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ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

ESSAYS IN PUEITANISM

BY

ANDEEW MACPHAIL

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

(Cfre jftitoergitie $re?£, CamferitJ0e

1905

MAR -

A 0*1

COPYRIGHT 1905 BY ANDREW MACPHAIL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published March IQ05

NOTE

The five essays which are contained in this book
were first read before a company of artists who
had the traditional antipathy of their class to-
wards the spirit of Puritanism. Any one who
should chance to read these writings is asked to
keep that local circumstance in view. Else he
might think that they betray the spirit of the
amateur, of the dogmatist, of the pedagogue ; that
is, if they be regarded as a wanton excursion into
the precincts of literature. The persons to whom
these pieces were addressed were of the opinion
that Jonathan Edwards manifested the spirit of
Puritanism in the pulpit ; that John Winthrop
showed that spirit at work in the world; that
Margaret Fuller's career was the blind striving
of the artistic sense for expression ; that Walt
Whitman's conduct was a revolt against the false
conventions which had grown up in his world ;
and that John Wesley endeavoured to make
religion useful to humanity once more.

" Et quand personne ne me lira, ay je perdu
mon temps, de rrCestre entretenu tant d'heures
oisifves a des pensements si utiles et agreables :
Combien defois m'a cette besogne diverty de
cogitations ennuyeuses f " - — Montaigne, ii, 18.

CONTENTS

I. Jonathan Edwards . . . . 1

II. John Winthrop 69

III. Margaret Fuller 151

IV. Walt Whitman 221

V. John Wesley 275

JONATHAN EDWARDS

JONATHAN EDWARDS

There used to be a presumption that theology-
had something to do with religion, and, inasmuch
as religion undoubtedly has to do with God, the
three, religion, theology, and God, were insensibly
brought together into an unnatural trinity. It
was not long before theology dominated the com-
pact ; its devotees at once proceeded to define and
limit the sphere within which Providence might
exercise its beneficent influence, and religion was
left entirely out of consideration. It is difficult
in any compact for all the persons, if one might
so name them, to sustain the ideal relations of
equality in power and glory, and in this case the
theologians went too far. The astrologers never
undertook to say upon whom the sun should
shine and the rain fall; there have been rain-
makers, of course, but they lost all credibility
long before the theologians lost theirs.

We must appreciate the strength of the belief
that there is an essential association between
theology and religion, if we would have any
understanding of the times in which that belief

4 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

prevailed ; and we must not be deterred by the
strangeness of the idea, for doubtless we ourselves
possess notions which are equally curious. AVe
hold that literature has a dominating influence
upon life; that science has some bearing upon
religion ; that art has something to do with mor-
ality; that there is a perception of right and
wrong, of good and evil, in nature.

It is a lack of seriousness on our part which
prevents our appreciating the full import of any
given system of theological speculation. AVe have
come to look upon all systems as being alike
interesting but useless ; we think there is a great
gulf fixed between belief and conduct, that in
fact these have little to do with each other.
Nothing could be more fatal to the theologians.

Before we can begin to understand any system
of theology, we must enter into the situation of
the unhappy men who propounded and propagated
it : we must appreciate their distress of mind at
the eternity of punishment which was impending
over their fellows, if not over themselves ; and
we shall usually find an opposing theory in the
nature of a revolt against this melancholy deduc-
tion. All schemes in fact were an attempt to ex-
plain or alleviate the unhappy situation in which
men found themselves in this world, and if the

JONATHAN EDWARDS 5

f ramers did not get beyond a guess at the explana-
tion, upon the whole, they certainly did some-
thing towards instilling into the minds of men
a hope of better things.

The earliest philosophic observation of which
we have any record is that which took note of the
lack of sequence between conduct and its reward.
The wicked have always appeared to flourish and
the good have been discouraged. This was the
problem which Job had to face, and doubtless
patriarchs even older than he must have discussed
the anomaly in their pastoral leisure. This af-
flicted patriarch could only take refuge in a blind
faith that the judge of all the world would do
right, a conclusion which did more credit to his
piety than to his understanding. If we could
assign a date to this observation, we should have
a valuable mark in the intellectual and moral
progress of the race ; if we say the Book of Job
was written in the time it purports to describe,
we admit the greatest miracle of literary history,
that so profound a work should be produced in
times so primitive ; if we assign to it a compar-
atively recent date, we are face to face with
another miracle, that the poem should be projected
into the past with such artistic completeness. It
is as if we were to discuss whether "Julius

6 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Caesar " was written in the time of Elizabeth or
in the first century. The very fact that there
should be such a question testifies to the mar-
vellous nature of the work ; but we are not here
specially concerned with that, save in so far as it
affords evidence of the profound attention that
has always been fastened upon this problem of
good and evil.

The only escape these old philosophers found
from the dilemma was to predicate that this life
is not all, that there is in the future some system
of reward and punishment ; that, in short, the
injustice which men behold here is not eternal.
The Jews never got beyond a vague outline in the
elaboration of such a system. The most poignant
of their poets, the writer of Ecclesiastes. perceived
that one event happened to all ; as it happens to
the fool, so it shall happen to the wise : that the
wise man dies even as the foolish ; that his days
are sorrow ; that a man has no preeminence over
the beast ; as the one dieth so dieth the other,
and all go into one place : all are of the dust and
shall return to the dust again. This the wise man
cannot endure, and he takes final refuge in the
spirit returning whence it came, after man had
performed his whole duty ; which is about as far
as we ourselves have got.

JONATHAN EDWARDS 7

The failure or success of the individual, his
happiness or misery, were all observed to depend
upon circumstances so fortuitous and so entirely
beyond his control, that no principle of justice
could be discovered in the events which happened
to him. But human life must be looked upon in
the mass and extent of its endurance, not as the
junction of the past and the present in the indi-
vidual. As Carlyle observed, " You must give the
thing time." The great Hebrew preacher had
previously recorded a similar observation in the
words : " Because sentence against an evil work is
not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the
sons of men is fully set in them to do evil ; though
a sinner do evil an hundred times and his days be
prolonged, yet surely I know that in the end it
shall not be well with him."

It would be a large matter even to take note
of all the attempts which have been made to read
the riddle, and it will be enough here to follow
that straightforward course of reasoning which
led to the definite, if not very comforting, conclu-
sion embraced in the doctrine of Calvinism. The
Calvinist falls back upon the will of God for a
solution. If God allows the wicked to triumph for
a time, that is proof that in the end they will be
condemned. Certainly, no one can deny the fact

8 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

of their present prosperity. And this will of God
was only made known to the Calvinist by re-
velation ; but, as we enter more deeply into the
matter, we are filled with the desire that, if any
revelation at all had been made upon the subject,
it might have been one which should leave the
matter clearer than it was before. The trouble
about all revelations is that they reveal so very
little that people of plain common sense can
understand ; and certainly such persons should
have been considered in view of the likely event
of their asking questions.

One who is fond of taking note of the mental
structure of his race continually finds embedded
in it isolated fragments from the past, which are
entirely incapable of being moulded or modified
by the more recent flow and growth. In the re-
ligious part of the nature these fragments are
peculiarly large and plentiful, and singularly in-
tractable to any influence that might make for
development. Many of the earliest instincts of
the race, which in the outset were in no sense
of a religious character, still persist in the domain
of religion and are of considerable force.

The earliest organization of society proceeded
upon the patriarchal theory that the eldest male
ascendant was supreme in his own household.

JONATHAN EDWARDS 9

His dominion extended over life and death ; and
in the case of his children and all that was theirs
it was unbounded. Indeed, the quality of son-
ship differed very slightly from the condition of
slavery. Of course, this theory was abandoned
sooner or later : by some races sooner than by
others ; and its place was taken by other consider-
ations, such as locality, or the advantage of union
for the sake of success in attack or in defence.
The patriarchal theory persisted longest in the
Semitic race, or at any rate in that portion of the
race occupying Lower Asia, from which we have
derived most of our ideas of an organized reli-
gion. In common with all ancient societies they
regarded themselves as being descended from
an original stock, and that was the only bond of
union which they could comprehend. Their politi-
cal idea had not yet extended even to the breadth
of being provincial. These Hebrews observed
that other races had outgrown or cast off this
patriarchal mould, and they explained this wil-
ful abandonment of the birthright by the Esau
legend, on the grounds of inherent viciousness of
nature, a practice which is still common enough
amongst religious people.

The Calvinist based his religion upon this
patriarchal theory. He adopted the Patriarch of

10 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

the Hebrews as his God. His conception of reli-
gion was to placate a power higher than himself ;
and he never got beyond the fear of that power,
however much he might try to persuade himself
that his conduct was determined by a dislike of
hurting the susceptibilities of that Omnipotent
Patriarch. The whole system of Calvin, then,
takes its roots in the disobedience of Adam. The
Calvinist God may have been all-powerful ; but
power is not now held to constitute a valid claim
to obedience. The whole progress of the human
race bears witness that at times the main duty
of man is disobedience. Adam's act at worst was
a revolt against authority. "Whatever grounds
there may be for visiting the punishment for
moral faults upon the children to the third and
fourth generation, there are none for so dealing
with political faults. Not Sulla, nor James the
Second, nor Judge Jeffreys would claim as much.
But it is worth while enquiring a little more
closely into this fault of Adam, taking the ac-
count as it appears in the only record open to
our inspection, namely, in those Semitic writings
which have obtained so wide a circulation in
the Western world. In the second chapter of the
Book of Genesis we are told — in addition to
many other things into which it is not necessary

JONATHAN EDWARDS 11

here to enter — that two trees were planted in
a garden, one the tree of life, the other the tree
of knowledge of good and evil. Adam was forbid-
den to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of
good and evil, and the injunction was accompanied
by the threat that if he did so eat, he would die
that very day. After the advent of the woman,
the serpent came upon the scene and categorically
denied the validity of the threat, and volunteered
the further information, that if they did eat
of the fruit they should attain to a knowledge of
good and evil. These simple persons followed
this suggestion, and we have it upon the author-
ity of the chief character in the scene — not to
designate him by a holy name — that the opinion
of the serpent was verified in every particular.
The man became "as one of us to know good
and evil," and that day he did not die ; on the
contrary, he was turned out of the garden, lest
he might eat of the tree of life also, and so live
forever. Of course it is not pretended here that
this is a true account of what really occurred, nor
is it alleged that anything did occur, but this is
the best information which we possess.

The only actor who came out of this transac-
tion with unimpaired credit was the serpent, and,
like many another speaker of the truth in oppo-

12 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

sition to authority, he got very little thanks from
either side for his interference. Certainly, Adam,
and we too, if we had any liability in so doubtful
a transaction, might complain that we had not
been treated with frankness, that there was an
arriere pensee, a mental reservation in the opera-
tion, inconsistent with a character which is en-
titled to absolute obedience. That the Hebrews
of lower Asia accepted this solution of the pro-
blem of the origin of good and evil has nothing
to do with us ; that persons of much higher intel-
ligence in some things should accept it as the
basis of a system involving the very serious
matter of eternal punishment is a phenomenon
of philosophic interest.

All systems of theology then were explanatory,
and nearly all were humanitarian. But a place
of reward was held to imply a place of punish-
ment, which is a " new thing," in spite of the
statement of the great writer before mentioned to
the contrary. A full consideration of this fasci-
nating subject would lead us far into esehatologv,
which is a hard word in itself, but one who med-
dles with theology at all feels bound to employ
hard-sounding terms. This " doctrine of last
things," as revealed in the Jewish Apocalypses,
of which there were many, some of authority and

JONATHAN EDWARDS 13

some of very feeble force, was always a product
of national or personal distress : the writings of
Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah will serve as par-
tial examples. In these weird revelations two
different views prevailed. According to one set
of seers only favoured persons were to rise from
the dead ; according to another all would come
into their reward or punishment. In the Revela-
tion, to which the same name is attached as that
borne by the fourth Gospel, both suppositions
are tastefully combined. As a matter of fact the
Hebrew Scriptures contain no clear note of an
immortality either of reward or of punishment.
That was left for a Jew of Alexandria, but his
Book of Wisdom never attained to any wide
celebrity. Saint Paul himself seized upon these
opposing views and certainly did not leave the
matter any clearer than he found it. The situa-
tion in which the early Christians found them-
selves was so distressing that they were continu-
ally turning their eyes for relief to the last things,
and at one time it became so acute that many
persons were troubled, lest when they awoke from
their sleep of death, important events should
already have taken place which might affect their
future state.

Before pronouncing upon Calvinism we must

14 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

follow the lines upon which it is constructed.
We cannot read the " Divina Commedia " with
any intelligence unless we understand the geo-
graphical and other relations of its various local-
ities, the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Para-
diso. We cannot enter fully into the mystery of
"Paradise Lost," or rather "hell discovered,"
unless we bring Milton's measuring apparatus
with us. It was Milton and not Calvin who made
a reality out of this evil shadow of good, and he
did it with such elaboration of plan and precision
in detail, that it appealed instantly to the imagi-
nation and does so yet appeal. Calvin knew a
great deal about men and this world ; about any
other world he had no better information than
we ourselves. That was left for Milton, and we
have his conception in plan and section ; the
empyrean occupying the upper area, with the
throne at the zenith surrounded by flaming mists,
a crystal floor dividing it from the lower hemi-
sphere or chaos, and in a kind of antarctic region,
hell proper. Nor are we left without a scale of
measurement. The distance from the nadir of
the starry universe to the upper boss of hell gate
is shown to be equal to its own radius, which
makes the distance from the hell gate to the
heaven gate equal to the semi-diameter of the

JONATHAN EDWARDS 15

universe. These measurements may be correct,
at any rate it is difficult to disprove them, for
recent progress in mensuration has been along
other and less speculative lines. If we were in-
clined to push our studies further into this fas-
cinating science, we might express the relation
of distances in more abstract terms ; we could
scarcely make them more precise.

The Calvinistic designers reverted to the
method of the writers of the Apocalypses, who
prophesied a great deal upon very inexact in-
formation, though they appear to have possessed
in that relation a marked advantage over the
sweet and gentle Master, who occupied himself
very little with such abstruse calculations. In
short, while they disclose little real knowledge of
the place itself, we have full information upon
the ease, one would almost say, the certainty, of
arriving at it. Yet for the comfort of those who
may be disturbed, the truth is here revealed. In-
stead of being a matter of divine revelation, this
theory of an unending punishment for the viola-
tion of the majesty of an Infinite Being has no
better basis than an obscure passage in Aristotle's
Ethics : Aquinas, Sum. Theol., quaest. xcix, art.
1 ; Calvin, Instit, 111, 25 ; Enc. Brit, vol. viii,
p. 535.

16 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

All the authorities upon eschatology proceed
according to the strictest principles of the math-
ematicians ; they do not know what they are
talking about, and they do not know if what they
are saying is true. They begin with an assump-
tion ; they end with an abstraction. So long as
the theologians keep the discussion on this high
plane no harm is done. When they attempt to
reduce it to the level of common sense, we can
only define our position and endeavour to secure
our own safety by taking refuge in this : We do
not know how the thing is, and if you tell us we
shall not believe you. We have hardened our
hearts. We are in the unhappy situation of the
Wampanoag truth-seeker who was trying to com-
prehend the doctrine of the Trinity, that three is
not three but one. He lamented bitterly that he
had no skill in the deeper parts of the arithmetic.

The controversy between theologians and men
of ordinary common sense amounts to this : we
talk about two different things in the same
terms. There is nothing more harmless than
such speculation, so long as those who do not
care for the exercise are not reasoned into the
one place or the other, a contingency not so re-
mote as one would think, if one meddles with
Calvinism at all ; for of all systems of theo-

JONATHAN EDWARDS 17

logical speculation, Calvinism has the greatest pre-
tension to reasonableness. It does possess more
than a pretension to reasonableness, for it ad-
heres to the strictest method of logic; all other
systems are reduced to an absurdity by the final
admission that some higher power may intervene
to vitiate their conclusions ; Calvinism does not
blink at its own conclusion, which is that once
a man is reasoned into hell, there is an end of the
matter.

