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Bliss Perry, The American spirit in lierature: a chronicle of great interpreters, Chapter 2: the first colonial literature (search)
lest instincts of human nature. But its administration was in the hands of able men. The power of the clergy was well-nigh absolute. The political organization of the township depended upon the ecclesiastical organization as long as the right to vote was confined to church members. How sacrosanct and awful was the position of the clergyman may be perceived from Hawthorne's The Minister's black Veil and The Scarlet letter. Yet it must be said that men like Hooker and Cotton, Shepard and Norton, had every instinct and capacity for leadership. With the notable exception of Hooker, such men were aristocrats, holding John Winthrop's opinion that Democracy is, among most civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst form of government. They were fiercely intolerant. The precise reason for the Hooker migration from Cambridge to Hartford in 1636-the very year of the founding of Harvard -was prudently withheld, but it is now thought to be the instinct of escape from the clerical archi
Bliss Perry, The American spirit in lierature: a chronicle of great interpreters, Chapter 3: the third and fourth generation (search)
manding personality than his father Increase. His nervous sensibility was excessive. His natural vanity was never subdued, though it was often chastened by trial and bitter disappointment. But, like his father, he was an omnivorous reader and a facile producer of books, carrying daily such burdens of mental and spiritual excitement as would have crushed a normal man. Increase Mather published some one hundred and fifty books and pamphlets: Cotton Mather not less than four hundred. The Rev. John Norton, in his sketch of John Cotton, remarks that the hen, which brings not forth without uncessant sitting night and day, is an apt emblem of students. Certainly the hen is an apt emblem of the uncessant sitter, the credulous scratcher, the fussy cackler who produced the Magnalia. Yet he had certain elements of greatness. His tribal loyalty was perfect. His ascetic devotion to his conception of religious truth was absolute. His Diary, which has recently been published in full, recor