An index to the First and Second Series of the Repository, extending from 1831 to 1844, was prepared and published by Dr. Agnew. The present index embraces the Second Series of the Bibliotheca Sacra, from 1844 to 1856, and the American Biblical Repository since the Union of the two in 1851. Books are generally designated by their short and popular titles, and not by the words of the title-page; and foreign titles are mostly translated. Both the index of subjects and authors, and the topical index, abound in bibliographical analysis and information.

4. AN INDEX TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE, by WM. FRED. POOLE, A.M., Librarian to the Boston Mercantile Library Association. "Qui scit ubi sit scientia, habenti est proximus." New York: Charles B. Norton, 71, Chambers Street, 1853. Royal 8vo. Fly-title, pp. i.—x., containing title-page, preface, and two pages of abbreviations; pp. 1–521, and leaf of errata.

Mr. Poole makes use of the American reprints of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and North British Reviews, which do not correspond with the paging of the originals. Otherwise the work is well suited for reference, and is most carefully compiled, and the heads, Authors, Books, and Literature, need only be referred to, to show how valuable this volume is to the student of literary history.

CONTRIBUTIONS

TOWARDS A

HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.

FIRST COLONIAL PERIOD.

THE historian of a Nation's Literature owes it both to justice and to policy to describe the earliest literary productions of the country whose mental creations are his subject. They are landmarks, valuable as indicating subsequent improvement, and although often crude and inelegant, are by no means to be slighted or disregarded. The first attempts at literature in America were the offspring of English colonial times, the study of letters having received the attention of some of the leading men among the earlier British settlers on the American continent. This is the more remarkable, from the fact that they wrote in times of trial and danger, when, instead of quiet and peace, so desirable to the man of letters, the writer was disturbed by the warcry of the savage and the alarm of his neighbours.

Among the stern, unflinching spirits who, with Captain John Smith, braved the pestilential swamps and wily Indians of Virginia, there were those who were not only "diggers up of trees' roots," as the famous admiral forcibly expressed himself, but lovers of literature. The most prominent of these was George Sandys, who deserves honourable mention for having penned the first American literary production of any note. He translated Ovid's Metamorphoses on the banks of James' River anterior to the year 1626, and so creditable was this performance that it was published in folio, in London, in the year named, with a Dedication to Charles the First. The work gained for its author the respect of Dryden, who pronounced Sandys the best versifier of his age, and Pope spoke in commendation of his verses in the Notes to the Iliad.

From the character left us of the early English settlers in America, it is manifest a love of letters was not confined to any particular colony. The Puritans carried the taste with them, as did the Virginia pioneers, and their literary productions, like their colony, took a far more lasting root than did those of their

more Southern brethren. As might have been expected, the first writings of New Englanders were mostly of a religious character, consisting of sermons, moral essays, and polemic controversies. None of these, however, appear to have been printed in the Colonies, although several were published in London. This was owing to the non-existence of a printing-office in any of the provinces until 1639, in which year printing was first practised in that part of the North American continent, extending from the Mexican Gulf to the Arctic Ocean.

Not a few of the settlers, North and South, have left journals, records, letters, and biographies, which, if they do not belong strictly to American literature, are not to be repudiated as worthless; for they are among the foundation-stones of a fabric whose capitals and crowning pinnacles may yet be among the richest trophies of the English language.

It is curious that the first book written, and the first book printed, in what is now the United States, were in verse-the one being Sandys' Translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the other the Bay Psalm Book - works widely different in character, and yet somewhat prophetic of the poetical taste of the future nation to whose early literary contributions they belong.

The failure of the attempts to colonize Virginia, gave to the successful settlers of New England, and particularly to those of the province of Massachusetts Bay, the honour of laying the foundation of American literature, as well as that of American Independence. From 1620, when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, until the establishment of a press at Cambridge, near Boston, quite a large number of tracts and pamphlets were written in the colony. These, as before remarked, were mostly of a religious character, strongly impregnated with the peculiar views of the Puritans; and they form the ground-work of much that is valuable in American theological literature. As a natural result, relief from the heat of religious controversy and sectarian bitterness, was sought in light literature and verse by many of the writers of the period. Among those who excelled as crude versifiers, it is fair to mention William Vaughan, Wm. Morrell, Wm. Wood, Captain John Smith, Roger Williams, and Governor Winthrop. The specimens of their rhymes which have descended to us, indicate a very low order of imagination, and none of them, with the exception of a few quaint and rather humorous verses by Captain John Smith, entitled the Sea Marke, rise to the level of the general run of school-boy poetry in our day. Still, dull as these productions are, they supply us in some degree with an inner view of the times, and probably indicate more accurately than any other records, the intellectual amusements of the settlers. Where a partiality for poetry prevails, it is fair to infer the existence of a certain amount of refinement; and as the rythmical writings of these early New Englanders met with applause, the fact is also an evidence of a desire among the people for a description of reading not exclusively religious-a literature at once harmless and moral, to cheer and amuse the mind.