To state the proposition baldly, the final situa-
tion of man depends in no way upon his own
actions, good or bad, or upon himself in any way,
but upon the arbitrary exercise of a power quite
outside his influence. Nothing could be more
shocking than such a doctrine stated in simple
language, though a thing may be shocking and
yet be true. Indeed there is something to be said
for this view of the case, when we consider how
little the situation of ordinary men, even in this
world, is influenced by what they do or what they
abstain from doing. Their situation depends
upon their nature, their place and station of
birth, and upon other circumstances beyond their
control. Most men at the end of their lives will
agree, that, good or ill, they could not have done
much otherwise.

18 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

When we state the case less baldly, as we must,
the reasonableness of Calvinism will be more
apparent. The first man, Adam, was created in
the image and likeness of God, in a condition of
purity. From this he fell, and involved his
decendants in his fall. Every man and woman
is born with a due share of this inherent guilt,
and, therefore, liable to all the pains of hell for-
ever. Every child has in itself the seed of ini-
quity, which in due season will bear its fruit.
This fruit of the flesh is amply described by many
writers and faithfully catalogued by Paul in his
arraignment of the Galatians. To enable God to
promulgate a plan of salvation out of his mere
good pleasure, his son was permitted to take
upon himself the punishment due to mankind.
There was the way of escape ; but man must avail
himself of it. We must first have faith : by which
is meant, not the acceptance as true of things
which our judgement tells us are false, but a will-
ingness to accept the remedy. From this follow.
in due sequence, justification by this imputed
righteousness, adoption into the chosen number,
sanctification or renewal into the original ima

It must be noted, however, that this initial faith
is not of ourselves, it too is a gift conferred only
upon certain persons. God, knowing all things

JONATHAN EDWARDS 19

in advance, knows upon whom this gift shall be
conferred ; therefore, a class of elected persons is
at once established. This reasoning is faultless ;
the only escape from its relentless result is to
question the data, and that we may safely do, for
Calvin is now dead a long time. We may affirm
that there never was any such system of Scotch
or Jewish bargaining ; we may go so far as to
admit that even if men were created in God's
image, certainly God never was created in the im-
age of Calvin, and we need not now be deterred by
the fate of Servetus, who used words to that effect.
The thing that strikes us as incomprehensible
is the relative inefficiency of the doctrine of Cal-
vinism. If we admit that God took any trouble
at all about the matter, we cannot help wonder-
ing why he should have chosen so inefficient a
method for carrying out the beneficent purpose,
when another and apparently less complicated
procedure might have been adopted. At this late
day it is no time to be suggesting any better
plan, since, no matter how good it might be,
its benefits could not be made retroactive any
more than the benefits of Calvinism. When the
system of Chris tanity was being elaborated by
Saint Paul, this objection was thought of, and the
benefits of the system were conferred by a simple

20 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

process upon those who had died before its
discovery. The living were baptized for the dead.
In Calvinism there was no such loop-hole. The
tree had to lie as it fell, and the Scotch Reform-
ers proclaimed in no uncertain language, that he
who believed any otherwise should be damned,
which is tolerably plain speaking.

It is hard for us to realize how these abstrac-
tions should have come to influence men's char-
acter and conduct. In reality, they did not much
influence them. What a man believes is not the
result of reasoning and conviction ; his belief
arises from his nature or type of character, and
has nothing to do with the laws of evidence, save
in the minds of rigid scientific enquirers. Even
in such cases they rarely get beyond an intellec-
tual assent, and that is a long way short of con-
viction, which is bound up with the emotions, and
alone has any motive power impelling a man to
act. Belief has so little to do with the intellect
that it is in the least intellectual persons we find
it most firmly fixed, and in very extreme cases
we call it hallucination or delusion ; persons so
gifted with the capacity for belief we class as
insane. In a lesser degree it is the most ignorant
persons who have the firmest belief upon ques-
tions about which they cannot possibly possess

JONATHAN EDWARDS 21

any information, — upon the action of drugs, the
future state, the habits of animals which they
have never seen, the influence of the moon upon
the weather, the Tightness or wrongness of eccle-
siastical and political doctrines.

A man can doubtless arrive at true views in
cases where truth is accessible, but, in such high
matters as those pertaining to religion, his in-
stincts and training lead him to certain inevitable
conclusions with which truth has nothing to do.
His reason will not be bound by anything so poor
as the laws of evidence. By experience one may
come to know that his strongest religious convic-
tions are false, that the belief which he cherished
most dearly has only a low degree of probability
at best ; but fortunately this same experience
teaches him also that it is hardly worth while
discarding these conceptions for others, whose
probability may be in a slight degree higher, and
so he is content to leave the matter at that.

In reality, a man's conduct is always higher
than his belief, and it is of rare occurrence that
acceptance of a creed extends into the region
of action. Even in Scotland, the straitest sect of
the Calvinists behaved towards their neighbours
much as if they really were not convinced that
" the bulk of mankind " was reserved for an eter-

22 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

nity of suffering. They pretended to believe it,
but in reality they did not. As Voltaire said of
the Basques : " When they converse they pretend
to understand each other, mais,je nen crois rien."

Epicureanism at no time flourished in Rome ;
Stoicism had an abundant entrance and was
glorified, as one might say. These stiff, austere
people were attracted by the stiff and austere
character of the creed, and their character was
made thereby still more stiff and austere by being
confirmed in its natural bent. It was a strong
belief suitable for strong men. The people of
Scotland somehow acquired the belief that by
taking much thought they could find out what
God and man is ; that by a purely intellectual
process they could think out a religion of their
own, and that this occupation was their main ob-
ject in life. It does not, however, advance the
position much to say that the adoption of Epicu-
reanism by the Athenians, Stoicism at Rome, or
Calvinism in Scotland, was a result of the pecu-
liarity of the national character, for this national
character is ever the last refuge of the bewildered
enquirer ; yet the fact is there.

Calvinism has been so closely identified with
Scotland that it is commonly looked upon as be-
ing the mainspring of national action. In reality

JONATHAN EDWARDS 23

that form of religion was adopted merely because
it appealed to the genius of the people, as Epi-
cureanism appealed to the genius of the Greeks,
or Stoicism to that of the Eomans. It was pre-
cisely what the people of Scotland required: it
was in abstract form ; it could be pursued to the
bitter end ; it provided an explanation of the con-
duct of more favoured people ; and it afforded
some comfort in contemplating their prosperity.
Finally it began to colour the character of the
nation, and to dominate the intellectual life of the
individual, so much so, that in the exquisite poem
of their own Caroline Lady Nairne, so full of
confidence in all one would love to believe of a
future life, they can only find matter for wonder
at the grounds for the " assurance " of the dying
woman.

It is now time to enquire what manner of man
this Calvin was. We have the word of Kenan for
it that " Calvin was the most Christian man of his
time," which of course is not saying much ; and
one would like a better authority than Renan
upon so subtle a matter. If Calvin's only claim
to remembrance was his acuteness in propound-
ing and his skill in solving theorems in divinity,
he would long ago have been submerged in the
flood of common sense that has been so steadily

24 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

rising. His claims are founded on other grounds
entirely. Since the time of the founder of Chris-
tianity no one has exercised so profound an influ-
ence upon the minds of men as Calvin, and no
single book was ever followed by such tremendous
consequences as his " Institutio Christianae Relig-
ionis." It contained only six chapters ; it was pub-
lished without a name ; the author was not more
than twenty-six years of age when it appeared.

Calvin's great work was that he first revealed
to the world the worth and dignity of the indi-
vidual, which is after all the essence of Puritan-
ism and the heart of Emerson's doctrine. He
proclaimed that man is called of God, that he is
the heir of heaven, and that these are the only
claims to consideration any one may advance. In
view of this glory, common alike to king and
noble, to the weaver at the loom, the trader in his
shop, the toiler in the field, all worldly and tem-
poral distinctions faded into nothingness. "When
a man gets into his head that he is the son of
God, that he is co-heir with Christ, his elder bro-
ther, he is in a bad frame of mind to admit that
the right of king or of priest is more divine than
his own. It was by running counter to this be-
lief that Charles the First learned at Cromwell's
hand "that he had a bone in his neck."

JONATHAN EDWARDS 25

Calvin proclaimed that all power, spiritual,
ecclesiastical, and temporal, proceeded from the
individual, in whose heart and conscience it had
been deposited by God himself. That doctrine
forced its way through three revolutions in Eng-
land, and stands untouched till this day in every
nation which answers to the name of modern.
Spain had a lesson in it not so very long ago ;
Eussia is now at school; and one or two other
peoples are ripe for instruction. Calvin defined
the issue : Was it to be the monarch or the indi-
vidual? The Covenanters decided against the
kings and drew the sword : " No, it shall not be,
and forthwith they put on their steel bonnets."
The sword was out for a century and a half be-
fore this question, so simple to us, was answered
in the Toleration Act of William the Third, and
in the Peace of Westphalia. Also, there were
a few words said upon the subject under a tree
in Massachusetts in the year seventeen hundred
and sixty-five and in succeeding years.

This doctrine of the sovereignty of the individ-
ual, subject only to the sovereignty of God, was
the last lesson of the Renaissance. It was learned
by those who had ears to hear, wherever they
might be. Classes were formed here and there.
There was a running together of learners from

26 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

all over Europe, to Geneva, to Zurich, to Edin-
burgh, and to Frankfort. The teachers were now
in one school, now in another, and at this time the
master mind in Frankfort was John Knox, him-
self a pupil of Calvin. It is worthy of note that
the main object of the Frankfort exiles was, in the
sneering words of an opponent, " to erect a church
of the Purity." An offshooot of this church,
which Calvin planted and Knox watered, was
afterwards transferred to the austere New Eng-
land soil, where it grew in stature and in favour,
let us hope with God, if not with men.

It was only in Scotland that people obtained
a complete " apprehension," as they would say
themselves, of the profound subtlety of Calvin's
theorem in divinity. They made it their own.
They concerned themselves with the salvation of
their own souls and the inferential neglect of the
souls of less favoured persons, and these matters
seemed of so much importance to them that they
overlooked the far reaching political results of
Calvinism.

The English Puritans on the other hand seized
upon the very heart of Calvin's doctrine — the
freedom of the individual. They eared nothing
for the freedom of the will, so long as the man
was free ; it was a matter too high for them.

JONATHAN EDWARDS 27

That has been the habit of Englishmen, ever since
they landed in Britain, at least : a perception of
facts, an inaccessibility to ideas. We have the
authority of one of themselves for that. Life to
them has always meant order and justice ; fight-
ing and force the readiest means to these ends ;
death and the future mysterious things inspiring
awe, but incapable of being understood.

To this practical and experimental temper, the
tenets of Calvin, the freedom, dignity, and sover-
eignty of the individual, appealed with peculiar
force. The doctrine of the Jesuits, at that time
being diligently propagated, curiously enough,
fitted well with this mood. The national temper
was rising. The war with Spain was over. The
House of Austria had been vanquished. The pre-
tensions of the Papacy were abated. In the
contest with the allied temporal and spiritual
powers, the temporal and spiritual alliance had
got the worst of it. The Tudors, who arose upon
the ruins of the old feudal and religious fabric,
finished their great work with Elizabeth. The
Stuarts were an experiment. The soul of the
Englishman was not a dogma ; it was a fact. Ee-
ligion was now a matter for the individual. His
soul was his own. There was the battle-ground
between good and evil, between Heaven and Hell.

28 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

This was the doctrine of Calvin, and in the
English mind it developed into Puritanism as
we know it ; in the Scotch mind it just developed
into Calvinism.

It would require a large book to describe all
the influences, up to their source, which finally
descended to form the broad spirit of Puritanism.
That could be attempted, too, but it would de-
mand a display of wisdom which might not be tol-
erable. The thing was a growth, and who shall
say exactly how even the flower in the crannied
wall does grow. Without being wiser than the
subject demands, it may be affirmed that the
Puritan spirit was first considerably developed
under the Tudors, and ended by upsetting that
broad-founded house as it has upset everything
since under which it has thrust its growing roots.
Then the Stuarts tried an experiment with it, but
they were a mere incident ; they came too late.
Calvin and the Bible had been there before them,
and Cromwell in good season put an end to the
Stuarts' foolish business. The events which led
up to the apparent failure of that cause, which
had seemed assured at the death of Elizabeth, and
again at the violent death of Charles, are the
commonplace of history. At any rate the minds
of men faltered at the failure, yet they looked

JONATHAN EDWARDS 89

over the seas where they might make the experi-
ment anew.

Coming to this exodus, the greatest since the
English left the shores of the Baltic, it is neces-
sary to insist again npon the distinction between
Calvin ist and Puritan, which is as clear as the
distinction between the Scotch and English char-
In the judgement of the Calvinist the unit
of all organized society is the man himself.
elected from all eternity, called of God. fore-
ordained to eternal life or otherwise, as the case
may be. The Puritan looked more to the fact that
each man is his own priest and every such group
of men a church, independent of all but of God.
supreme in matters ecclesiastical and spiritual.
The Pilgrims went a step further, and desired
to add the control of temporal affairs to these
functions and so make a "new experiment in
freedom."

The church in Xew England never was a purely
religious institution. Very few churches in those
days were ; at least it is now difficult to per
what religious purpose they could have served.
It was purely political in its practices and aims,
and was identical with the state : membership in
the church was essential to citizenship : in the
phrase of the time there could be no divorce

30 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM ♦

between things civil and things religious ; and the
utmost freedom which was allowed to those who
were unwilling to adopt this view of the case was
the liberty of going out into the wilderness,
though it is on record that even this poor privi-
lege was denied to some men and to some women
too.

The success of Puritanism or of any great
cause came through a series of reverses. The
theocratic government — and, therefore, oligar-
chic, for it is not to be expected that God will
reveal his eternal purposes in connection with the
erection and support of meeting-houses, the tax-
ing of chimneys, and the impounding of cattle
equally to all men — soon broke down utterly, and
profanity overflowed the land like a second flood,
as all the writers of the period testify. This tes-
timony of preachers to the immorality of their
times and to their own imperfect nature must be
accepted with some reserve. The Apostle Paul
accounted himself the chief of sinners, and if we
had independent testimony bearing upon the con-
dition of the Court of Herod, we might adopt a
more lenient view than that promulgated by John
the Baptist. It is always the dweller in the wil-
derness who knows most about the immoralities
of the Court ; it is to such places as Exeter Hall

JONATHAN EDWARDS 31

and Madison Square Presbyterian Church that
we must look for an intimate knowledge of the
conduct of important personages in this world
and in the two dominions of the world to come.

It is easy to find independent confirmation of
the pessimistic views entertained by the moral-
ists upon the spiritual condition of New England
at the end of the seventeenth and the first half
of the eighteenth century. It was one of those
strange periods of dulness and stupidity which at
times overtake the human race ; but if one went
into this matter at length, he would be intruding
in a field which Jonathan Edwards has made
peculiarly his own, and claiming for himself an
intimacy of knowledge with the Worker of Evil
which no man in these days is willing to admit.
That great philosopher described the evil agent
as " the greatest fool and blockhead in the world,"
and gave as an instance of his wrongheadedness
the sending of the people to New England, where
he hoped they might be forever beyond the influ-
ence of the gospel ; but then anything Edwards
did not like was of the Devil.

If this view of the exodus across the sea be
correct, and the identity of Satan as the great
Pilgrim be acknowledged, it would appear that
he acted with the subtlety peculiar to him in

32 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

such cases, in view of the kind of gospel the
emigrants were likely to receive, before the time
of Edwards. The more closely we enquire into
the religious condition of New England at the
end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the more are we inclined to
applaud the far-sightedness of this great emigra-
tion agent. There was little in New England to
encourage a natural religion ; everything was in
favor of the supernatural variety and it assumed
the most fantastic forms. This supernaturalism
quickly developed into the grossest and most
degrading superstition, witchcraft, demoniacal
possession, sexual immorality, and compulsory
attendance upon church. The time was ripe for
a great reformer, a great moralist, and a great
preacher, and all three arose in the person of
Jonathan Edwards.

