History of American Literature

brought with them their own language, books, and modes of thought. England had a world-famous literature before her sons established a permanent settlement across the Atlantic. Shakespeare

ndred years have elapsed since the first colonists came to America, he imme

favorable to the early development of a literature. Those who remained in England could not clear away the forest, till the soil, and conquer the Indians, but they could write the books and send them across the ocean. T

literature would be only a feeble imitation of these models, but a change finally came, as will be shown in later chapters. It is to be hope

Cultivated Englishmen to-day willingly admit that without a study of Cooper, Poe, and Hawthorne no one could give an adequate account of the landmarks of achievement in fiction, written in our common tongue. French critics have even gone so far as to canonize Poe. In a certain field he and Hawthorne occupy a unique place in the world's achievement. Again, men like Bret Harte and Mark Twain are not common in any literature. Foreigners have had American books translated into al

e varying problems and ideals of American life. Even more important than the changed ways of earning a living and the difference in climate, animals, and scenery were the strug

ds associated with our birthplace must mean more to us than more remarkable achievements of men born under other skies. Our literature, even in its humble be

by the London Company, an organization formed to secure profits from colonization. The colonists and the company that furnished their ship and outfit expected large profits from the gold mines and the p

on, an Elizabethan poet, wrote verses dedicated "To the Virginian Voyage

ve heroi

ur countr

or still

loit'ri

at home

nd s

*

erfully

you stil

he pearl

urs t

gin

only p

nts, kidnapped girls, even convicts, were sent to Jamestown and became the ancestors of some of the "poor white trash" of the South. After the execution of Charles I. in 1649, and the setting up of the Puritan Commonwealth,

Looking back at his achievement in Virginia, he wrote, "Then seeing we are not born for ourselves but each to help other ... Seeing honor is our lives' ambiti

, or pleasure. They were called Puritans because they wished to purify the Church of England from what seemed to them great abuses; and the purpose of these men in emigrating to America was to lay the foundations of a state

t took the eye a

h, from l

orld laid

to its mind, could

gdom unless they conformed to the rites of the Established Church. His son and successor Charles I. (reign, 1625-1649) called to his aid Archbishop Laud (1573-1645), a bigoted official of that church. Laud hunted the dissenting clergy like wild beasts, threw them into prison, whipped them in the pillory, branded them, slit their nostr

tion: JOH

mity, it was the vigilance and vigor and consecrated cruelty with which he scoured his own diocese and afterward all England, and hunted down and hunted ou

in that year they suddenly stopped coming. "During the one hundred and twenty-five years following that date, more persons, it is supposed, went back from the New to the Old England than came from the Old England to the New," says Pro

orn in the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603), and they and their descendants showed on

he suggested action. Some people merely dream. The Elizabethans dreamed glorious dreams, which they translated into action. They defeated the Spanis

ive, but also that they came because they possessed this characteristic in a greater degree than those who remained behind. It was easier for the majority to stay with their friends; hence England was not dep

lizabethans craved and obtained variety of experience, which kept the fountainhead of ingenuity filled. It is instructive to follow the lives of Elizabethans as different as Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain John Smith

to the desire born of the New Learning to live as varied and as complete a life as possible, and to the absence of overspecialization among individuals. This chance for varied experience with all sorts and conditions of men enabled Shakespeare to speak to all h

forget that the Cambridge University graduate, the cooper, cloth-maker, printer, and blacksmith had the initiative to set out for the New World, the ingenuity to deal wit

OHN SMITH

ation: J

s before the death of Elizabeth and thirty-seven before the death of Shakespeare. Smith was a man of Elizabethan stamp,-active, ingenious, imaginative, craving

ingle combat, was taken prisoner and enslaved by the Tartars, killed his inhuman master, escaped into Russia, went thence through Europe

f Virginia, written in 1608, the year in which John Milton was born. The last work written by Smith in America is entitled: A Map of Virginia, with a Descri

tious, all savage. Generally covetous of copper, beads, and such like trash. They are soon moved to anger, and so malicious that they seldom forget an injury: they seldom steal one from ano

ndians to provide food for the colony and to survey Virginia. After carefully editing Captain John Smith's Works in a volume of 983 pages, Professor Edwin Arber says: "For [our] own part, beginning with doubtfulness and

ace in colonial literature. He had the Elizabethan love of achievement, and he records his admiration for those whose 'pens writ what their swords did.' He

nd time from Indian treachery, of her bringing corn and preserving the colony from famine, of her visit to England in 1616, a few weeks after the death of Shakespeare, of her royal reception as a princess, the daughter of an Indian king, of Smith's meeting her again in London, where thei

e involved in its acceptance." But literature does not need to ask whether the story of Hamlet or of Pocahontas is true. If this unique story of American adventure is a product of Captain Smith's creative imagination, the literary critic must admit the captain's superior ability in producing a tale of such vitality. If the story is true, then our literature does well to remember whose pen made this truth one of

