tocracy and power he added personally scholarly attainments, a surpassing diligence in study and in work, an absorbing religious fervor and a domineering spirit that was often more militant than Christian; these qualities placed him and held him in a position where he was easily both in religious and in civil life one of the most notable figures and most influential personages in the Boston of his generation. Mather published during his life nearly 400 works. Of these the most important was the Magnalia Christi Americana which was written in the latter part of the century but was not published until 1702. It is an ecclesiastical history of New England from 1620 to 1698 and is a fountain of information concerning the lives and thoughts of the people of that century. Another notable work of Mather's was Wonders of the Invisible World, in which is given a detailed account of the Salem witchcraft outbreak. He was also versed in science and left an unpublished treatise on medicine and an unpublished commentary on the Bible, Biblia Americana.

In 1640 the Bay Psalm Book was produced under the supervision of Richard Mather, Thomas Welch and John Eliot, a metrical version of the psalms that, judged from the poetical point of view, did not rise above the level of mere doggerel, although it became a famous book in England as well as in America. Nor was Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom, or A

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Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment (1622) worthy of higher commendation. In the verses of Mrs. Anna Bradstreet, a sister of the famous Joseph Dudley, governor of Massachusetts and chief justice of New York, there was an approach to genuine poetic quality. Her Several Poems Compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of Delight (1622) was the nearest approach to poetry that the century offered in America, save the translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by George Sandys in Virginia. And we must not overlook the gracious Chief Justice Samuel Sewall whose Diary, kept from 1673 to 1729, linked the two centuries and has won for him in later time the title of the New England Pepys. Sewall was one of the justices who presided at the witchcraft trials in Salem, and for that offence he afterward openly confessed remorse. He wrote one of the first protests against African slavery in the tract The Selling of Joseph (1700), and a mystical work, Phenomena Quaedam Apocalyptica.

During the first half of the next century there was evidence of a growing change in the intellectual activity of New England. The purely religious topic, while yet in the ascendancy, was gradually giving away to political, civic, and miscellaneous subjects. And also in the middle colonies, writers were heard here and there who challenged the literary supremacy of Boston. The

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power of the Mather theocracy had well-nigh departed, and the most important religious writing of the period was that of Jonathan Edwards, whose sermons - Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God (1741), Men Naturally God's Enemies, The Final Judgment, and others, with his great metaphysical treatise Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will (1754) -were powerful expositions of a severe Calvinistic theology.

Contemporary with Edwards was Benjamin Franklin, who, although not a great writer, was really the first man of letters that the colonies had produced, as he was also the first to receive recognition as such. His most popular writings were his Autobiography and Poor Richard's Almanac. The former belongs to the Revolutionary period, having been begun in 1771. The latter was first issued in 1732 and was continued for 25 years, having an annual circulation of ten thousand. Also from Philadelphia in this period were George Webb's poem Bachelor's Hall, and James Logan's Cato's Moral Distichs Englished in Couplets, now scarcely remembered by antiquarians.

Literary composition among the Dutch in New Netherland was confined closely to public papers and descriptive accounts of the country. Among such productions were the Remonstrance of New Netherland, sent to the States-General of the United Netherlands, written

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Adriaen Van der Donck for the Board of Nine Men; Cornelis Van Tienhoven's Information in Regard to Taking up Land in New Netherland; Adriaen Van der Donck's Description of New Netherland; Martin Cregier's Journal of the Esopus War and Nicacius De Sille's History of the First Beginning of New Utrecht. Three poets there were. Jacob Steendam wrote a Complaint of New Amsterdam (1659), to move Holland to more active interest in the province; and the Praise of New Netherland (1661) and Spurring Verses (1662). Nicacius De Sille wrote into his town records of New Utrecht three short poems. Dominie Henricks Selyn composed, some in Latin and some in Greek, about two hundred poems, including a long effort in verse on the Esopus wars with the Indians.

In 1638, Stephen Daye, an apprentice printer of London, arrived in Boston with a printing press and type and at once set up a printing office in Cambridge under the control of Harvard College. This was the first press in any of the American colonies and it achieved distinction for the good character of its work as well as by reason of its priority. In 1641 Daye brought out the third product of his press, The Whole Booke of Psalms Faithfully Translated into English Metre; the celebrated Bay Psalm Book, as it is best known, the first book printed in America and the first product of