Jonathan Edwards was born in East Windsor,
Connecticut, in 1703. He came of Welsh stock.
His father was a graduate of Harvard College,
an ordained minister for sixty years and a man
of learning. His mother was a daughter of Sol-
omon Stoddard, minister in Northampton, a
woman " surpassing even her husband in native
vigour and understanding." This must have been
so, for he relegated to her all domestic affairs, a

JONATHAN EDWAEDS 33

practice one could wish had been more generally-
followed in New England. Jonathan was the
fifth child, the only son in a family of eleven
children, and all were brought up in accordance
with the well-established traditions of a minis-
terial household. At twelve years of age, the
boy was writing letters to refute the idea of the
material nature of the soul ; at thirteen he went
to Yale College, and graduated at the age of
seventeen. The next two years he remained at
New Haven to prosecute his theological studies
till he received a call to a newly organized church
in New York, where he remained eight months,
and then returned to Yale to take up the duties
of tutor, at the time of the secession of so many
of the teaching staff to the Episcopal Church.
There he remained till he was twenty-three, and
all this time he was exercising himself in the art
of writing. Much of this writing was merely
transcription, some of it a catching and setting
down of the philosophical tissue which was flying
in the air.

The nature of Jonathan Edwards was religious
and not philosophical. The two are not identical
or even complementary ; they may be in contra-
diction. If we say his temperament was poetical,
that would be a cryptic saying, in face of his own

34 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

declaration that he had " a constitution in many
respects peculiarly unhappy, attended with flac-
cid solids, vapid, sizy and scarce fluids, and a low
tide of spirits, often occasioning a kind of child-
ish weakness and contemptibleness of speech,
presence, and demeanour." These are commonly
regarded as the ingredients of a philosopher or
theologian, but poets too have their own pecu-
liarities. He had intuitions as a poet has ; his
thought was resolved into emotion, and though
he was continually striving to convert it into a
logical form he was never able to distinguish be-
tween emotion and thought. In any case we shall
be safe in affirming that he had the apocalyptic
sense.

A study of the child life of New England re-
veals some of the strangest facts in psychology.
The abnormal was the normal, and hysteria
passed for the greatest good sense. The misery
attendant upon the witchcraft delusion, the sto-
ries of early conversion, accounts of the precocity
of infants of four years of age, who indulged in
secret prayer, in private religious meetings with
children scarcely older than themselves, tor-
menting themselves with visions of hell fire, —
all these are a revelation of the morbid condi-
tions which arose in that atmosphere. The child

JONATHAN EDWARDS 35

Edwards was one of these. He was continually
engaged in looking into his little mind and form-
ing resolutions for amendment of the faults he
discovered there : " never to do, be, or suffer
anything in soul or body but what might tend to
the glory of God ; to live with all my might while
I do live ; never to speak anything that is ridicu-
lous or a matter of laughter on the Lord's day,
and frequently to renew the dedication of myself
to God."

From childhood Edwards's mind had been full
of objections to the doctrine of God's sover-
eignty ; and it seemed horrible to him, as it has
done to many maturer minds since, " that God
could choose whom he would, leaving them eter-
nally to perish and be tormented eternally in
hell." At last he became happy in the accept-
ance of this strange dogma and spent his life in
urging its acceptance upon others. This convic-
tion was reinforced from time to time, when he
resorted to secluded places, " to meditate upon
the things of God, and indulge in reverie in the
woods of an early morning ; to look into his own
heart which seemed like an abyss infinitely deeper
than hell." At such times, happily, " God's glory
was revealed to him through the whole creation ;
His excellency, wisdom, purity, and love seemed

36 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

to appear in the sun, moon, and stars, in the
clouds and blue sky, in the grass, flowers, and
trees, in the water and all nature." On one occa-
sion, when he had ridden into the woods — he
had now attained to middle life — and alighted,
" to walk in divine contemplation and prayer,
he had so extraordinary a view of the glory of
the Son of God and his wonderful grace, that he
remained for upwards of an hour in a flood of
tears and weeping aloud." All this was charac-
teristic of the gentle mystic and not of the rigid
divine.

Edwards was now ready for his work, and his
opportunity came. In 1727, being in his twenty-
fourth year, he was ordained at Northampton as
the colleague of his grandfather, Solomon Stod-
dard, who was in his eighty-fourth year, a man
so venerable and of so much authority that the
Indians referred to him as the Englishman's God.
The new incumbent began his career by leading
the life of an ascetic : he dwelt by himself and
studied thirteen hours a day ; he abstained from
all amusement and from any excess of food,
and rarely visited his parishioners. This method
of life only lasted a few months, for the young
minister married a girl of seventeen with whom
he had become acquainted at New Haven. Her

JONATHAN EDWARDS 37

name was Sarah Pierrepont ; her father was pro-
fessor of moral philosophy at Yale, and on her
mother's side she was descended from Thomas
Hooker, the founder of the church in Connecticut.
Edwards's habit of thought is revealed in a letter
he wrote about this young lady some years before
they were married, at a period it would seem
before he had made her acquaintance. Unless
upon the previous assumption that he was a poet,
it is hard to guess the source from which he drew
his information.

" They say there is a young lady in New Haven
who is beloved of that great Being who made
and rules the world, and that there are certain
seasons in which this great Being, in some way
or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind
with exceeding sweet delight, and that 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 always. There she is to dwell with
Him, and to be ravished with His love and de-
light for ever. Therefore, if you present all the
world before her, with the richest of its treasures,
she disregards and cares not for it, and is unmind-

38 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

ful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange
sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her
affections ; is most just and conscientious in all
her conduct ; and you could not persuade her to
do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give
her all the world, lest she should offend this
great Being. She is of a wonderful calmness and
universal benevolence of mind ; especially after
this great God has manifested Himself to her
mind. She will sometimes go about from place
to place singing sweetly ; and seems to be always
full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for
what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields
and groves, and seems to have some one invisible
always conversing with her."

One result of this marriage was a family of
eleven children, ten of whom came to maturity ;
one of the daughters afterwards became the
mother of Aaron Burr, who " murdered " Alex-
ander Hamilton in a duel, became vice-president
of the United States, and finished his career in
a trial for treason on account of a foolish con-
spiracy to set up a southern dominion.

The minister appears to have ruled well his
own household. He was " thorough in the gov-
ernment of his children, and bent them to his
will ; he was a great enemy to all vain amuse-

JONATHAN EDWARDS 39

ments and pernicious practices." It is well that
it was Aaron Burr the father, rather than the
son, who broke into that well-regulated house-
hold.

We shall leave at one side for the moment any
consideration of Jonathan Edwards as a philo-
sopher, though with the strange irony of events,
it is upon this aspect of his character that chief
attention has been fixed. He was a great preacher
of righteousness; yet if we look only in his
printed sermons, we shall not get very far in
understanding the secret of his influence upon
contemporary and subsequent life. The first edi-
tion of Edwards's works, including his sermons,
was issued in Worcester, Massachusetts, in eight
volumes, in 1809, and was afterwards republished
in four volumes. Both issues are still accessible ;
also Dr. Dwight's edition published in New York
in ten volumes, in 1829, and a London edition
of eight volumes by Williams in 1817, with two
supplementary volumes by an Edinburgh firm.
There is also an edition in two large volumes by
Bohn, which contains a good portrait.

There are very few persons now living who lay
claim to having read largely of Edwards's ser-
mons, and there are fewer still who have actually
done so. They are hard to master, though an

40 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

excellent discipline, and it is only by a process of
slow growth that one brought up in the Calvinist
faith arrives at the perception that there can be
such a thing as nonsense in a sermon. Preaching
must be a dull business where the speaker is not
sure of making himself understood ; it is much
worse when the preacher himself does not under-
stand what he is saying ; and when his utterances
are reduced to writing, the confusion is worse
confounded. When a man talks about things he
does not understand, to people who do not un-
derstand the terms he is using, it is easy to guess
what lucidity there will be in his reported utter-
ances. A writer with a fine style can interest a
reader in things which in themselves possess no
interest whatever ; but Edwards had no fine style ;
his style is more involved than his matter, and
though he could write bad Latin, that did not
qualify him for writing good English. As Haz-
litt observed in his own ironic way, it is easy to
be a great preacher if a man is allowed to start
from no data and come to no conclusions. The
same observation of course is true about writers
also.

Edwards seized upon a theme and made it his
own. He knew nothing of this world, and very
little of heaven or of men ; he made people be-

JONATHAN EDWARDS 41

lieve that he knew a great deal about hell and
devils. As a matter of fact he knew no more
about hell than we do, and had no greater inti-
macy with the Devil than we have, but he had the
capacity of interesting people in the fearsome
theme, because he himself was intensely con-
cerned with it. Satan was God's emissary, and
the fear of hell his chief weapon for reducing
men to obedience and instilling into their hearts
love for his being and a recognition of his bene-
volent purposes.

Jonathan Edwards was a great preacher and a
great moralist by reason of his hatred of sin. He
held himself aloof from the things of this world,
and rejected the concerns of this life. Engrossed
in exalted matters, he was not tempted himself,
and could not appreciate the power of temptation
upon others. His own zeal for morality was so
great, his piety so deep, his principles so fixed,
his ideals so pure, that he had no sympathy with
the lower concerns of other people nor any tolera-
tion of the things that interested them. Occupy-
ing this exalted position, he gave way to pride ;
unchecked by the opinions of his fellows, he be-
lieved he was right when he was surely wrong ;
his mind became harsh and bare when it should
have been genial and rich, for these qualities

42 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

only come from a tried and varied life. To
Edwards, the soul was nothing but moral. In-
tellect and the artistic sense did not touch it, save
in so far as they had to do with morality, and
intellect and the artistic sense we know have not
necessarily anything to do with morality. He
demanded grandeur and purity alone, caring
nothing either for beauty or for richness.

The normal mind appreciates certain things in
nature and draws its own conclusions from them.
That was how the Greeks arrived at their notions
of religion. The Calvinists, and Edwards with
them, found the source of religion in the mind,
not in the world without, and they say they know
how it was implanted there. All reasonable men
agree that there is a moral principle in the
human nature, a desire to do right, or at least
a dislike of doing wrong. We do not claim to
know how it got there, and if any one tell us we
shall not believe him. The most we are willing
to do is to make the feeble admission, along with
Sir Leslie Stephen, that nearly all men go so far
as to desire to do right, and that there are very
few to whom wrong-doing is a positive pleasure.

The fatal error in Edwards's doctrine, and in
the Calvinists' too, is their explanation of the
forgiveness of sin. Not the blood of any sacrifice

JONATHAN EDWARDS 43

can atone for it, nor the fires of the Calvinist hell
purge away its stain, In the portentous words
of Bishop Butler, " things are what they are, and
the consequences of them will be what they will
be." It seems more difficult in these days than
in times past for men to discover the eternal
purposes of God, and lay bare the methods of
divine procedure. We have some reticence in
affirming what God can do and what God cannot
do, but we shall be well within the mark in as-
serting that God himself cannot forgive sins in
any such rough and ready, good-natured method
as has been attributed to him. The healing of
the sick, the raising of the dead to life, the arrest
of the elements in their course — all these we
can pretend to understand. But the divinest
thaumaturgy of all is the conversion of evil into
good. That is the only sense in which God can
forgive sin, and it is by the conversion of evil
into good that he reveals in the highest his in-
finiteness of power, of patience, of mercy, and of
justice, and it requires an eternity of time to com-
plete the transformation. If it were not so, evil
in the end must triumph over good, and that we
do not believe, for we could not believe it and live.
However, the value of this fear of hell is not
to be despised as a moral agent, for in all

44 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

times the average conception of religon has been
to placate a power not ourselves. Certainly, Ed-
wards's parishioners in Northampton received the
full benefits of this moral agent, and it was not
a bad device in so far as their minds were won
over to serious things.

All writing about Jonathan Edwards is the
merest trifling if one do not give some account of
the part he played in the great revival that was
coincident with the times in which he wrought.
The present writer has lived through two of these
manifestations ; as a detached observer, it is true,
— in the earlier one on account of youthf ulness ;
in the later, on account of hardness of heart or
other incapacity. And these revivals too were
associated with a still earlier one, and that in
turn by tradition was directly traceable to what
is known in evangelical circles as the Great Re-
vival of Edwards. The most casual reader of
history is struck by the frequent occurrence of
these strange upheavals of the moral nature, at
one time manifesting themselves by wholesale
crusades against some fanciful infidel, by the
burning of heretics, and again by the harassing
of priests and the destruction of churches. At
rare intervals they have taken the form of an
awakening and a reformation of the individual

JONATHAN EDWARDS 45

character, as was the case in the great movement
with which Wesley had to do.

However these revivals may be described, — as
" a sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry
trees," as " an outpouring of the spirit," as " a
troubling of the waters," — at bottom they have
been due to a revolt on the part of humanity
against the accumulation of evil under which
at length it felt itself to lie. They have always
occurred when the people were seized with a
great idea ; and in the case of the revival which
is called "great" the dominating idea was the
immediate association of the divine spirit with
the soul of man. That idea arose in the mind of
Jonathan Edwards with new force. Calvin had
fixed a great gulf between God and man, yet
even he made an attempt to bridge it by the
work of the Spirit ; Luther endeavoured to bring
the two into some kind of communion through
the medium of devout feeling ; it was left for the
Puritan churches to insist upon proof that the
gulf had been bridged, and to Edwards to preach
the doctrine of the immediacy of God, the same
which Paul preached on Mars Hill, that "He
is nigh unto every one of us." This then was
the great work of the New England preacher,
and it was taken up in due time by Wesley and

46 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Whitefield in England, and finally by Emerson
and Whitman and the Unitarians in America.
Who then shall say it was not a great work ?

Whilst the fervour lasted, there was much
confusion : the minds of many men and women
became disordered by excessive fear and concern.
When they were convinced of the fate in store
for them, they did not accept the situation calmly,
but lay in agony, with wild outcries, and an in-
ward fear that was unutterable. The pastor found
nothing unusual in this manifestation of concern ;
for did not John fall at the feet of Jesus as one
dead? did not Jacob dislocate his thigh? and did
not the disciples toil all night? Some few are
said to have received an assurance that their fears
were groundless, that they were safe from the
divine vengeance ; and a man in that happy situ-
ation is not apt to bear himself with humility ;
indeed he is liable to take his stand behind a new-
found security and presume that he may sin with
impunity. However that may be, we soon find
Jonathan Edwards confessing " that many of
these high professors were fallen into great im-
moralities, that their conversation was more in
keeping with the character of a sailor than of
a Christian, and that they were manifesting an
incorrigible wildness in their behaviour."

JONATHAN EDWARDS 47

The reaction had come. The people of North-
ampton had been told that "the bulk of man-
kind was reserved for burning," that " innocent
as children seem to us, they are not so in God's
sight, but are young vipers, and infinitely more
hateful than vipers ; " that they themselves, those
decent village people, " were all over deformed
and loathsome as a filthy worm, little wretched
despicable creatures, vile insects risen up in con-
tempt against the majesty of heaven and earth ; "
but these statements did not receive any general
acceptance. One man, however, did believe what
he heard, and he adopted the sensible procedure
of cutting his throat. Edwards took it as a mat-
ter of course that " persons should murder them-
selves under religious melancholy, who would not
have done so had they remained in heathen dark-
ness ; " but if all the people had believed, there
would not have been trees enough in Massachu-
setts whereon to hang themselves. They listened
with more or less apathy, just as children, who
are insensible to the sin and misery and sorrow
which are in the world.

That is ever the fate of all appeals to the emo-
tions; the stimulus must be increased, but at
length the healthy nature will reassert itself. So
long as Edwards was content to deal with sin in

48 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

general terms, no one took offence, but when he
undertook to apply his epithets to individuals,
they took it for incivility, and all, good and bad,
save twenty out of two hundred, united to turn
him out of the community which he had served for
twenty-three years. Yet it must have been with
a sense of relief that they witnessed his departure.
There would be peace, at least so long as they
remained in this world, and that was something.
They were content to let the Devil have his own
way for a little ; probably familiarity with that
important New England personage had bred con-
tempt ; yet it must have brought consolation to
the exile, to know that some of his parishioners
who had been most zealous in stirring up strife
were afterwards stricken with remorse, and even
went so far as to apply to themselves the subject-
matter of the imprecatory psalms.