IVITY IN VIR

is is a story of shipwreck on the Bermudas and of escape in small boats. The book is memorable for the description of a storm at sea, and it is possible that it may even have furnished suggestions to Shakespeare for The Tempest. If so, it is interesting to compare these with what they produced in Shakespeare's mind

king's ship;

st, the deck,

ment: Sometime

any places; o

owsprit, would I

eet an

y tempests, devils, wicked spirits, and other fearful objects. Shake

is e

he devils

m suggestions for one of his great plays lends added interest to Strachey's True Repertory. But, aside from Shakespeare, this has an interest of its own.

tion: GEO

phoses, sometimes working by the light of a pine knot. This work is rescued from the class of mere translation by its literary art and imaginati

litch of bacon

in the smoky

n the new world, whereof it cannot but participate, especially having wars and tumults to bring it to light, instead

poem is an elegy on the death of Nathaniel Bacon (1676), a young Virginian patriot and military hero, who resisted the despotic governor, Sir William Berkeley. It was popularly believed tha

inia'

cret crimes, ju

s, dreading the

eath by Par

destr

hough ne'er

aid of his com

ered more t

State of Virginia. This is today a readable account of the colony and its people in the first part of the eighteenth century

ives, and there he may depend upon being received with hospitality. This good nature is so general among their people, that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal servant to entertain all visitors wit

tion: WIL

mmissioned by the Virginian colony to run a line between it and North Carolina. This book is a record of personal experienc

ng that has life. Not so much as a Zealand frog could endure so aguish a situation. It had one beauty, however, that delighted the eye, though at the expense of all the other senses: the moisture of the soil preserves a continual verdure, and makes every plant an evergreen, but at the same time the fo

any. Our chaplain for his part did his office and rubbed us up with a seasonable sermon. This was quite a new thing to

well have been written in London as in Virginia. They also show how much eighteenth-century prose had improved in form. Even in England, modern prose may almost be said to begin with John Dryden, who died at the beginning

more popular education, and more literature in New England. The ruling classes of Virginia were mostly descendants of the Cavaliers who had sympathized with monarchy, while the Puritans had fought the Stuart kings and had approved a Commonwealth. In Virginia a wealthy class of landed gentry came to be an i

n: EARLY PRI

irginia, wrote, "I thank God there are no free schools, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred

The plantations were large, and the people lived in far greater isolation than in New Engl

from the general working class, like Benjamin Franklin, to arise in the South. Labor was thought degrading, and t

d, from whom we have quoted in the preceding sectio

am sensible of many bad consequences of multiplying these Ethiopians amongst us. They blow up the pride and ruin the industry o

RADFORD,

n he gave up a good position in the post service of England, and crossed to Holland to escape religious persecution. His History of Plymouth Plantation is not a record of the Puritans as a whole, but only of that branch known a

th the discretion of a Washington and the zeal of a Cromwell. His History tells the story of the

E OF FIRST PARAGRAPH OF

H PLANT

called it The Log of the Mayflower, although after the ship finally cleared from England, only five incidents of the voyage are briefly mentioned: the death of a young seaman who cursed the Pilgrims on the voyage and made sport of their misery; the cracking of one of the main beams of the ship; the washing overboard in a storm of a good y

omes in beautiful Lincoln and York, wife separated from husband and mother from child in that hurried embarkation for Holland, pursued to the beach by English horsemen; the thirteen years of exile; the life at Amsterdam, 'in alley foul and lane obscure'; the dwelling at Leyden; the embarkation at Delfthaven; the farewell of Robinson; the terrible voyage across the Atlantic; the compact in the harbor; the landing on the rock; the dreadful first winter; the death roll