Much inconvenience resulted to both authors and readers in the colonies from the want of a printing establishment, and this early impressed itself upon the leading men of the country. To supply it was the next step, after the institution of an academy for classical learning; and this was done in the autumn of 1638, by the Rev. Mr. Glover, a nonconformist minister, at a period

more than forty years before printing was executed "in any other part of what, before the Revolution, was called British America." Stephen Daye, a native of London, was the first person who printed in New England, his earliest work being a sheet called the Freeman's Oath, issued from the press of Mr. Glover, in January, 1639. The work exhibits great want of skill and practical knowledge on the part of the printer.

The first book printed in the United States was the Bay Psalm Book. It was executed by Daye, in 1640, and was soon after reprinted in England, where it passed through seventeen editions, the last bearing date 1754; from which it appears to have enjoyed a popularity in the mother country of 114 years' duration. It was for many years a standard authority in Scotland, in which country twenty-two editions were published, the last of which is dated 1759, It enjoyed a more lasting popularity than any American work since, having passed through seventy editions in all, which is remarkable, considering the period in which it flourished.

This book was not strictly original, and is devoid of literary merit. The first original work published in New England was a volume of poems, by Mrs. Anne Bradstreet. It was printed at Cambridge, Mass., in 1640, and was not only popular with the colonists, but was republished in London, in 1650, where, according to Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton, its memory was "not wholly extinct” in 1674. So far, however, as our opportunities of judging of this work extend, it is deficient in merit, although candour must award it some praise. Most of the pieces are insipid, none of them entirely elegant, and but few of them above mediocrity. They are blemished with a straining after historical, biblical, and scientific similes, which are mostly unnatural and laboured. Still, defective as are Mrs. Bradstreet's effusions, she was among the first American writers, and as such deserves to be remembered. Her rythm is far from defective, her language chaste, and her ideas neither altogether puerile nor insipid.

From 1640 until 1661, about twenty different books and pamphlets were printed at Cambridge. The majority of these were of a religious character, and generally inculcated the peculiar views of the Puritans. In fact, the colonial press seems to have been mainly used by religious writers, and so early as 1653, mention is made of an original work, the production of which is strong proof of the literary ability of its author. This was a Catechism in the Indian language, by John Eliot, the famous Apostle to the Indians. It was printed at the expense of the corporation in England for the Propagation of the Gospel among the New England tribes, and appears to have been useful, for we observe a second edition of a thousand copies was printed in 1661. Eliot was a laborious and pains-taking writer. In addition to this Catechism he published an Indian version of the Psalms in 1659, which subsequently passed through three or four editions; and in 1661, he completed and published his translation of the New Testament into the Indian tongue, which was followed in 1663 by the publication in quarto, with marginal notes, of his translation into the same language of both the Old and the New Testament combined. This was the first Bible printed in America. A second edition, of 2000 copies, was printed in 1685. The second American Bible was in German. It was printed and published at Germantown, Penna, by Christian (or Chris

topher) Sauer, in 1743. It is said that the first American Bible in English was surreptitiously printed at Boston by Kneeland and Green, in 1752, with the London imprint, but there are doubts about this, as no copy of it can now be found. The first acknowledged American edition of the English Bible was published by R. Aitken, at Philadelphia, in 1782.

In 1664, Eliot translated into Indian, Baxter's Call to the Unconverted,— one thousand copies of which were printed,—and in 1666, published an Indian Grammar in quarto at Cambridge, New England, which was printed there by Marmaduke Johnson.

Some copies of his New Testament were dedicated to Charles the Second, by whom the work was favourably received. Its popularity, however, did not depend upon the King, nor was it extensively known in England. It had a good circulation in the colony, from all we can learn, and the number printed of the various editions exceeded three thousand copies! But few of these exist, and they are more valuable as typographical and historical curiosities than for purposes of practical usefulness. Time and the progressive increase of the Anglo-Saxon race and tongue in America have given them the character of sealed books in the strictest sense of the term, for the language in which they are written is literally "dead," the tribe, and all who had a knowledge of it, being long extinct.

These works were a legitimate result of that theological spirit which prevailed among the northern colonists, and were followed by Newman's Concordance of the Scriptures, it being the next religious production of value in point of originality. It was compiled by the light of pine knots in one of the frontier settlements of New England, was the first of its kind, and, for more than a century, was admitted to be the most perfect, holding its place in public estimation until superseded by that of Cruden, which it suggested.

For some years the mind of the colonists was occupied with theology, a natural consequence of emigration arising from difference of religious opinion. Cotton Mather engaged extensively in the disputations of his time, and the number of his writings indicate the excitement of the period, as well as give evidence of his learning and industry. Although his productions are neither brilliant nor profound, he is to be regarded, to some extent, as the representative writer of his age, and was justly considered one of the most learned men of his time. He wrote with facility in seven different languages, was the author of no less than three hundred and eighty-three works, and was enrolled among the Fellows of the Royal Society, being the first American to obtain that honour. His writings, although disfigured with affectation, extravagance, and eccentricity, have a certain vigour not to be overlooked; and Franklin himself bears testimony to the merit of at least one of his productions. He candidly says of Mather's Essays to do Good,-" perhaps they gave me a tone of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal events of my life."

From this brief sketch of the most prominent American colonial writers down to 1700, it is evident John Eliot and Cotton Mather were the most remarkable. They differed widely in character, but each exercised a strong influence on the public mind. Writing with nearly all other New Englanders was, as a rule, a mere pastime: with them it was a semi-profession. They wrote and translated to secure an end. Mather was self-willed and