The situation of the dispossessed minister was
one of difficulty. He was past middle life ; he
had a wife and ten children dependent upon
him, and he was without means. Some help came
from Scotland in the way of books and words of
encouragement to continue the controversy, which
perhaps was not the best advice. A call soon
came from the church in Stockbridge, a frontier
settlement composed entirely of Indians, and there

JONATHAN EDWARDS 49

Edwards went in 1751, under appointment from
the Board of Commissioners for Indian Affairs
in Boston, and with some support from England.
This interest in the Indians was a form of exag-
gerated sentimentality peculiar to the time, and
it was fostered by all of those who took up the
" Return to Nature " cry, raised by Rousseau and
the poets of the eighteenth century, who were
more gifted in folly than any poets before or
since. Under its influence both Wesley and
Whitefield had gone to preach in Georgia.

There is something irresistibly comic in the
idea of Jonathan Edwards being ordained as
a missionary to the Indians. Amongst the older
writers it was a favourite theory that the Indians
would readily be won over to the Christian reli-
gion, and would accept with unquestioning faith
their account of its mysteries. They were led to
this conclusion, an erroneous one as it afterwards
proved, by their misconception of the nature of
the Indians and of the nature of Christianity
also. This wild offspring of Adam's degenerate
seed were able to comprehend the doctrine of the
Jesuits in so far as it could be expressed in im-
ages ; they never even got to the length of under-
standing pictorial representations, because their
knowledge of art did not extend to the subject

50 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

of drawing on plane surfaces. To them a saint
drawn in profile was only half a man. One con-
vert apostasized as soon as it was revealed to
him, through a more profound knowledge of ex-
egesis, that the sword of the spirit was not pri-
marily intended for the rending asunder of the
joints and bones of his enemies, and another lost
all consolation from the Christian religion when
it was borne in upon him that the pains of hell
were reserved for members of his own tribe also,
and it might be for himself as well. It is no won-
der then that the savages found the religion of
New England too high for them, and if their new
missionary had spoken his mind freely upon the
subject of their future state, it would not have
been more tolerable to them than it had been to
the inhabitants of Northampton.

In the selections from the unpublished writ-
ings of Edwards, by Gossart, we have the skele-
ton of a sermon which he preached to his new
charge through an interpreter. The subject was
worthy of the occasion, and the treatment was
after the best manner of the author of the M Free-
dom of the Will." Calvinism from the mind of
Edwards, through the mouth of an interpreter, to
the mind of the North American Indian, is an ap-
palling thing to consider ; yet the new missionary

JONATHAN EDWARDS 51

did not fail in his duty. He divided and sub-
divided his subject ; he elaborated and condensed,
and yet it is doubtful if his hearers comprehended
the full import of his doctrine any better than
we do.

The history of Indian affairs at Stockbridge
was pretty much like the history of Indian affairs
in other parts of the United States before and
since, a record of peculation, oppression, and
abuse. Against these Edwards made good head-
way and drove the offenders from the field, but at
the end of two years his congregation had van-
ished further into the forest, and he was once
more relieved from his charge. These years, how-
ever, were years of " pleasure and profit " to the
philosopher. He had leisure for writing, and
the more he wrote " the more and wider the field
opened before him." It was here he wrote and
published the " Freedom of the Will," and his
treatise on the " Nature of Virtue," and " God's
Last End in the Creation of the World." Here
also he wrote his famous work on " Original Sin,"
and besides these performances he had leisure to
meditate upon a great matter. This was a history
of the Redemption. It was to be a "body of
divinity in an entire new method, being thrown
into the form of a history." It was to begin and

52 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

end with eternity, and all great events were to
be viewed sub specie aeternitatis ; heaven, hell,
and earth were to be the scenes ; it was to in-
clude " all divine doctrines, showing the admir-
able contexture and harmony of the whole." Such
a production would have been a fairly marvellous
feat, but it never came to anything. All persons
who write much have such visions of grandeur,
but fortunately they never proceed very far to-
wards the realization of them.

From these happy labours Jonathan Edwards
was called in 1757 to be the official head of
Princeton, then as now the earthly seat of all
authority in the Presbyterian religion of the
United States. He occupied the position for less
than three months, and died on the 22d of March,
1758, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, as a result
of inoculation with the virus of smallpox.

It yet remains to turn to that side of Ed-
wards's nature which was essentially philosoph-
ical. Many of the speculations with which the old
philosophers tormented themselves appear to the
ordinary man as so much rubbish. He thinks
there is no use bothering with them, because he
knows that, in what used to be called philosophy,
the only certainty is that any given proposition
is probably false. In some cases the probability

JONATHAN EDWARDS 53

may be high, and in others low, but when the
thing is likely to be equally true and equally
false, he thinks he might as well be pitching cop-
pers. Many of these problems we have already
solved to our own satisfaction ; in the words of
Dr. Johnson, we know the will is free and that is
the end of it ; some we are content to leave in
obscurity, as Dr. Johnson also was obliged to do,
when the revelation he was about to make upon
the future state was interrupted by an untimely
visitor ; about others we have no means of know-
ing, and the remaining ones have no interest for
us. But it has not always been so. There was
a time when men had a passion for enquiring into
those things which the Germans call the uncon-
ditioned, about which nothing can ever be learned,
and to leave aside those things of which the truth
may be ascertained by diligent enquiry.

With the singular irony of events it is upon
his philosophic speculations that the fame of
Jonathan Edwards rests, and according to the
measure of philosophers he was of no mean rank.
The subjects he treated were as profound, his
method as obscure, his course of reasoning as sin-
uous, his conclusions as unintelligible, as those
of any pioneer into the Teutonic mysteries. It
does not interest us now whether the will be free

54 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

or not, or what may be the nature of true virtue ;
no one now defends or attacks the proposition
of original sin, or claims that one is sometimes
three. It may be so, but we have other things to
bother about ; yet a mind that was interested in
these subtilties and resolute to deal with them
must always possess a profound interest for us.
It is, therefore, worth while observing the work-
ings of the mind of Edwards upon these sub-
jects, leaving at one side as much as possible any
consideration of the subjects themselves.

The earliest manifestations of Edwards's philo-
sophic activity were revealed in his fourteenth
year in " Notes on the Mind." These early notes
contain the germinal thought of all Edwards's
later philosophy, and deal with the will and its
freedom, ideas abstract and innate, causation and
the association of ideas. In his doctrine of ex-
cellency one finds an agreement with Plato's con-
ception of the good ; in his doctrine of the one
substance, he is in agreement with Spinoza ; and
his proclamation that the universe exists only in
the mind of God is precisely that of Malebranche.
Such expressions as " bodies have no existence
of their own," " all existence is neutral," M the
existence of all things is ideal," " matter is truly
nothing at all, strictly and in itself considered,"

JONATHAN EDWARDS 55

" I had as well speak plain, space is God," are
almost in their entirety a reproduction of the
philosophy of Berkeley. Space may be God, but
even so, the definition does not go very far
towards clarifying our conceptions of either the
one or the other.

If Edwards between the ages of fourteen and
seventeen had elaborated such a body of doctrine
as is revealed in his " Notes on the Mind," that
would have been a record in precocity, and his
biographers claim that he did so, on the ground
that there is no evidence that he had read any
of Berkeley's writings. These notes were written
up to the year 1819 and perhaps later ; the " New
Theory of Vision," the " Principles of Human
Knowledge," and the " Dialogues," had been pub-
lished several years earlier by Berkeley. There
is another fact : Dr. Samuel Johnson, afterwards
President of King's College, New York, was dur-
ing Edwards's career at college a tutor at Yale,
and he was a warm friend and ardent follower
of the great English idealist. At any rate there
was something in the air, and at that time the
interchange of ideas between the old world and
the new was as complete if not so swift as it is
now. If we assume — there are some things we
cannot prove — that the lad was informed of the

56 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

speculations of Berkeley, we avoid the admission
of a miracle, which is always a desirable thing;
but we must still wonder that so young a child
should have taken so profound an interest in
them as to put them in his own words, and that
was a miracle in its own way. There is no dif-
ficulty in assuming that the young philosopher
had access to the writings of Malebranche, for
the " Recherche de la Verite " had then been
before the public for forty years ; two good trans-
lations into English had been made before 1704,
and Norris had worked over the material for his
" Theory of an Ideal World " at least as early as
that.

It matters little what other sources of sugges-
tion he possessed, for, speaking absurdly, Locke's
writings were in the hand of every schoolboy,
and Locke had boasted to Lady Masham that
he himself had read Descartes and Spinoza, and
that what he read had been intelligible to him.
Edwards acknowledged freely his indebtedness
to Locke ; he makes no reference to his obliga-
tions in other quarters, but we must bear in mind
that he was of a reserved nature, and after some
pages of cipher writing he adds : " remember to
act according to the proverb, *a prudent man
concealeth knowledge.' "

JONATHAN EDWARDS 57

Locke has been the source of more inspiration
than that which Edward derived from him ; in-
deed nearly all the good and much of the evil
that occurred in the eighteenth century is trace-
able to the wisdom and common sense, the calm
reasonableness and reverence for facts of this
great philosopher. The French Revolution was
the logical deduction from his postulate that the
ultimate sovereignty of a people rests on a virtual
consent or contract to be governed. Of course
the French went too far, as the Calvinists also
did, in the destruction of the wicked ; the English
alone can be trusted to stop short of absurdity in
pushing conclusions home, because the English
mind has a contempt for pure reason, a hatred of
abstractions which are contrary to common sense,
a distrust of speculations which do not fit in with
some rule of thumb by which they have been
working for three or four generations. Ethics
and philosophy and even theology they think
must be kept in their place, along with steam-
engines, macadamized roads, and spinning-jennies,
and all are to be brought to the same test of experi-
ence. That is why the English philosophers have
been kept from working mischief, in their own
country at least.

But Edwards never got so far as to develop a

58 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

harmonious system. To him the works of Hobbes
and Hume were only corrupt books, and yet in
making virtue a second object of life, without
knowing it, he fell into agreement with the utili-
tarian theories of Hume, Bentham, and Mill ; his
theory of the Will is now held only by professed
agnostics, and by a few who call themselves
Christians.

I shall speak in another place of the value of
the mathematical method in solving historical
problems. The analogy between mathematics and
history is very close. There is a method of analy-
sis by which relations are deduced amongst quan-
tities by considering the relations existing between
infinitesimal variations in those quantities ; that
is to say, by the consideration of infinitesimally
small quantities we may attain to finite results.
The edifice of history is built up stone by stone,
but from absolute lack of material, insignificant
as that material may appear to be, there must be
wide gaps in the structure. It is a favourite occu-
pation of beginners in the integral calculus to
prove strange things by the use of that method
of analysis, that one is equal to three and three
to one ; but the fallacy lies in the improper em-
ployment of the symbols denoting Nothing and
Infinity. The relation which exists between the

JONATHAN EDWARDS 59

diameter and the circumference of a circle is indi-
cated by a symbol and cannot be completely
expressed in any terms, words, or figures of which
we have any knowledge. Every intelligent boy
has amused himself in seeking a fuller expression
of that relation by the addition of more decimal
places, and always with the belief and secret
ambition that by searching the thing could be
found out ; but with more mature knowledge he
is obliged to fall back upon the symbol. Jona-
than Edwards had faith that he could express in
set terms relations which can only be expressed
by symbols, and he confused the symbols denot-
ing Infinity and Nothing. That is why he has
proved strange things.

In the text of the " Essay on the Trinity," as
recently published by Professor Fisher, there are
fine examples of the adaptation of the mathemat-
ical method to the solution of " theorems in divin-
ity," from which one illustration will serve : " In
order to clear up this matter, let it be considered
that the whole divine office is supposed to subsist
in each of these three, namely, Gr., his under-
standings, his love, and that there is such a won-
derful union between them, that they are after
an ineffable and inconceivable manner one in an-
other, and as it were predicable one of another ;

60 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

as X. said of himself and the R, I am in the F.
and the F. in me, so the F. is in the Son and the
S. in the F., the H. Gh. is in the F. and F. in
the H. Gh., the H. Gh. is in the S. and the Son
in the H. Gh., and the F. understands because the
Son is in him, the F. loves because the H. Gh. is
in him, so the Son loves because the H. Gh. is in
him and proceeds from him, so the H. Gh. or the
divine essence subsisting is divine, but under-
stands because the Son, the divine Idea, is in
him." Edwards from this formula would con-
clude : Q. E. D. We may be permitted to sub-
stitute our own conclusion : " Which is absurd."
We may also question the propriety of reducing
the Lord Jesus Christ to the terms L. J. X.

One might be convicted of ignorance — and
that justly — if he did not give expression to the
suspicion which has been in the minds of some
for the past half century, that Jonathan Edwards
was tinctured with heresy. The thing is unthink-
able to any but Unitarians ; it is as if one were
to say that the Pope was not a Catholic. The
most malignant of these disseminators of doubt
was Oliver Wendell Holmes, who has since gone
to his own place. It was alleged that an unpub-
lished manuscript existed in which was revealed
the true relation existing between the various

JONATHAN EDWARDS 61

Persons in the Trinity, a matter which Edwards
refused to disclose in his published writings.
The legends which grew up around this manu-
script would be long to describe. Some pretended
to have seen it, but no two persons could agree as
to what they had seen, or recognize the thing
when they saw it again. Some who had access
to the writing affirmed that it was in two parts,
a comparatively simple observation, one would
think ; others held that it was divided only " in
fact but not in form " into two parts, and when
put to the question they could only make the
feeble admission that on second view they " recog-
nized " the document but could not " recall "
what they had read of it on previous occasions.
That hesitancy of recollection is not wonderful
to one who reads the manuscript in its present
published form. Whether the document acquits
Jonathan Edwards of heterodoxy or not, I do not
pretend to say, — Professor Fisher thinks it does,
and one is willing to take his word for it, — but
certainly this mysterious manuscript whicfi be-
came so singularly involved with the persons of
the Trinity still "leaves the matter in a state
of obscurity."

The situation developed by Edwards was a seri-
ous one. He began with the sovereignty of God

62 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

and the sinfulness of man ; he showed how deserv-
ing of eternal punishment all mankind was ; he
described a place which was in every particular
most suitable for the purpose; and finally, near
the end of his life, he wrote a great book to prove
that no man had any choice as to where he should
spend his eternity. The truth of the matter is that
the argument won instant favour, because it dealt
a heavy blow at the Arminians, who held the will
to be in equilibrium, and it assisted men like Dr.
Chalmers " to find their way through all that
might have proved baffling and transcendental
and mysterious in the peculiarities of Calvin-
ism."

For the moment the Arminians were staggered
and Edwards's posture of defence was unassail-
able ; but in the course of time they found that
the ground on which he stood was unsafe, because
it was shifting. His definition of the will at one
moment was " that by which the mind chooses any-
thing ; " and again, " that by which the mind de-
sires or inclines to anything." Between u choice "
and " inclination " a great gulf is fixed. This may
be a mere " nibbling " at his argument ; but if
Edwards himself were to rise from the dead, lie
wrould admit that, inasmuch as his argument is
in large part based upon a purely idiosyncratic

JONATHAN EDWARDS 63

interpretation of Scripture, it must come to the
ground. The dictum of Saint Paul is no longer
recognized as sufficient foundation for the airy
fabric of a metaphysical system ; as the German
theologian observed, " I have read what Paulus
says on the subject and I do not believe him."
We are content, then, to leave at one side his
ethical and metaphysical speculations as being
merely of literary interest. They may be true;
we have no means of knowing ; but they are of
no further interest to us.

But Jonathan Edwards's influence in the sphere
of morality is of supreme interest to us as reveal-
ing his own personality and the nature of the
people who came under its sway. It is as a
preacher of righteousness, not as a philosopher,
that he appeals to us, though we must admit that
his philosophical reduction of transactions to
abstract formulae inevitably gave form to his
doctrines of morality.