ish capturing the "lord of misrule" at Merrymount, and of the failure of an experiment in tilling the soil in common. Bradford says that there was immediate improv

d other ancients, applauded by some of later times;--that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a common wealth would make them happy and flourishing.... Let n

e subject matter of her early colonial prose in comp

THROP, 1

tion: JOH

ssachusetts Bay. This Journal was to continue until a few months before his death in 1649, and was in after times to receive the dignifi

the owner of broad estates. As he paced the deck of the Arbella, the night before he sailed for Massachusetts, he knew that he was leaving comfort, home

principal part of the time from his arrival in 1630 until his death in 1649, he served as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Co

m 1630 to 1648. The early part of this work might wit

E OF BEGINNING OF MS. O

F FACSIMILE OF WI

, MARCH 29, MONDA

28 pieces of ordnance, (the wind coming to the N. by W. the evening before,) in the morning there came aboard us Mr. Cradock, the late governor, and the m

Monday, April

and others, that were sick and lay groaning in the cabins, we fetched out, and having stretched a rope from the steerage to the main-mast, we made

cts an interesting side light on the govern

rdered by the governors of the college to be there whipped, which was performed by the president himself-yet they were about twenty years of age; and af

William Franklin, condemned for ca

ul correction, and exposed him many times to much cold and wet in the winter season, and used divers acts of rigour towards him, as hanging him in the chimney, etc., and the boy being very poor and weak, he tied him upon an horse and so brought him (sometimes sittin

ch to base their decision. The most noticeable qualities of this terrible story are its simplicity, its repression, its lack of striving after effect. Winthrop, Bradford, an

good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard, not only of your goods, but of your lives, if need be." Winthrop saw

nt a moral, like the selfish refusal of the authorities to loan a quantity of gunpowder to the Plymouth colony and the subsequent destruction of that same powder by an explosion, or the drowning of a child in the well while the parents were visiting on Sunday. In short, this Journal gives valuable information about

LIGIOU

e reign of Elizabeth, it was thought that the Revival of Learning would cure all ills and unlock the gates of happiness. This hope had met with disappointment. Then Puritanism came, a

tant matter, and they neglected whatever form of culture did not directly tend toward that result. They thought that entertaining reading and other forms of amusement were contrivances of the devil to turn

d the importance of the individual, of life's continuous moral struggle, which would land each soul in heaven or hell for a

ETTER "A" IN NEW

dam's

nned

sand to one." On the physical side, scientists have pointed out a close correspondence between Calvin's creed and the theory of evolution, which emphasizes the desperate struggle resulting from the survival of the fittest. The "fittest" are the "

his soul. A firm belief in this tremendous responsibility made each one rise the stronger to meet the other responsibilities of life. Civil re

gland, the strength and direction of their religious ideals helped to turn their energy into activities outside the field of

ngland. For the purpose in hand the world has never seen superior leaders. Many of them were graduates of Cambridge University, England. Their great authority was based on character, education, and natural ability. A con

ing and they enjoyed it as a mental exercise. Their minds had not been rendered flabby by such a diet of miscellaneous trash or sensational matter as confronts modern readers. Many

et it stand still, it breeds frogs and toads and all ma

1639 relates how the Rev. John Cotton discussed whether a certain shopkeeper, who had been arraigned before the court for extortion, for having taken "in some small things, above two for o

h a privilege might lead to a return of the persecution from which they had fled. If those came who thought differently about religion, they were told that there was sufficient room elsewhere, in Rhode Island, for instance, whither Roger Williams went after he was banished from Salem. The history of the Puritan clergy would have been more pleasing had they been more tolerant, less narrow, more modern, like Roger Williams. Yet perhaps it is best not to complain overmuch of the str

ET

t an exercise which turned the mind from God. The Rev. John Cotton investigated the question carefully under four main heads and six subheads, and he cited scri

