition'd yt a year might be given him in his college standing, The President & Fellows having considered his age, viz. 23 years, and yt his Learning may admit of such a favour; but principally from the discouragements he is under from his Father's Aversion to an Academical Education, together with ye straitness of his circumstances, & difficulties of supporting himself here a longer time, do grant his Request (i. 9). The second extract, not dated, but between entries of December 14, 1725, and January 28, 1726, is from President Wadsworth's Diary: Vaughan a Senior Sophister, having been some time sick at m* Stedman's in Cambridge, died Jan. 10. 1725/6. and on ye twelf of ye same Month he was buried. when the second Bell toll'd (or thereabouts) his corps was brought into ye College Hall, ye scholars, and other Gentlemen who attended the Funeral, went into ye Hall, when the corps was 1 Our Publications, xvii. 275, 284. carried forth, all ye Undergraduates, ye Juniors walking first, went in order before yo corps to yo Grave. The President, Fellows, and other Graduates, with Inhabitants of yo Town who attended yo Funeral, went in order after ye Mourners to ye Grave. This Vaughan came from Newport in Rhode Island. The Lord sanctify this Providence, to all y scholars (pp. 23-24). The names of the members of the society follow in alphabetical order, with the Class to which each belonged. All but Lewis and Wood received the degree of A.M. Of the twenty-six members, fifteen became clergymen, namely: Allis, Balch, Bowman, Bradstreet, Cabot, Cutter, Gilman, Hall, Jewett, Parker, Prentice, both Smiths, Warren, and Webb. Samuel Allis 1724 Ammi Ruhamah Cutter 1725 David Hall 1724 Edward Hunting 1725 Joseph Lewis 1724 Vaughan 1726 Mr. JOHN WOODBURY exhibited a copy of An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times, written by the Rev. John Brown (1715-1766),1 with numerous annotations in the handwriting of Thomas Hollis (1720-1774), "Benefactor of Harvard College, and distinguished friend of civil liberty." The pamphlet contains a severe criticism of the effeminacy in social life and venality in politics in England as the author saw them in the middle of the eighteenth century. The book had perhaps been sent by Hollis to the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, and contains many comments on the margins in Hollis's 1 A sketch of Brown will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. The book was originally published in 1757 and went through several editions. own hand. Mr. Woodbury spoke of Hollis and his career, and his industry in spreading the doctrines of civil liberty, chiefly by sending books containing these doctrines to the libraries of universities all over the world.1 Mr. ALFRED JOHNSON spoke at length on "Maine as a Massachusetts Frontier, and some of its early Forts,' and illustrated his subject with lantern slides of maps, plans, and views. Mr. ALBERT MATTHEWS Communicated the following paper, written by Dr. Roger P. McCutcheon of Denison University, Granville, Ohio: THE OBSERVATOR AND INCREASE MATHER A NOTE ON SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BOOK-REVIEWING A minor incident concerning Increase Mather was thus noted in 1725: About this time [1684] some wicked Men circumvented Letters of Mr. Mather's writing to a worthy Person at Amsterdam, which contain'd nothing that could give Offence to the Higher Powers. These Letters enabled them to imitate his Hand, in subscribing of his Name. They forg'd a Letter full of impertinent, as well as treasonable Expressions, whereof not one Sentence was his; and with a Date, Boston, 10 m. 3 d. 1683. they subscribed his Name to it. Sir Roger L'Estrange did, in several of his Observators, publish some Scraps of the forged letter, with his Comments. Copies of it were Carried to Barbadoes and the Caribbee Islands, and were made part of the Entertainment, whilst the chearful Bowl was employ'd to drown their Thoughts.2 1 Mr. Woodbury has given the volume to the Harvard College Library. 2 Memoirs of the Life of the late Reverend Increase Mather, With a Preface by the Reverend Edmund Calamy, D.D., London, 1725, pp. 35–36. Cf. C. Mather, Parentator, Boston, 1724, pp. 93-96. The forged letter itself is printed in full in the Mather Papers (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 104-107) and in the New England Historical and General Register, xxxix. 23-25. An abstract appears in the Calendar of State Papers, America & W. Indies, 1685-1688, no. 1915, pp. 613-615. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Albert Matthews for several of these and later references. While the incident itself has been thoroughly studied,' L'Estrange's treatment of the forged letter as a sample of contemporary practices in book-reviewing may be deserving of a brief comment. The modern reader discovers certain noteworthy differences between L'Estrange's work and that of the present day. Among these are a large use of quotation, a careless attitude to facts, a certain unscrupulousness in attack, the dialogue form, and the continuation of the "review" over several numbers. The method L'Estrange uses is that of the expositor, who quotes a passage of the text under consideration, and then comments extensively on it, for the instruction of his hearers. "The Observator Preaches upon a New-England-Text" reads a headline from one of the issues in which Mather's supposed letter is discussed. After a brief introduction, the passage reads: "In the First Epistle of Mr Mather, Minister of the Second Church in Boston, in New-England; to Mr Gouge, Minister of the English Congregation at Amsterdam, fol. 3. You will find these Words."2 A sentence from the forged letter then follows, and is expounded at length. Always, the expositor is unfriendly. For a generation this method of quoting your adversary, then killing him by comments, had found favor with the English journalists. One remembers the bickerings between Mercurius Aulicus and Mercurius Britanicus, the royalist and parliamentary news-books of the period of the Civil War. John Taylor, the water-poet, even reprinted one entire issue of Britanicus, in order to ridicule it more thoroughly. By means of the actual quotations from the forged letter in the four issues of the Observator which consider it, one could reconstruct a considerable amount of the letter. Although this method of extensive quotation and abstract seems unusual to us, it was even then being used in the Transactions of the Royal Society to introduce English readers to books of real merit. It is the method used in the first English journal of books, the Weekly Memorials for the Ingenious, which had begun in 1682. In the regular book-journals, of course, the comments are almost 1 See the Mather Papers, pp. 407-11; Palfrey, History of New England, iii 556-558; and allusions in Robert N. Toppan's Edward Randolph (Prince Society). * Observator, no. 176, Monday, December 1, 1684. In his Mercurius Aquaticus, 1643. entirely lacking, as would be expected from the obvious difference in purpose. The modern reader is also impressed with a certain careless attitude toward truth. No present-day editor of a journal of opinion, even of one so obviously partizan as the Observator, would print extensive comments from a correspondence without some investigation as to its authenticity. In this connection L'Estrange's opinion of news-books may be quoted; oddly enough, it comes from the first issue of the Intelligencer, of which he had been editor: "A Publick Mercury should never have my Vote, because I think it makes the Multitude too Familiar with the Actions, and Counsels of their Superiors."1 Now while L'Estrange had been in charge of the official newspapers he had shown enough regard for truth to correct misstatements.2 But the Observator was not a newspaper, it was a journal of opinion; moreover, the time of the Popish Plot (the circumstance which really had called the Observator into existence) abounded in statements which were most unsubstantially based. They were days when the journalists went back for their models to the Civil War period. When a parliamentary journalist was accused of adding a cipher or two to the mortality statistics of some battle, he admitted that "we have Presses here can spell a victory short, or over, as well as you."3 "The Common News-Papers are Partial, and Factious," L'Estrange wrote for a headline to the Observator of May 28, 1683; yet his own journal can scarcely be called impartial. L'Estrange is also following the orthodox tradition in the sharpness of his attack. His tone seems to us needlessly virulent. In a time of turbulent shouting, he outdoes his contemporaries only by sheer vocal strength, not by any essential difference in vocabulary. Certainly to his adversaries he did not seem unusually venomous. On the contrary, he won their respect. One of his chief disputants, Henry Care, editor of the rival paper, the Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, pays him a somewhat left-handed compliment, but a fairly earned one. Care thought he had found an Observator written 1 Intelligencer, no. 1, August 31, 1663. 2 E.g., see the Intelligencer, no. 23, March 21, 1663-4, p. 192. Mercurius Britanicus, no. 49, August 26-September 2, 1644, p. 387. |