In American literary history all appreciation
has been based largely upon purely "idiosyn-
cratic grounds," as Emerson said of Margaret
Fuller's criticism of the plaster casts in the Boston
Athenaeum. In the case of Jonathan Edwards
again we are met with the same indiscriminating
praise and blame. Over his grave one may read

ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

to this day an inscription in Latin, it is true, tes-
tifying that he was second to no mortal man. Of
course, one does not go to tombstones in search of
truth, yet the view there established is in keeping
with much that one reads elsewhere. Another
writer says that since the time of Plato there has
been no life more simple and imposing in grand-
eur than that of Jonathan Edwards. Robert Hall
regards him as the " greatest of the sons of
men ; " another eminent divine was accustomed to
look upon him as belonging to some superior race
of beings ; and Chalmers, with his peculiar fecund-
ity in words, writes that he esteemed Edwards
as the "greatest of theologians, combining in a
degree that is quite unexampled, the profoundly
intellectual with the devoutly spiritual and sacred,
realizing in his own person a rare harmony be-
tween the simplicity of the Christian pastor and
the strength and prowess of a giant in philo-
sophy." As a corrective to this nonsense we may
set down the opinion, which is also probably
nonsense in its own way, of President Stiles of
Yale College, as recorded in his diary : " "When
posterity occasionally comes across Edwards's
writings in the rubbish of libraries, the rare
characters, who may read and be pleased with
them, will be looked upon as singular and whim-

1

JONATHAN EDWARDS 65

sical as in these days are admirers of Suarez,
Aquinas, or Dionysius the Areopagite."

This prediction of President Stiles has been
fairly well verified. The philosophical writings of
Jonathan Edwards have long since gone into the
rubbish of libraries, along with much other philo-
sophical rubbish, it may be added ; his sermons
merely move men to scorn or mirth. Wherein,
then, consists the secret of the power which
Edwards exercised and does still exercise ?

He had a great and a good nature ; he lived a
great and good life ; he was under the domination
of great ideals, and his life was entirely detached
from the things of this world. This great nature
was the product of his Celtic inheritance, made
serious by his more immediate Puritan ancestry
and his solemn environment. He saw things
which other men did not see, therefore he was
a seer; he spoke for them, and was a prophet.
He aroused them from habits of sloth and sensu-
ality to a perception of serious things. True, the
means he employed was the fear of hell, yet at
times fear is the only moral agent of very much
value, a means of grace of which this generation
unfortunately is deprived.

One thing yet remains to be said — said again.
Though Jonathan Edwards is dead, he yet speaks

GG ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

to us, and the message comes clearer from his dis-
ciples than it came from him. His son expanded
the doctrine of the efficacy of the atonement, and
his grandson, Timothy D wight, by his preaching,
turned back that mingled tide of atheism and
deism which proceeded from France early in the
last century. Nathaniel Emmons lived for ninety-
five years and was engaged in actual ministerial
work for fifty-four ; he trained fifty-seven pupils
in his own family, and through them propagated
the doctrine of disinterested love which he de-
duced from Edwards's treatise on the u Nature of
Virtue." How he did it we do not know. Samuel
Hopkins disseminated the same views upon the
obligation to love ourselves and our fellow men,
and through the work of 'William Ellery Chan-
nfng and his friends, the thing grew into the great
humanitarian movement which, beginning in Newr
England, spread over the whole nation and is yet
spreading.

The only real good which ever comes to hu-
manity is that which arrives by way of the emo-
tions, and emotions arise out of a condition of
mind. When the present devices of philanthropy
shall have had their day, and their futility shall
have been demonstrated, some great teacher will
rediscover the old truth that salvation lies in a

JONATHAN EDWARDS 67

right condition of mind ; he will awaken the peo-
ple and revive in them those emotions which are
religious.

The old name for a revival was an awakening,
and Jonathan Edwards awakened the people
thoroughly. Once awake they could be trusted to
find a way out for themselves. The path they
followed has not been precisely the one which was
marked out for them by the great divine, but it
led in a new and right direction. To turn the
people anew and aright is the greatest work that
any man can accomplish, and it is for this supreme
reason that the name of Jonathan Edwards is
held in remembrance.

n

JOHN WINTHROP

JOHN WINTHROP

In dealing with the personality of John Win-
throp, let it be understood that he lived at a time
in the world's history when men had convictions
upon subjects in regard to which we have none,
and that their conduct was shaped by beliefs
which do not influence us. These convictions had
to do chiefly with what they caDed religion, a term
which we shall continue to employ in the sense in
which they understood it, laying aside our own
preconceptions or conclusions as to what religion
really is.

We, in these days, have the instinct for doing
right, or, as Jonathan Edwards defined it, "a
rectitude, a fitness of benevolence to the soul and
the nature of things ; " we have the dislike for do-
ing wrong even more highly than our fathers had,
but in matters of religion we do not possess any-
thing more than what that great divine described
as " mere notional knowledge." The atmosphere
in which we live is so free, the field is so wide and
open, that we wander whither we will, with no
outside force to drive us into this corner or into

72 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

that. We know how hard it is to prove a thing,
and that after all our conclusions may be wrong.
Why then should we suffer or make others suffer
for a conclusion which at best has only some de-
gree of probability in its favour ?

Before notional knowledge can bear much fruit
it must be vivified by emotion. A man may hold
the belief in a general way that the celebration of
the Mass is, or is not, an idolatrous performance,
and according to his custom he may abstain from,
or assist at, its celebration. If by compulsion his
habitual practice is interfered with, then his re-
ligious emotion is aroused, and a whole continent
is aflame. That is the story of every religious
war. The passion for religion is dormant in us.
Nothing has occurred this century past to arouse
it ; but it stirs uneasily at times, and only requires
some rude shock to awaken it to full fury. It is
not dead but sleeping.

No task to which the historian can set his hand
is so difficult as the correct estimate of a situ-
ation which has become involved in religious
controversy, because in it the factors are so
numerous, and the things which are low and the
things which are high are so subtly mixed. The
task has in itself all the difficulties inherent in
the attempt to ascertain the truth about any

JOHN WINTHROP 73

event, whether occurring in times present, or in
times past, and to it is added the problem of deal-
ing with truth and falsehood uttered in passion.

" Truest poetry is most feigning " — we have
the authority of the greatest of poets for that ;
and the same observation is largely true of that
form of writing which is called historical. Indeed,
most history is most lying, and the mean between
two lies is not always the truth. The makers of
historical novels have reduced history writing to
its legitimate conclusion.

This difficulty of arriving at the truth of
matters which have happened in times past has
long been a favourite subject of reflection, even
for historians themselves, but they have not gone
to the length of admitting the impossibility of the
task. What, after all, is historical truth ? There
is, of course, something like it, something that
does duty in its stead ; and the most that can be
claimed is that the thing is a theory of history, as
theology is a theory of God.

The fact of the matter is that the truth about
things past cannot be ascertained. No two persons^
will agree about the occurrence of an incident in
a football match ; how then can more than two
persons agree about the series of events which is
called a battle, or the sequence of events which

74 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

is called war ? No person can tell the whole truth
about anything ; if two persons be employed upon
the task, the chance of arriving at the truth is
exactly halved. If historians are incapable of
ascertaining the truth about the things which they
have seen, how shall they tell us anything reliable
about the things that interested past generations
of men ? If the physician has some difficulty in
arriving at the diagnosis of a case when the
patient is alive, what chance is there, even with
the assistance of a pathologist, that his judgement
will be correct after their material has fallen
into dust? All written history then is merely
a probable or plausible explanation of what
occurred. Instead of the historian revealing the
past, his history only reveals the man who has
written it, his race, nationality, politics, religion,

# temperament, and character. An historian is
counted. great in so far as he can make the past
to live ; but if he can make it live he can also make

<S it lie. Historians are dramatists. They choose
their characters. They decide beforehand upon
the effect they intend to produce and adjust their
narrative accordingly; u for," as Montaigne
observed, " since the judgement leans to one side.
they cannot keep from turning and twisting the
narrative according to that bias."

JOHN WINTHROP 75

A new way to approach history is by the mathe-
matical method. A mathematician cares nothing
for truth ; he cares only for the relation of the
factors whose value he does know, or for the re-
sults that will come from certain assumptions
which he has made ; and, if a mathematically
minded person were to apply himself to history,
he would see at a glance that in dealing with
historical events he should have to employ the
method of assumption. He would devise some
symbol to represent the truth of the case, which
he would probably designate by the letter T ; he
would let t equal the time elapsed since the al-
leged occurrence of the incident, and n the num-
ber of narrators, h the coefficient depending upon
circumstances, and m a function varying directly
with the narrator's motive for lying. Out of
these elements, if that be the proper term to
employ, an ingenious historian might construct
a tentative formula for the solution of historical
problems.

The value which should be assigned to these
various factors would have to be determined by
what the mathematicians call "investigation."
The factor &, which is the coefficient of circum-
stance, would prove to be the most indefinite
element ; but one might begin by assigning to it

7G ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

a certain range of value, as between .01 for Froude,
to take an example, and .001 for Cotton Mather.
The range between what is considered reliability
and open mendacity would, however, not be very
great in any case. Enough has been said to indi-
cate the method, as the mathematicians them-
selves say, and it is put forward in all modesty
as a basis for a new essay in history. Whatever
be the ultimate result of the plan, it will prove
a fascinating exercise, assigning a value to these
coefficients in the case of the various representa-
tions of past events. One who was well acquainted
with Guizot said of him that the thing which he
knew only since morning he pretended to have
known from all eternity ; and another, who dis-
liked Voltaire, affirmed that his method was to
collect everything he knew to be false and write
it down as history. Obviously the value of the
coefficients as applied to these two writers would
not vary widely.

One of the most historically fascinating pro-
blems which has been presented to the human
mind is that which goes by the name of Puri-
tanism. The record of the series of events which
culminated in that phenomenon is open to every
enquirer ; and yet, even from an identic*] narra-
tion, two persons will come to an exactly opposite

JOHN WINTHROP 77

conclusion in respect of the essential nature of the
thing. To the one it will appear as a " panther,"
and its opposant a " milk-white hind, immortal
and unchanged ; " and we all know the hard things
which the New England divines were in the habit
of saying about " the black sons of the scarlet
woman," and of " the harlot who had her seat on
the seven hills of Eome." Probably in both cases
the factor which I have called a function varying
directly with the incentive for lying, has an identi-
cal value, and that a very large one.

If I were so far left to myself as to meddle
with the matter of Puritanism at large, I should
proceed according to the method outlined, tak-
ing into account the time elapsed, the number
of narrators, the variations in their narratives,
the value of the coefficient depending upon the
circumstances under which the accounts were
written, making a particular estimate of that
function which is concerned with the motive for
lying, and I should endeavour to reduce this
final equivalent to zero in the case under sup-
position. The present intention, however, is
merely to consider the personality of one wit-
ness,—John Winthrop, — and to endeavour to
ascertain the value of his evidence, as expressed
in his work, by establishing his character.

78 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

If we knew the heart of John Huss, John Cal-
vin, John Knox, Oliver Cromwell and his great
companions, as we know the heart of John Win-
throp, we should be down among the roots of
Puritanism. Knowing the heart of John Win-
throp, we know the essential nature of the New
England emigration, how it came about, and
what it meant to the world. His life is open
before us in his letters and journals, and with
a singular candour of spirit they give the fullest
expression to his most secret thought. We may
read in them of his self-consuming love, the bit-
terness of his grief and his overwhelming sorrow.
We have a faithful account of the process by
which he was led up to the greatest sacrifice
which a man can make, of wife, home, family,
and tradition. We may also read that he sent
men away from his judgement seat to be whipped,
because they held opinions contrary to his own.
Surely then it is worth while reducing to small
compass the presentment such a man makes of
himself, doing it faithfully, and continually test-
ing it by the abundant collateral information of
contemporary events which is accessible to us.

John Winthrop was born in 1588, the year in
which the Armada was defeated : and the gen-
eration which had witnessed that defeat also wit-

JOHN WINTHROP 79

nessed the forces for which the Armada stood,
entrenched behind the throne of England. The
descendants of those stout sailors were resolute
that they would not endure the thing, but they
differed in their method. To Cromwell and his
friends it seemed the most natural thing in the
world that they should take a sword in their
hands. To others the readiest way was to depart
over seas and make a new experiment in freedom.
John Winthrop was the leader and inspirer of
those who adhered to the latter view.

The first fact to establish in estimating a per-
sonality is the environment of the man ; his class,
and hence the habitual bent of his mind; his
family and friends; in short, his outlook upon
the world. In the letters of John Winthrop,
published in 1864 by Kobert Charles Winthrop,
fifth in descent from himself, we find as frontis-
piece a reproduction of a portrait of the First
Governor, " by Vandyke," and another in the
body of the book, " by Holbein," depicting his
grandfather, Adam Winthrop the second. This
portrait of Governor Winthrop is still to be seen
in the old Senate Chamber in the State House in
Boston, now used as a reception room. It cer-
tainly adorned the austere walls of the Govern-
or's New England home, and was given to the

80 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

" town house " by his eldest son. There is, of
course, no historical evidence that the portrait
was painted by Van Dyck, but certainly it does
possess many of the characteristics of that mas-
ter, — a fine sense of proportion, an elegance of
outline, and that precious blending of the figure
with the background in light, shade, and colour.
The picture by Holbein is in possession of the
widow of the Robert Winthrop before mentioned,
and rests on the walls of her house in New York,
38 East Thirty-Seventh Street. Of the authen-
ticity of this picture there seems to be no doubt,
even from an examination of the engraving,
which is done on copper in line and stipple. If
the portraits are authentic, it is significant of the
position of the Winthrop family in the social
order of England, though there is independent
evidence of that. From a note upon the subject
of these portraits, by R. C. Winthrop, Jr., one
would gain the impression that he was read-
ing a letter by the hand of the first Governor,
on account of the singular similarity of the
writing.

To this day we may read in the register of the
parish church of Groton an entry recording the
death of that Adam in 1562, and one may still
look upon his tomb graven with the family's name

JOHN WINTHROP 81

and arms. The family mansion, which adjoined
the church, has long since disappeared, but the
garden plot is still marked by the traditional
mulberry-tree, which reminds one of Professor
Masson's acute observation, recorded in his " Life
of Milton," that great men, wherever they go,
invariably plant mulberry-trees.

All this is more interesting to the descendants
of the Winthrops than it is to us, but even to us
it is significant of the position which the First
Governor occupied in the world. His father kept
a diary and almanac, from which we can recon-
struct the family life in its smallest detail, even
to the hanging of the " great mastiff e, a gentle
dog in the howse, but eyes oft blind." Winthrop's
mother wrote charming and scholarly letters to
her husband; curiously enough, one which remains
is written in French, and deals with the forward-
ing of a French bible. The family life was nobly
lived.

John Winthrop's youth was passed in the man-
ner proper to the son of an English gentleman of
those days. He went to Cambridge, and upon his
return he took up the duties and obligations of
his station in life. Long years afterwards, in the
New England fastness, he wrote an account of his
Christian experience, but we must not lay any

82 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

stress upon his confession, that in his youth " he
was very lewdly disposed, inclining unto all kinds
of wickedness, such as writing letters of mere
vanity." He protests, however, that he never
attained to the length of " swearing and scorning
religion/' All great and religious men have fallen
into this habit of self-accusation, and if we be-
lieved what the Apostle Paul and John Bunyan
tell us of their early lives, we should say that they
were well worthy of the galleys and the gaol.

There is a profound psychological reason for
this self-accusation, on the part of the great relig-
ious men of New England especially, and some
persons may endure reading it, if it be set down
shortly. Up to the time of Jonathan Edwards,
admission to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper
was more or less a social and political test, an
acknowledgement on the part of the authorities
that the communicants were free from the more
open forms of vice and from opinions hostile to
the welfare of the community. If a man commit-
ted adultery, or refused to pay his taxes, or spoke
slightingly of the ministers or magistrates, the
table was " fenced " against him, as we used to
say. If he observed the ordinary usages of the
society in which he lived, and kept his mouth
shut, no questions were asked. The Sacrament

JOHN WINTHROP 83

then was a means of grace, a converting ordinance,
out of which some good might come. Edwards's
own grandfather, the venerated Stoddard, adhered
to this view, which was the one openly recognized
in all the New England churches.