IMILE OF TITLE-PAGE

in existence. In their preface to this work, known as the Bay Psalm Book (1640), the first book of verse printed in the British American colonies, they explained that they did not strive for

ivers on

n wee did

hen wee mo

membre

ps wee did

e willo

there they

capti

of us a s

: us waste

mong a Si

then the

ic theology. This poem, entitled The Day of Doom, or a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment, had the largest circulation of any colo

ut he ate o

it was in

all of h

hment's i

e sin that

is his

sent, which

had the

resents the Almi

rs are, and

ers may

all have, f

mine ow

are your si

d a long

ss yours i

ery sin's

t is, there

not hope

you I s

st room i

has a swing and a directness fitted to catch the popular ear and to lodge in the memory. While some of his work seems humorous to us, it would not have made that impression on the early Puritans. At the same time, we must not rely on verse like this for our understanding of their outlook on life and death. Beside Wigglesworth's lines we should place t

hat Milton called the "fantastics," a school of poets who mistook for manifestations of poetic power, far-fetched and strained metaphors, oddities of expression, remote comparisons, conceits, and strange groupings of thought. She had especially studied Sylvester's paraphrase of The Divine Weeks and Works of the French poet Du Bartas, and probably also the works of poets like George Herbert (1593-1633), of the English f

hat fain would

own, some of

eon, and with h

balls, doth li

ort seemed the

this Gulf with

gh praise when he called her "a right Du Bartas girl." One of her

did c

trongest, noble

test use and mi

the fantastic school of poets because it afforded an opportunity for much

red by imitation of the fantastic school. Spenser seems to have become her master in

merry grassho

cricket bear

ne, and played o

lory in thei

w both poetic e

hat on smooth

and steers his

command of

e great maste

an atmosphere and amid the domestic cares inc

L WARD,

ACSIMILE OF TITL

OBBLER OF

e upper leather and sole, with all the honest stitches he can take." He had been assistant pastor at Agawam (Ipswich) until ill health caused him to resign. He then busied himself in compiling a code of laws and in other writing before he returned to England in 1647. The foll

fish in roiled waters. Though that dragon cannot sting the vitals of the el

a sort of colonial Carlyle, a

ill allow, I can afford with London measure: but when I hear a nugiperous gentledame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week: what the nudiustertian fashion of the Court; I mean the very newest; with egg to be in it in

us to "nugiperous" and "nudiustertian." Next, he calls the women's tailor-ma

of departure from religious truth; (2) banish the frivolities of women and men; and (3) bring the civil war in England to a just end. In propor

erves to be remembered

ift wherein b

l that doth not

EWALL, 1

when he was nine years old, and who became our greatest colonial diarist. This was Samuel

tion: SAM

failing makes the majority of diaries and memoirs very dry, but this fault cannot be found with Samuel Sewall. His Diary will more and more prove a mine of wealth to the future writers of our literature, to our dramatists, novelists,

ose to life. The following entry brings us face

r his playing at Prayer-time, and eating when Return Thanks, I whipped him pretty smartly. When I first went in (called by his Grandmothe

s terrible delusion had passed, he had the manliness to rise in church before all the members, and after acknowledging

cord of any other Puritan courtship so unique as this has been given to the world. He began his formal courtship of Mrs. Winthrop, October 1, 1720. His Diary contains records of each visit, of what they said

n Monday. She seem'd pleas'd with them, ask'd what they cost. Spake of giving her a hundred poun

o the cradle was between her arm'd chair and mine. Gave her the remnant of my almonds. She did not eat of them as before.... The fire was come to one short brand besides the blo

is aversion to slavery and to his refusal to allow her to keep her slaves. This episode is only a small part of a rich storehouse. The greater par

ATHER, 1

tion: COT

ntered Harvard at the age of eleven, and took the bachelor's degree at fifteen. His life shows such an overemphasis of certain Puritan traits as almost to presage the coming decline of clerical influence. He says that at the age of only seven or eigh

BE SHORT," to greet the eyes of visitors. The amount of writing which he did almost baffles belief. His published works, numbering

lications of religious truth. A tall man suggested to him high attainmen

w England back in religious matters to the first halcyon days of the colony. On the contrary, he lived to see Puritan theocracy suffer a great decline. His fantastic and strained applicatio

ts of kindness for other children. His Essays to Do Good were a powerful influence on the life of Benjamin Franklin. Cotton Mather would not have lived in vain if he had don

works, is a large folio volume entitled Magnalia Christi Americana: or the Ecclesiastical

ntains a rich store of biography of the early clergy, magistrates, and governors, of the lives of eleven of the clerical graduates of Harvard, of the faith, discipli

the Magnalia for vivid

a way of selecting and

lodge in the memory. T

mpression of the influen

here he did use to lodge

his companions, that he

for he was not able to

his ro

the evening before, fo

evening he wrote argum

ose 'twas from his reas

England have gener

dog, as he pleased.'" Some of Mather's prose causes modern readers to wonder if he was not a humorist. He says that a fire in the college buildings in some mysterious way influenced the President of Harvard to shorten one of his long prayers, and gravely adds, "that if the devotions had held three minutes longer, the Colledge had been irrecoverably laid in ashes." One does not feel sure that Mather saw the humor in this de

nor writers still indulge in these conceits, and find willing readers among the uneducated, the tired, and those who are bored when they are required t

rrowe

orn mig

ton Mather's son, Samuel, noted as a blemish his father's "straining for far-fetched and dear-bought hints." Cotton Mather's most repellent habit to mod

t the Magnalia, it is a vigorous presentation of much that we should not willingly let die. In fact, when we read the early his

EDWARDS,

to college, he wrote a paper on spiders, showing careful scientific observation and argument. This paper has been called "one of the rarest specimens of precocious scientific genius on record." At fourteen, he read Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, receivi

g of her, he wrote this prose hymn of

at she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on Him, that she expects after a while to be received up where He is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven, being assured that He loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from Him alw

EMORIAL TABLET T

ch, Northam

laces before us Sarah P

the similarity of though

et us turn to the maid

iveried angel

f each thing o

dream and s

ngs that no gro

erse with hea

a beam on th

ted temple

degrees to the

be made i

h in Northampton, Massachusetts. With the aid of his wife, he inaugurated the greatest religious revival of the century, known as th

rmed a series of resoluti

ll my might, wh

other, I should count a just occasion to despise hi

o act as if I were any way my own,

. After a successful pastorate of twenty-three years at No

that he wrote his books on the backs of letters and on the blank margins cut from newspapers. His fame was not swallowed up in the wilderness. Princeton College called him to its presidency in 1757. He died in that office in 1758, after less than three months' service in his new position. His wife was still i

fifty years before placed on its walls a bronze tablet in

's greatest metaphysician, (2) her greatest theologian, and (3) a unique

that it is "repugnant to reason that one act of the will should come into existence without a cause." He boldly says that God is free to do only what is ri

eld. Unfortunately, he did not rise superior to the Puritan custom of preaching about hell fire. He delivered on that subject a sermon which causes modern readers to shudder; but this, although the most often quoted, is the least typical of the man and his writings. Those in search of really typical statements of his

Spirit's pl

e dull dense worl

sions to the f

ublished, writings, says, "He was at his best and greatest, most original and creative, when he described

grant rose and lily, we

ields and singing of bir

ignity. The easiness and

s of His beauty

Sharon and the Lily of the valleys," and

TERATURE O

tbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754 are: (1) JOHN MILTON (1608-1674), the

eir just hands on that golden key

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700), a master in the field of satiric and didactic verse and one of the pioneers in the field of modern prose criticism; (4) ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744), another poet of the satiric and didactic school, who exalted form above matter, and wrote polished couplets which have been models for so many inferior poets; (5) the essayists, RICHARD STEELE (1672-1729) and JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719),

influence of contemporary English authors appeared in American literature. In the next chapter, we shall see evidences of the influence of Pope. Benj

HISTORIC

Although these colonies were established under different grants or charters, and although some had more liberty and suffered less from the interference of England than others, it is nevertheless tr

stocratic; that of Massachusetts, theocratic. Virginia persecuted the Puritans. The early settlers of Massachusetts drove out Roger Williams and hanged Quakers. New York persecuted

this colony because Washington Irving (p. 112) has invested it with a halo of romance. He shows us the sturdy Knickerbockers, the Van Cortlands, the Van Dycks, the Van Wycks, and other chivalrous Dutch burghers, sitting in perfect silen

nd agriculture. At the South, agriculture was the chief occupation and tobacco and rice were the two leading staples. These were produced principally by the l

religious matters, or witchcraft were sometimes sources of disturbance. All knew the hard labor and the privations involved in subduing the wilderness and making permanent settle

ur hundred thousand. The middle colonies began the eighteenth century with about fifty-nine thousand and grew by the middle of the century to about three hundred and fifty-five thousand. During the same period, the southern group increa

untry, from the Gulf into Canada. One other result followed. The colonies began to seem valuable to England because they furnished a market for English manufactures and a carrying trade for English ships. The previous comparative insignificance of