But from the beginning there was a secret dis-
sent from this practice, and many of the best men
felt in their hearts that coming forward to the
table was an open sign that the communicant had
attained to a newness of life, to a submission of
his will to the will of Grod, and a union of his
spirit with the spirit of God ; that, in short, it was
an affirmation of his justification, a proclaiming to
the world that he had undergone that mysterious
change commonly called conversion. Edwards's
own mother declined to come forward for ten
years after her marriage, until she had attained
to a full assurance of the completeness of that
change. As Edwards's ministry grew, he gave
entire assent to this awful significance of the
Communion, that men and women who took the
mysterious elements in their hands and partook of
them unworthily did but eat and drink damnation
to themselves. It was upon this vital question that
the great preacher was banished from Northamp-
ton still farther into the wilderness. In order,
then, to signify to themselves the completeness of

84 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

their conversion, and if possible its instantaneous-
ness, these good men were fond of dwelling upon
their early iniquity, in proof of their present justi-
fication. If sin did not exist, they were obliged to
create it, and that is the source of most religious
confessions from the time of Saint Paul to last
night's experience meeting.

It would be the business of a great writer and
the subject of a great book to trace the develop-
ment of John Winthrop's nature, as it grew from
strength to strength, to follow its course until
at length a great light dawned upon him, and he
saw in all its hideousness and nakedness the
stupidity and wickedness and sorrow in which his
country lay. The moment of that perception is
the starting point of all movements towards good.
In a complete record of AYinthrop's life we should
also find expression of his love and tenderness and
bitter sorrow over his own ; pity and concern for
his neighbours ; industry and energy in the dis-
charge of his public duty ; indignation and wrath
against those who were working prblic evil.

At length the time came when he was willing
to forsake all and pursue into the wilderness the
chimera of perfection. He drew up his reasons
for it, which were : to carry the gospel : M to pro-
vide tabernacles and food as a refuge for the

JOHN WINTHROP 85

church against the time she must fly," and for his
fellow men, " the most precious of all creatures,
who were become of less price than a horse or a
sheep." He saw " a whole continent lying waste,
whilst it was impossible for a good and upright
man to maintain his charge at home ; fountains
of learning were polluted," — in short, the time
had come.

There was a great correspondence and a furious
running to and fro, as when a company of bees
decides to swarm. In a letter to his " verye lov-
inge wife," dated October 20, 1629, Winthrop
writes : " So it is that it hath pleased the Lorde
to call me to a further trust in this business of
the Plantation (being chosen by the Company to
be their Governor). The only thinge that I have
comfort in, it is that hereby I have assurance
that the Lorde hath called me to this work."

Governor Winthrop's record of his voyage to
New England in the Arabella has the freshness
of narration which one observes in the account of
the casting away of that Alexandrine ship in
which Saint Paul sailed to Italy. Thus : " We
tacked again and stood W., but about noon the
wind came in full W. a very strong gale, so we
tacked again and stood N. and by E. ; at night
we took off the main course, and took in all our

86 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

sails save only the main and mizzen. The storm
continued all the next day, the wind as it was and
rainy. In the forenoon we carried our forecourse
and stood WSW., but in the afternoon we took
it in, the wind increasing and the sea grown very
high, so lying with the helm aweather we made
no way but as the ship drove." This was evi-
dently Winthrop's first adventure upon the sea,
for he takes note of everything ; how a tub in
which some fish were salting was overturned, how
a swallow, a wild pigeon, and another small land
bird perched in the rigging. He also observed
the decreasing declination of the pole-star, the
apparent smallness of the moon, and the contin-
ued coldness of the weather, no matter from which
quarter the wind blew.

A good discipline was observed on board the
Arabella ; that was the Governor's way. On the
third day out, whilst a fast was being observed,
two of the landsmen pierced a rundlet of strong
waters ; for this they were laid in bolts the whole
night through ; in the morning the principal of-
fender was openly whipped, and both were kept
upon bread and water for the day. Shortly after-
wards two young men fell at odds and the quarrel
ended in a fight. This, it appears, was contrary
to orders, which had been duly published, and the

JOHN WINTHROP 87

passionate fellows were adjudged to walk upon the
deck till night with their hands tied behind their
backs. Another young man, for using contempt-
uous speech in presence of the notable persons
on board, was also laid in bolts till he submitted
himself and presented open contrition for his
offence. The passengers must have been persons
of some consideration ; most of them were accom-
panied by servants; some bore titles ; and the daily
life was conducted with a degree of grandeur.

The discipline was impartial. Complaint was
made to the captain that one of his under-officers
had done grave injury to a landsman, whereupon
he was ordered to be tied by the hands with a
weight about his neck ; but at the strong inter-
cession of Winthrop the punishment was recalled ;
that was also Winthrop's gentle way. A much
more intricate case had to be adjudged. It ap-
pears that a servant of one of the Company had
sold to a child a box which was said to be worth
threepence, and made the excellent arrangement
that he should receive in lieu of a money payment
one biscuit a day whilst the voyage lasted. This
thrifty trader then sold the biscuits to his fellow
servants ; but when he had obtained about forty
biscuits, his sharp practice came to light, and he
was sentenced to have his hands tied to a bar,

88 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

a basket of stones was suspended about his neck,
and there he stood for two hours. That is the
earliest record of trade methods in the annals of
the United States.

The voyage of the Arabella was not free from
the miseries attendant upon sea travel in those
days, arising from want of room, sameness, if not
actual scantiness, of food, and sea-sickness. Com-
plaint was made by the captain " that the landsmen
were very nasty and slovenly, and that the gun-
deck where they lodged was so noisome with their
victuals and beastliness that the health of the
ship was endangered." The Governor " after
prayer " dealt with this also in his resolute way.

The remedy for the disorder of sea-sickness
then, as now, was indulgence in alcohol, and one
maidservant went so far with that prophylactic
measure as to become senseless. The Governor
observed, as many another transatlantic traveller
has done since, that it was a common fault
amongst grown people at sea to give themselves
to drink hot waters very immoderately. At the
end of a fortnight, many children, and adults too,
lay groaning in the cabins ; they were driven out
and were made to stand, some on each side of
a rope, which they swung up and down till they
were merry again — a pretty device against the

JOHN WINTHROP 89

malady. Other trivial exercises followed, in which
Winthrop noticed the usual tendency on the part
of sailors to play the wag with the passengers. •

In those days a ship was a little world ; children
were born and people died; the observances of
religion were attended to, and the voyage was
arranged as if it were never to end. Even on the
high seas small boats were continually passing
from ship to ship, to convey and accept invitations
to dinner, to procure the services of a midwife, to
borrow fresh water or hooks for Catching codfish.
One visitor at breakfast on board the Arabella
was Captain Burleigh, " a grave comely gentleman
of great age, who offered much courtesy and re-
ceived a salute of four shots out of the forecastle
for a farewell." He had been an old sea-captain
in Elizabeth's time, and being taken prisoner, was
kept in a Spanish dungeon for three years, but he
and his three sons were afterwards captains in
Roe's voyage. Another visitor encountered upon
the sea was Sir David Kirke, whose adventures in
Canada and Newfoundland entitle him to a place
amongst the English seamen of the sixteenth
century.

The voyage of the Arabella was not without its
spice of danger. It was threatened by what was
thought to be ten sail of Dunkirkers, and every

90 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

precaution was taken to meet them resolutely.
The officers took down some cabins which were in
the way of the ordnance, they threw overboard
everything which was subject to taking fire, hove
out the long-boats, put up the waist-cloths, and
served out arms and ammunition. Finally, when
the women had been sent below into a place of
safety, and all arrangements completed, Winthrop
and his company went to prayer upon the upper
deck, putting their trust in the Lord of Hosts and
" the courage of their Captain," as the recorder
was prudent enough to observe. The danger
from the elements, however, was a real one, and
the whole account of the voyage is one dismal
record of " stiff gales and stormy boisterous nights,
in which the sea raged and tossed exceedingly.',
The voyage lasted from Easter Monday, the 29th
of March, to the 12th of June, — 75 days. After
sighting Cape Sable and skirting the Maine coast,
the adventurers finally cast anchor inside Baker's
Island, and at two o'clock John Endicott, Gov-
ernor of Salem, came on board, all with due firing
of cannon, for the thing was done in proper fashion.
Governor Winthrop had begun his work.
Within forty days he had opened his court and
assisted at the ordination of a minister, elders and
deacons, and sent a man to prison for injuries

JOHN WINTHROP 91

offered to the Indians. Next he attacked social
problems, and by example and precept restrained
the intemperate use of drink.

Death, too, was busy. The Lady Arabella of
the house of Lincoln died within a few days of her
arrival in the country, and her husband a month
later. The people lay in tents and contracted
scurvy, of which many died, and for the first few
years we read continually that scores died on the
passage out. Men were drowned by the upsetting
of canoes, by falling through the ice, or were cast
away on the ledges and shoals that skirted the
coast. They were lost and frozen in the woods and
marshes, and sometimes were succoured and some-
times murdered by the Indians. The Governor
himself passed a night in the woods, but, " what
with gathering wood, what with walking to and
fro by the fire singing psalms," he wore away the
time.

Within twenty days of landing the Governor
makes this entry in his journal : " My son, Henry
Winthrop, was drowned at Salem." That is all,
and there it stands in its reticence and austerity.
Henry Winthrop was not a helpful son. He had
ventured to the Barbadoes as a planter, and there
he received such a letter from his father as many
another wandering son has deserved. Amongst

92 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

other things, he was told that the tobacco he had
sent home was " ill-conditioned, foul, full of stalks,
and evil-coloured." But now the boy was dead.

The father did not wince ; he had already looked
death in the face : " On Thursday in the night
she was taken with death, and about midnight
called for me. When I came to her she seemed
to be assured that her time was come and to be
glad of it. In the mean time she desired that the
passing bell might ring, and when the bell began
to toll, some said it was the four o'clock bell,
but she, conceiving that they sought to conceal
that it did ring for her, said there was no need
as she heeded it not and it did not trouble her.
At noon, when most of the company were gone
down to dinner, I discoursed with her of the
sweet love of Christ, and she showed by her
speeches and gestures her great joy and steadfast
assurance. When I told her that she should soon
see her Redeemer with those poor dim eyes, she
answered cheerfully; when I told her that the
day before was twelve months she was married
to me, I perceived she did mistake me. While
I spake to her she would lie still and fix her eyes
steadfastly upon me, and if I ceased a while, her
speech being gone, she would turn her head to-
wards me and stir her hands as well as she could,

JOHN WINTHROP 93

till I spake, and then would lie still again." The
Wednesday following she was buried in Groton
chancel, " and her child was laid with her."

We can form no estimate of what Winthrop
did, unless we are clear about what he aimed to
do. His object was to set apart a body of men
who entertained identical views as to their rela-
tion, purpose, and place in the eternal order of
things, and desired to subsist by the exercise of
their faculties, unhampered by influences which
lay beyond themselves. Winthrop did not formu-
late his purpose in these large words ; probably
he thought it would be best expressed by the
term " trading church."

To attempt such an enterprise was quite legiti-
mate and proper. Other colonies had been estab-
lished in the New World with as definite an
object in view. Virginia owed its existence to
the taste for tobacco, which European men had
acquired. Pennsylvania was settled by men who
believed that trade could be carried on with kind-
liness. Khode Island was a purely commercial
enterprise without much concern about religion
or charity. New Netherland was a single colony
seated on Manhattan Island, and it was most
concerned about rum and slaves. Albany was
a centre for the fur trade, anxious chiefly to keep

94 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

on good terms with the Indians. Even in Massa-
chusetts there were numerous colonies, each ani-
mated by its own guiding principle. The pil-
grims who settled in Plymouth, for example,
desired in reality the opportunity of worshipping
God in their own way. They were reasonably
willing that others should exercise the same
privilege and yet remain within the community.
The people of Boston entertained a different
view.

There are colonies, nearly as old as Winthrop's,
which exist to this day, and are yet admirably ful-
filling the purpose for which they were founded,
trading, paying dividends, and guarding their
rights to an exclusive commerce. The Hudson's
Bay Company has been in existence these three
hundred years. It was founded for a specific
purpose, and there is no evidence that its officials
have ever manifested an extreme degree of cor-
diality towards unauthorized persons, who would
interfere with them. Even the eminent philan-
thropist who is now at the head of that great
Company would probably not lay claim to any
great toleration of interlopers.

In accordance with this idea of a trading church,
a colony was established on the inner shore of
Massachusetts Bay, at Boston, and at Newtown,

JOHN WINTHROP 95

since called Cambridge. Those who were of like
mind with the founders were free to join. Those
who held contrary views were free to go else-
where, and no one was compelled to adopt the
ideas, or conform to the views which the majority
of the colonists entertained. When the church in
Salem was being set up, two persons protested
that they were dissatisfied. They were desired to
take ship and proceed to England. When Roger
Williams declared that he was not in harmony
with the principle upon which the community
was established, he was privately notified by Win-
throp that he was free to withdraw beyond the
jurisdiction of the Company and join with per-
sons whose views were more in accord with his
own. He followed this advice and set up for him-
self on Narragansett Bay. When Mrs. Hutchin-
son and her friends discovered their dissent, they
also were urged to depart. Some of the Com-
pany proceeded to New Hampshire and there
established towns. Others went to Rhode Island
and laid the foundations of Providence. From
these colonies in turn new dissenters went out
into the wilderness, and in new places found free-
dom of thought and action, with no interference
from their neighbours. The greatest exodus of
all was toward Connecticut, and there in reality

96 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

was laid the foundation of the United States as
we know it to-day. The movement was perfectly
free. Men who were dissatisfied with their strange
environment returned home, or sought refuge in
some other community ; or, failing to find satis-
faction there, they boldly sat down by themselves.
There is a provision in many seeds for their
dissemination. In like manner the seeds of Puri-
tanism were sown broadcast throughout New
England.

The proceedings of that court in London at
which the new governor was chosen were not so
transparent as might appear. The thing was
a revolt. The Massachusetts Company was at the
mercy of the King whilst its headquarters re-
mained in London, so they resolved to transfer
legally the whole government beyond the seas.
Once entrenched behind the rocks of New Eng-
land they considered themselves safe. They wen
safe, and are to this day. It was John AVinthrop
who did it.

However the emigrants might attempt to dis-
guise it from themselves, the exodus was a revolt
from the church and state of England, as sincere,
if not as open, as the rebellion of Cromwell. The
formal declaration of their intention was post-
poned, it is true, for a century and a half, but

JOHN WINTHROP 97

the events which culminated in 1776 were only
the culmination of events which began to operate
long before 1620. The American Kevolution, we
know, was in no sense the last desperate effort
of despairing men, groaning under oppression
and goaded by tyranny. No men of English
breed have ever groaned or been goaded long;
they always looked to the matter with the first
weight or the first thrust. They, at least, — what-
ever the Hebrews of Lower Asia did, — always
could and always did kick against the pricks.
The New England exiles were no oxen. Their
rebellion was systematic, and was so understood
in England.

Once they were safely over sea the minds of
the colonists quickly grew familiar with the idea
of an absolute separation. As early as the year
1634 all the ministers in the colony met at Bos-
ton, at the summons of the Governor and assist-
ants, to consider what ought to be done if a gov-
ernor-general were sent from England ; and they
agreed that " in such an event we ought not to
accept him, but defend our lawful possessions, if
we were able, otherwise to avoid or protract."
That is the way of success in all rebellions, to
defend our lawful possessions if we are able,
otherwise to avoid or protract.

98 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Not all the inhabitants were of this politic
mind, or the magistrates either. John Endicott,
Governor of Salem, with his sword slashed the
red cross of Saint George from the banner of
England, and so left no doubt of the political
and religious sentiments which he entertained.
The court was wise enough to notice the incident,
but because they could not agree, the case was
deferred till the next general meeting. The com-
missioners for military affairs gave order, " for
the meantime," that all ensigns should be laid
aside. At the next meeting a suspiciously formal
enquiry was made, and Endicott was adjudged
worthy of admonition, on the grounds that, w> if
he judged the cross to be a sin, he did content
himself to have reformed it at Salem alone, not
taking care that others might be brought out of
it also, laying a blemish upon the magistracy, as
if they would suffer idolatry, and give occasion to
the State of England to think ill of us." No men-
tion was made of the offence itself, but the magis-
trates undertook to write to England in this
sense, " expressing our dislike of the thing, yet
with as much wariness as we might, signifying
that though we were very clear that the fact, as
concerning the manner, was very unlawful."

The possibility of an attempt to force a gov-

JOHN WINTHROP 99

ernor-general upon the colonists was ever before
their eyes. The colony was not five years old
when tidings were received of the commission
issued to the Archbishops and ten of the Council
to regulate all plantations, to call in patents, to
make laws, and raise tithes. They were advised
at the same time that ships and soldiers were
on the way to compel them by force to receive
a governor and the discipline of the Church of
England. All this occasioned the magistrates to
" discover their minds to each other, which grew
to this conclusion, that five hundred pounds more
were raised to hasten our fortifications."

When war finally broke out between Cromwell
and the King, the interest which the colonists
took in the matter was purely academic, or rather
theological. At a court in 1644, Captain Jenyson,
whose military and political qualifications are set
forth with singular enthusiasm, was brought to
task for questioning the lawfulness of the Parlia-
mentary proceedings in England. He made the
ingenious defence that being a church member
he should first have been dealt with in a private
way, and the magistrates came under censure for
their precipitancy. The culprit satisfied both sides
by " professing that he was assured that those of
the Parliament side were the more godly, and

LofC.

100 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

though if he were in England, he might be doubt-
ful which side he should take, yet if the King or
any party should attempt anything against this
Commonwealth, he should make no scruple to
spend estate and life and all in his defence against
them." That was in the true New England spirit,
so Captain Jenyson "was dismissed to further
consideration." Loyalty to them was no blind un-
reasoning fealty. At an earlier court than that in
which Captain Jenyson was dismissed to further
consideration a scruple arose about the oath
which the magistrates were to take, — " you shall
bear true faith and allegiance to our Sovereign
Lord, King Charles." After due consideration it
was " thought fit to omit that part of it for the pre-
sent;" which was avoiding and protracting again.
AVhen the King finally made his submission
to the Parliament, the colonists were advised to
44 send over some one to solicit for them, the
Parliament giving hope that they might attain
much ; " but these wily old Puritans, having con-
sulted about it, " declined the motion on the
grounds that if they should put themselves under
the protection of the Parliament, they must then
be subjected to all sueh laws as the Parliament
might impose, in which ease it might prove very
prejudicial to them."

JOHN WINTHROP 101

The fact of the matter is that the colonists
regarded themselves as independent from the
first moment of setting foot upon New England
soil, and from that moment their every effort was
directed towards some form of government which
should meet their new conditions. At length, in
1639, by the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,
a state government was called into existence. A
general republic was created, composed of three
towns, with equality of representation, with a
governor and upper house, elected by a plurality
of votes. In none of the articles of this Constitu-
tion was the slightest mention made of any coun-
try or any sovereign beyond the seas. Nor were
there any theoretical considerations of equality
and liberty. The thing was taken for granted.
The towns and their inhabitants were the re-
positories of all authority. Finally, in 1643, all
the inhabitants between the seacoast and the Con-
necticut River prepared to bind themselves into
a confederacy, of which the articles were most ex-
plicit, and gave no account of any allegiance owed
to any other country whatever.

Nothing was further from Winthrop's mind
than the establishment of a " democracy " in the
new world. He had another purpose entirely,
which was to establish an absolute community of

102 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

church and state ; but he was soon to learn that
his project was impracticable. He turned away
from it quickly and endeavoured to find a new
and better way. This hesitancy of mind between
the old and the new explains his mingled severity
and kindliness, his conciliation and repression,
his untried experiments, and his holding fast to
that which he knew.

Once Winthrop had cast aside the old theo-
cratic idea of government, he had to feel his way
between the bigotry of Endicott, the rashness
of Dudley, and the foolishness of John Cotton ;
between the sheer obstinacy of the elders and
magistrates on the one hand, and the recalci-
trancy of the people on the other. If we would
follow the tortuous course of early New England
history, we must take John Winthrop for our
guide. We should find the Governor now lead-
ing, now following, at one time stumbling over
justification by faith, again turning aside from a
covenant of works, and always with the hesitancy
of a man who has left behind the guiding prin-
ciple which had once been so sufficient for him.

It would require a great expanse of writing,
and it might not be worth the trouble, if one
were to enter into the interminable debates in
which are found the mutual recriminations of

JOHN WINTHROP 103

these bewildered legislators, and to describe all
the provisional conventions by which their dis-
agreements were temporarily composed. The
most we can do is to survey the main obstacles
which Winthrop encountered in his efforts to
govern New England.

Under ordinary circumstances the historical
records of any community fall into four divisions,
according as they deal with autocracy, oligarchy,
hierarchy, and the final rule of the people. That
has ever been the course of human events, from
despotism to the government by a few, from that
to priestly control, and then a gradual enlargement
until all have obtained a due share. It is usually
only by slow stages that the freemen arrive at
any share in the control of public affairs. It is
only by winning their rights that the people prove
their right to possession, and by holding them
that they establish their ability to hold that which
they have won. These people had been cast upon
a foreign shore, without any body of opinion or
law for the government either of church or of
state. Accordingly, the government was purely
a despotism, and that is the only method by which
a primitive community can be governed. John
Winthrop was the despot, and it is fortunate that
it was so, for he was quick to realize the inevit-

104 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

ableness of the final conclusion. So, in New
England the stages of advance were short and
the progress rapid. Governor Winthrop was too
wise, the magistrates were too feeble, the min-
isters were too foolish, and the people were too
resolute, to permit of the issue being long de-
layed. Indeed, the stages were so short that no
one system had time to become well organized.
Neither the Governor, the magistrates, nor the
ministers ever got beyond a pretension to au-
thority, and that pretension was continually being
disputed. Indeed, there were practically only two
divisions. The Governor, the magistrates, and
the ministers stood together, and quarrelled only
incidentally ; the common people were in opposi-
tion to all three. This is true in the main, but it
is easy to find instances of the Governor's irrita-
tion against the magistrates, and against the
ministers, and those two bodies often called him
to task.

As early as 1635 there was a strong feeling in
the church of Boston against the Governor, and
the members were earnest with the elders to have
him called to account. But he took occasion to
forestall them by stating openly that if he had
been called to account he should have desired
first to advise with the elders whether the church

JOHN WINTHROP 105

had power to call in question a proceeding of the
civil court ; and second, he would have consulted
with the rest of the court whether he might dis-
cover their concerns in the assembly. Though
he affirmed " that the elders and some others did
know already that the church could not enquire
into the justice and proceedings of the court, he
would go as far as to further declare his mind
upon the matter." He showed that if the church
had such power they must have it from Christ ;
but Christ disclaimed it in his practice ; and
though Christ's kingly power was in his church,
it was not that kingly power whereby he is King
of Kings and Lord of Lords. Further, he would
submit that if in pursuing the course of justice,
though the thing were unjust, yet he was not
accountable to them.

A book was brought into court wherein the
institution of the standing council was pretended
to be a sinful innovation. The Governor ruled
to have the contents of the book examined, and if
there appeared cause, to enquire after the author.
But the greater part of the court having some
intimation of the author, and being friendly to
him, would not consent to the Governor's pro-
posal.

The ministers ruled that no member of the court

106 ESSAYS IX PURITANISM

ought to be publicly questioned by the church for
any speech in the court, without the license of the
court ; " that in all such heresy and errors of any
church members, as are manifest and dangerous
to the state, the court may proceed without tarry-
ing for the church ; but if the opinions be doubt-
ful they are first to refer them to the church."
Shortly afterward, Mr. Wheelwright was brought
up to be questioned for a sermon which seemed to
tend to sedition, whereupon nearly all the church
of Boston presented a petition to the court for
two things ; that as freemen they might be pre-
sent in cases of judicature, and that the court
should declare if it might deal in cases of con-
science in advance of the church. This was taken
as a groundless and presumptuous act, and was
rejected with the answer, " that the court had
never used to proceed but it was openly, but for
matter of consultation and preparation they might
and would be private." There was so much heat
and contention that it was moved that the next
court should be kept at Cambridge, but that
resolution came to nothing.

Upon one occasion the Governor and council
countermanded an expedition against the Narra-
gansetts, and some of the people protested. The
Governor denied the right to protest, but after-

JOHN WINTHROP 107

wards lie permitted the expedition to proceed
" rather to satisfy the people than for any need
that appeared." The Governor was continually
taking offence at the interference of the ministers,
though he admitted their right to proceed in
what he called a churchlike way. At one general
court for elections a disturbance resulted upon
some question of procedure. There was great
danger of an open tumult, " for those of one side
grew into fierce speeches, and some laid hands on
others, but seeing themselves too weak they grew
quiet." The people of Boston elected deputies
who were disliked by the court, and the magis-
trates found means to send them back home alleg-
ing that two of the freemen had no notice of the
election, and so they declared the election void.
The people of Boston next morning returned the
same deputies, "and the court not finding how
they might reject them, they were admitted."
Charles the First had not so much sense.

Again, the deputies proposed that all affairs of
the Commonwealth, in the vacation of the general
court, should be transacted by a commission of
seven magistrates and three deputies. The magis-
trates ruled that the court alone should treat of
those affairs, and the freemen replied that the
Governor and assistants had no power but what

108 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

was given them by the general court. The whole
situation was finally summed up by one of the
deputies who protested: "Then you will not be
obeyed."

The question of the relation of one authority
to another finally culminated " in a great busi-
ness which fell out upon a very small occasion,"
commonly known in New England annals as the
" sow business." It appears that there was a
stray sow in Boston, which was brought to one
Captain Kaine ; he had it cried abroad and sev-
eral came to see it, but none claimed it for nearly
a year. But Captain Kaine had a sow of his own,
which, when the time was ripe, he killed in the
usual way. Then the wife of one Sherman, who
alleged that she had lost a sow, came to examine
the stray animal and had to admit that it was not
hers. Then she resorted to the feminine strata-
gem of alleging that the sow which had been
killed probably belonged to her. The matter was
brought before the elders of the church as a
cause of offence. Many witnesses were examined
and Captain Kaine was declared innocent. The
woman brought the case to another court, where
the man was again cleared, and was allowed
twenty pounds against the complainant for slan-
der. The matter was opened up again in the

JOHN WINTHROP 109

Salem court, and the best part of seven days was
spent in examining witnesses and debating the
case. But even then no decision could be arrived
at, for the deputies voted one way and the magis-
trates the other. The upshot of the matter was
that in 1644, " upon the motion of the deputies,
it was ordered that the court should be divided
in their consultations, the magistrates by them-
selves and the deputies by themselves ; what the
one agreed upon they should send to the other,
and if both agreed then to pass, etc." The founda-
tion of the government of the United States was
laid, and it was not laid in blood. That is John
Winthrop's claim to greatness. Had the Stuarts
been as wise, they would have been upon the
throne of England at this day.

It took the world a long time, it took the min-
isters of religion a longer time, to learn what was
their true relation to the state. There have been
occasions when there was no other body than the
church which was competent to carry on the gov-
ernment or the ordinary business of a civilized
society. That happened when the Roman Em-
pire went to pieces ; it happened again when the
New England colonists found themselves in a
new world, an unorganized mass of humanity.
It took Europe eighteen centuries to learn the

110 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

difference between the sword of the flesh and
the sword of the spirit, and the lesson is not well
learned yet. New England learned the first rudi-
ments in eighteen years. The history of those
eighteen centuries is in large part a record of the
attempt of the church to perform the duties of gov-
ernment, and, when that failed, of its insistence
that it should tell the rulers and then the people
what they should do, and how they ought to do it.
It is only within our own time that the church
has learned that its business is to deal with every
political event, not in relation to the kingdom of
this world, but in relation alone to the kingdom
of God. The first Governor of Massachusetts
saw in a glass darkly, but what he saw was enough
for his sane mind, and he laid a foundation of
knowledge, which is yet the basis of government
in the United States, and always will be.

The next difficulty was the need of a body of
fundamental laws, and Mr. Cotton and other
ministers were called in to the assistance of the
magistrates. The best Mr. Cotton could do was
to present a "model of Moses, his judicials," but
the magistrates had the wisdom to take them into
further consideration till the next court. The
people considered their position unsafe, whilst so
much power rested in the discretion of the magis-

JOHN WINTHROP 111

trates ; and yet, for very weighty reasons, " most
of the magistrates and some of the elders were
not very forward in the matter." Their hesi-
tancy was based upon the soundest consideration
of policy. In their judgement there was a " want
of sufficient experience of the nature and con-
dition of the people, considered in relation to
the condition of the country and other circum-
stances." They conceived that the only sound
laws are those which arise pro rei natura ; the
fundamental laws of England arose in that way ;
under their charter they were expressly denied
the right of making laws repugnant to the laws
of England, and the laws of England they would
not have. Therefore they preferred to " avoid
and protract," and so they would have none.
They would permit of no set penalties even for
such offences as lying and swearing ; but their
reluctance in this case probably arose from the
determination of the magistrates that their au-
thority should not be lessened or taken away.
The deputy governor at this time was Mr.
Dudley, " a wise and stout gentleman, who would
not be trodden under foot by any man," but in
the end even he was compelled to become amen-
able to the hundred laws, which came to be
known as the Body of Liberties.

112 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

The casual reader of New England history
gains the impression that the church and state
were identical ; as sometimes happens, the casual
reader is wrong. The church was one with the
state only incidentally, and that for a very short
period.

The resolution of the people that they would
have none of clerical control is amply revealed in
the Congregationalism of the early churches. It
was the custom of the ministers to meet once a
fortnight at different houses in turn. Roger Wil-
liams took exception to this practice, fearing it
might in time grow into a presbytery, but all were
clear in their minds that the fear was groundless,
inasmuch as " no church or person can have power
over another church." Yet the churches were
bound by an agreement to assist each other by
what was called advice, and they had frequent re-
sort to it. On one occasion there was a difference
between the church of Charlestown and their
pastor, Mr. James, who, it appears, was a very
melancholic man and full of causeless jealousies,
for which he had been dealt with publicly and
privately. Chosen men, mostly elders, were sum-
moned from various churches, and they agreed
that the melancholic minister should be cast out,
if he persisted in his course.

JOHN WINTHROP 113

Again, it was proposed to begin a new church in
Dorchester, and the inhabitants desired the appro-
bation of the other churches, but permission was
refused, on the allegation that the applicants had
builded their comfort of salvation upon unsound
grounds, some upon dreams and ravishes of spirit
and by fits, others upon the reformation of their
lives, others upon duties and performances. En-
quiring further into the nature of this apostasy
the elders discovered three especial errors : that
the residents in Dorchester had not come to hate
sin because it was sinful, but because it was hurt-
ful ; that they had made use of Christ only to help
their own imperfections ; that they expected to
believe through some power of their own. The
inhabitants of Woburn, " a village at the end of
Charlestown bounds," had gathered a church and
were about to ordain a minister. They would not
permit the elders of any other church to assist, lest
it might be an occasion of introducing a depend-
ency of churches, and then a presbytery, so they
ordained their own minister. The Governor dis-
closes his own opinion in the remark, that the
function was performed " not so well and orderly
as it ought."

The undercurrent of revolt against hierarchy
was at all times strong. The money demanded of

114 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

the people for the support of the church was great
in proportion to their means, and it was usually
raised by a direct tax. " which was very offensive
to some." That we can well believe. One Bris-
tow, of "VVatertown, " who had his barn burnt,"
AYinthrop observes, as if there was some con-
nection between the contumaciousness of the man
and the destruction of his property, being grieved
because he and others who were not church mem-
bers were taxed, wrote a book against the imposi-
tion. That was ever the New England way — to
write a book. Winthrop admits that the man's
arguments were weighty ; but he could not be
permitted to cast reproach upon the elders and
magistrates, so he was convented before the court.
With perfect fairness nothing was required of
him in respect of his arguments, but he was fined
ten pounds "for some slighting of the court. "

The casual reader is in possession of another
misconception — that the greater part of the colo-
nial activity was consumed in theological con-
troversy. This current misapprehension of the
actual state of affairs which prevailed in that
period of expansion arises from the fact that the
persons who were mixed up in theology, and con-
sequently in dissensions, left most painstaking
records of their proceedings, whilst the trad«

JOHN WINTHROP 115

rum, fish, cattle, ships, and negroes were content
to carry on their enterprise in silence. A reader
of the jargon in the Wall Street edition of to-
day's newspaper, or of the proceedings of a Meth-
odist Conference, a Presbyterian Assembly, an
Episcopal Synod, or a political convention, would
get a very definite notion of some things which are
going on in the world, but he would be astute
enough not to be led into thinking that the events
therein recorded concerned the people at large.