MM

eare had written, and before 1620 the King James version of the Bible had been produced. England had, therefore, a wonderful literature before her colonies came to America.

ved more by agriculture, were more widely scattered, had fewer schools, more slaves, and less town life than the New Englanders. Unde

n of writers; (2) William Strachey, who outranks contemporary colonial writers in describing the wrath of the sea, and who may even have furnished a suggestion to Shakespeare for The Tempest; (3) two poet

poetic exposition of Calvinistic theology, (c) Anne Bradstreet, who wrote a small amount of genuine poetry, after she had passed from the influence of the "fantastic" school of poets; (4) Nathaniel Ward, the author of The Simple Cobbler of Agawam, an attempt to mend human ways; (5) Samuel Sewall, New England's greatest colonial diarist; (6) Cotton Mather, the most famous clerical writer, whose Magnalia is a compound of early coloni

eem too inflexibly stern, too little illumined by the spirit of love, too much darkened by the shadow of eternal punishment, but unless that religion had communicated something of its own

to follow the shining path of the Eternal over the wave and through the forest to a new temple of human liberty. Their aspiration, endeavor, suffering, accomplishmen

S FOR FUR

TOR

heney's Short History of England, read the chapters dealing with the time of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., the Commonwealth, Charles II., J

earliest times to the outbreak of the Fren

he Colonists

s Colon

tory of the English

e English

tials in Ame

ents' History of

History of the Unit

nford's Amer

ial colonies, consult

ths series

New England, The Dutch

Virginia and

TE

rican Literature during

ican Verse,

American Lite

of American Lite

ory of Literat

arly Virginia,

ymouth Plantation. New e

bner,

story of New England").

ols., (Scri

el Sewall and the

Pepys" (Sewall) in

ne Bradstreet

's John

s Thoma

Life of Co

e of Jonath

athan Edwards,

TED RE

be referred to either by the last name of the author, or, if the

Early American Writers,

onial Prose and Poetr

owe

rary of American Literature, 1

can Prose Selecti

s: Selections in Prose

ctions indicated for eac

nings of Jamestown (f

igious Observances of th

1612), Cairns, pp. 2-

neral History of Virgin

T. & W., Vol.

A True Repertory of the Wrack and Redemp

, see pp. 51-58 in Vol. I. of Tyler's A History

th of Nathaniel Bacon, s

II., 166-169; S. & H., I

A.-The best selection f

a may be found in T. & W

; S. & H., I

ng Line, see Cairns, passim, 259-272; Trent, 19-

Voyage of the Mayflowe

grim Fathers, T. & W.,

, I., 46-49; The Landing

Plymouth, S. &

ive entries from his Jo

rns, 44-48, and fourteen

ound in T. & W., I., 106-116; in S. &

.-The selection in the

ok is su

f Doom, see Cairns, 166-

passim, I

ons, may be found in Cairns, 154-162; T.

in Cairns, 113-118, and T. & W., I., 253-259. For the satiric essay on wome

for "the blame and shame of it" may be found in T. & W., II., 294-296. The record of his courtship of Madam Winthrop is given in Cairns, 24

he interesting story of the New England argonaut, Sir William Phips, may be found in T. & W., II., 257-266

W., III., 148, 149; S. & H., II., 374; and Carpenter, 16, 17, beginning, "I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the valleys." S

S AND SU

How does his account of the Indians (p. 18 of this text) compare with modern accounts? Is he apparently a novice, o

re's Tempest. In what part of this Act and under what ci

of Squanto, the Pilgrims' tame Indian. Winthrop's Journal contains many specimens of brief narrative, such as the story of the voyage across the Atlantic from March 29 to June 14, 1630; of Winthrop's losing himself in the wood, October 11, 1631; of shipwreck on the Isle of Shoal

40 is superior to the work of these three men? Why is it especially important for Americans to k

prose writer of the nineteenth century i

t be reasonably expected

me of the Calvinisti

Doom? Choose the best

ial p

f a good diarist? Which of these do y

mpare his narrative of Captain Phips with the work of Smith, Bradford,

n Wigglesworth's Day of Doom. Why may this selection from Edwards be called a "p