There was, however, so much bickering over re-
ligious matters, and they yet loom so large, that
we must endeavour to gain some notion of the pro-
blems in divinity which agitated the little com-
munity, and a dull business it will be. Looking at
the matter broadly, the whole contention turned
upon the meaning of Sanctification and Justifica-
tion. To us the question presents no difficulty ;
but it must be kept in mind that we have the
Shorter Catechism in our hands, and this sum of
saving knowledge was not devised for some fifteen
years after the period of which we are speaking.
It is hard for a Calvinist to realize that there ever
was a period in the world's history devoid of the
blessings inherent in that work. Had those
seekers after truth but apprehended the simplicity
of the thing — that justification is an act and

116 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

sanctification a work, that effectual calling in the
Catechism is placed textually before both, and
adoption between them — many a sincere disput-
ant would have been spared the whipping-post,
the prison, and the wintry forest. But these things,
which have been revealed to us, it was not suffered
unto Winthrop to know. As a result, the com-
munity was divided into two parties, as distinct as
Catholics and Protestants in other countries,
namely, those who were under a covenant of grace
and those who were under a covenant of works.
It was Arminianism and Calvinism in one of their
opposing aspects.

With the appearance of the Shorter Catechism
a great calm fell upon the religious world. At
least one hundred and seven questions were dis-
posed of; whether settled right or wrong, they
were settled ; but it required the united skill of
the theologians of two kingdoms, and Cromwell,
to keep the peace between them, whilst they were
engaged upon the task. With these two fundamen-
tals, Justification and Sanctification, undecided,
it is easy to understand the minor errors which
would accompany or flow from that state of un-
certainty. The conditions in New England grew
so bad by the year 1(331 that a great diet or
assembly was held at Cambridge, or Newtown as

JOHN WINTHROP 117

it was then called, to which came all the teach-
ing elders throughout the country, and some who
were newly arrived out of England. A summary
was presented of the opinions which were spread
abroad ; they were eighty in number, " some
blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe."
These were condemned by the whole assembly,
and all present subscribed their names, some
protesting even whilst they signed. As this body
of error was revealed in all its grossness, many
took offence, as if it were a reproach laid upon
the country, and they insisted that the persons
should be named who held these errors. Upon
the refusal of the moderators to bring the errors
home to individuals, the delegates from Boston
departed and came no more to the assembly.

So far as one can make out there were five main
points in question between Mr. Cotton and Mr.
Wheelwright on one side, Winthrop and the elders
taking the opposite side. It is worth while setting
forth these questions, to illustrate the temper of
the persons who became excited over such things,
and thought they understood them. The first was,
whether persons are united with Christ before the
stage of active faith ; the second was, of course,
about the evidence of justification ; the third, that
the new creature is not the person of the believer,

r)

118 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

but a body of saving grace in such an one ; the
fourth, that God does not justify a man before
he is effectually called ; and the fifth, that Christ
and his benefits may be offered to a man who is
under a covenant of works, " but not in or by
a covenant of works."

In handling these questions both parties deliv-
ered their arguments in writing. These were
read in the assembly, and afterwards the respect-
ive answers were given, and a decision taken.
As soon as these monsters were expelled, the
assembly determined to drive out the little foxes
also. The women of Boston were giving trouble
as early as 1631, and it appears there was a set
of sixty persons which met every week to listen
to their leader, " who took upon herself the whole
exercise in a prophetic way." Her misconduct
was declared to be disorderly and without rule.
In this the Governor concurred. There was a
practice of asking questions after the sermon,
and under cover of the question occasion would
be taken to revile the elders, and to reproach the
ministers and magistrates. This subtle device
was also utterly condemned.

There was great hope that this assembly would
have some good effect in pacifying the dissensions
about matters of religion, but " it fell out other-

JOHN WINTHROP 119

wise ; " for though Mr. Wheelwright and his party-
had been clearly confounded and confuted, they
persisted in their opinions ; they were as busy as
ever in nourishing their principles and drew up
a petition affirming their truth. The general
court, which assembled some time after, took
the matter up. One of the recalcitrants was dis-
franchised and banished, and word was sent to
Boston that deputies must be sent who would be
more amenable to argument ; but the town per-
sisted in sending the same deputies. The end of
it was that Mr. Wheelwright was disfranchised
and banished. He appealed to the King. The
appeal was not allowed to lie, and he was given
fourteen days to remove himself out of the juris-
diction. Nor did the valiant Captain Underhill
escape, for he with some five or six others was
disfranchised, and they were removed from their
public places. The court ordered that all those
who had subscribed to these doctrines and would
not acknowledge their fault should be disarmed.
The church in Boston did not receive this
chastisement with a good grace, and proceeded
to call the Governor to account. He forestalled
them, however, by opening up the question of the
jurisdiction of the civil court over the church.
He proved his case by referring to Uzzia, to Asa,

120 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

who put the prophet in prison, to Solomon, who
removed Abiathar from the priesthood, and finally
justified the banishment by the example of Lot,
and by the sending away of Hagar and Ishmael.
At Roxbury, also, the church proceeded on simi-
lar lines, and spent many days in public meetings
to bring the petitioners to a comprehension of the
full enormity of their sin, but the best they could
do was to cast them out of the church. At Wey-
mouth, however, the elders had better results in
reconciling the differences between the people.

The errors cited above were merely the more
open and notorious, but it appears that there
were many secret opinions which were scarcely
less tolerable ; some went so far as to hold that
there was no inherent righteousness in a child
of God ; that neither absolute nor conditional
promises belonged to the Christian ; that the
Sabbath was but as other days ; that the soul
was mortal till it was united to Christ : and
finally that there was no resurrection of the body.
The town of Providence appears to have been the
head centre for the propagation of these evils,
and it was ordered that if any of the residents
were found within the jurisdiction of Boston,
they should be sent home and charged to come
there no more under pain of imprisonment.

JOHN WINTHROP 121

It would be tedious to enumerate all the ques-
tions which agitated the community ; that faith
is a cause of justification ; that the letter of the
Scripture holds forth a covenant of works, and
its spirit a covenant of grace ; that a man might
have special communion with Jesus Christ and
yet be damned. It would be more tedious still
to enumerate all the attempts that were made to
solve the doubts. To Mr. Cotton, sixteen points
were presented in writing, and all business of
the court was put off for three weeks, that
they might bring matters to an issue. Looking
at the matter narrowly, these incidents were
merely church quarrels, such as happen even yet
in every Protestant community, and never gain
a wider currency than in tea-table talk or village
scandal. In the early days they were the subject
matter of history, because the church was inci-
dentally the state. The place of these contentions
is now taken by the equally trivial matters which
transpire in the corridors of legislative halls, or
in the secret meetings of small politicians. The
indwelling of the Holy Ghost is as profitable a
subject of discussion as many of the political
theories which are now agitating the public mind.

We should not fail to take note of another of
Winthrop's main difficulties, which was the men-

122 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

tal disorderliness of the people, at times amount-
ing to actual hysteria. Strong emotion acting upon
a weak mind always produces disorder. In this
case it was the religious emotion. It fell with full
force, and even normal minds were affected by it.
The mind of the Governor himself was influenced
by it, but its worst effects were witnessed in the
case of women and children. A woman of the
Boston Congregation, having been in much
trouble of mind about her spiritual state, at length
grew into bitter desperation ; she could endure the
uncertainty no longer, and decided to set the
matter for ever at rest ; so one day she took her
infant child and threw it into a well, saying now
she was sure she would be damned. It is always
a mark of a disordered mind in a woman, when
she manifests excessive concern about her own
soul, or any concern whatever about the souls of
persons outside of her own household. Of course,
very few women went to the extreme of throwing
their children into wells, but sixty women of Bos-
ton used to meet together every week to M resolve
questions of doctrine.''

At Providence also, " the devil was not idle :
men's wives claimed liberty to go to all religious
meetings, though never so often." A meeting was
organized to censure a domestic tyrant named

JOHN WINTHROP 123

Udrin, and some were of opinion "that if he
would not suffer his wife to have her liberty, the
church should dispose her to one who would use
her better." One Greene, who spoke out of the
fulness of his experience, for he had married a
woman " whose husband was then living, and no
divorce," gave testimony to a phenomenon with
which we are not entirely unfamiliar, "that if
they should restrain their wives, all the women
in the country would cry out against them." The
devil — that was Winthrop's interpretation of
the spirit which was at work — continued to dis-
turb the peace through his agent, the wife of a
Salem man named Oliver. As an indication of
her obstinacy of nature, Winthrop notes that
whilst in England she would not bow her knee
even at the name of Jesus.

This woman stood up in the church on Sacra-
ment Day and demanded the sacred elements,
" and would not forbear before Mr. Endicott did
threaten to send the constable to put her forth."
This went on for five years, and in the end the
woman was adjudged to be whipped, which was
certainly an extreme measure.

This abnormal excitability has not yet dis-
appeared from the expanded New England com-
munity now known as the United States, and

124 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

some have thought that they have witnessed its
manifestations in many other quarters than those
in which women dwell. It does not require a very
acute or trained observer to detect the operations
of that spirit in the church, in the colleges, in
schools and in homes, in the legislatures, in the
newspapers and in the political assemblies, in the
streets, in offices, and at the lunch counter. It is
easily traceable from the beginning, at times con-
tracted and insignificant, and again broadening
out till the normal structure of society was almost
entirely replaced by the horrid growth. It was
seen at its worst during the period of the witch-
craft delusion, to a less extent during the
Edwardean revivals and in the early forties, and
again at the outbreak of the Spanish War and
through the whole course of the Philippine opera-
tions. It would not be hard either to trace its
effect upon the lives of individuals, even down to
the time of Abraham Lincoln and Henry Ward
Beecher. One of them it slew, and the other it
almost brought to the ground. Unfortunately, in
Beecher's time there was no Governor Winthrop
in Plymouth church, with whip and cleft stick.

The head and front of this revolt of the women
was Mrs. Hutchinson, M a woman of ready wit and
bold spirit," and she was allied with a party

JOHN WINTHROP 125

which almost rent the community in twain, by-
insisting that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells
in a justified person. To the disgust of the
Governor, meetings and conferences had to be
held. Mrs. Hutchinson at first appears to have
had her own way, though she did make the
unwilling reservation that the indwelling of the
Holy Ghost might not amount to a personal union.
The heresy spread ; more meetings were held, and
the matter was concluded by a conference, "in
which there appeared some bitterness of speech."
As the speech stands before us, the bitterness is
apparent, but the sense is not, though the last
sentence of the reported utterance contains 126
words and three sets of brackets. But the temper
of the magistrates was up. Mrs. Hutchinson was
arraigned upon the definite charge of alleging
that none of the ministers, save Mr. Cotton, were
preaching a covenant of free grace. After "many
speeches to and fro, she could contain herself no
longer, but gave vent to revelations," portending
evil to the young community. That was her real
offence, and she too was banished; but because
it was the winter time, they committed her to
a private house, with permission only for her own
friends and the elders to visit her. Though the
opinions which she entertained do not appear very

126 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

dangerous to us, they may have appeared so to
the persons who understood those things.

In all these religious strivings we are apt to
lose sight of the actual business that was being
done in New England ; but, fortunately, we are not
left without information of the attitude of the
common people towards the sea of strife in which
the politico-theologians were involved. The people
at large are never much concerned about anything
else than that out of which their livelihood comes.

The movement of population was most remark-
able. Within six weeks in the year 1635, fourteen
ships arrived with "store of passengers and
cattle ; " sloops, shallops, and small boats of all
kinds were passing from island to island, with
mares, heifers, goats, and sheep ; traders were
coming to port with beaver skins, corn and hemp,
sugar, strong waters, tobacco, and other com-
modities ; whole communities, men, women, and
children, swine and cattle, were migrating in all
directions to find new places in which they might
" sit down." Ships were built to prosecute the
whale and herring fishery ; trade was opened with
neighbouring colonies and witli Virginia, the
West Indies, and the ports of Spain. Wars were
prosecuted against the Indians, against one or
other of the French factions which claimed inter-

JOHN WINTHROP 127

est about the Bay of Fundy, and provision was
made against attack by the Dutch, the Spaniards,
or England herself.

Besides all this, there were continual adven-
tures by sea and by land undertaken by adven-
turous soldiers, which betray anything else than
the traditional temper of religious sectaries.
Thomas Wanerton was " a stout man and had
been a soldier, but for many years he had lived
very wickedly in whoredom, drunkenness, and
quarrelling ; he had of late come under some ter-
rors and motions of the spirit by means of the
preaching of the word," but he succeeded in
shaking them off, and with twenty men undertook
an attack upon Penobscot, which was held by
D'Aulnay in opposition to La Tour. It does not
matter what the issue of the attack was, save that
" there was a knocking at the door with swords
and pistols ready, and a great deal of shooting
backwards and forwards."

Two new ships, the one of 250 tons, built at
Cambridge, the other of 200 tons, built in Boston,
set sail for the Canaries on the same day, laden
with pipe-staves and fish. Upon another day five
ships sailed from Boston, three of them built in
that port, two of which were of 300 tons burthen.
The following day a ship arrived from Teneriffe

128 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

with a freight of wine, pitch, sugar, and spices,
and a ketch of 30 tons, bought from the French,
which was ready to sail for Trinidad, blew up in
the harbour.

The first ship built in Boston was the Trial,
of 160 tons, Thomas Graves, master, M an able
and a godly man." This small craft was contin-
ually going and coming to Bilboa with fish ;
thence to Malaga; back to Boston with wine,
fruit, oil, iron, and wool ; then to trade with La
Tour, and so along the eastern coast towards
Canada. The launching of this ship was attended
with religious services, and Mr. Cotton was in-
vited to discourse before the " divers godly sea-
men " who formed the crew. Their godliness did
not interfere with their enterprise, for they sailed
to Fayal, where they found an "extraordinary
good market " for their stores and fish ; there
they took on board wine and sugar for the West
Indies, which they exchanged for cotton and
tobacco in the port of Saint Peter's. During their
stay they engaged in an enterprise of salvage, ami
by the help of a diving-tub took up forty guns,
anchors, and cables ; so with some gold and sil-
ver, which they got by trade, they sailed away
for Boston, and through the Lord's UesSU
Winthrop alleges, "they made a good voyage.

JOHN WINTHROP 129

which did much encourage the merchants, and
made wine and sugar and cotton very plentiful
and cheap in the country."

Winthrop's journal bears upon nearly every
page evidence of the extraordinary vitality and
activity of the young community. Ships were sail-
ing from Salem and Providence to all ports —
to the Dry Tortugas, with " salt fish and strong
liquors, which are the only commodities for those
parts " — and bringing back cotton, tobacco, and
negroes in exchange. Unless these seventeenth
century seamen are sadly belied, they engaged in
other enterprises of more questionable morality
than the slave trade. It would be as reasonable
to regard the New England harbours as nests
of pirates as of religious fanatics, though of course
a man may be a religious fanatic and a pirate too.

I shall relate but one instance to illustrate the
temper of the men who formed the front of the
community, and appeal to any reasonable person
to say if he thinks that the relation of sanctifica-
tion to justification was the dominant concern of
their lives. " Here arrived one Mr. Carman, mas-
ter of the ship called [name omitted], of 180 tons.
He went from New Haven in lOber last, laden
with clap-boards for the Canaries, being earnestly
commended to the Lord's protection by the church

130 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

there. At the Island of Palma he was set upon
by a Turkish pirate of 300 tons and 26 pieces of
ordnance and 200 men ; he fought with her for
three hours, having but twenty men and but
7 pieces of ordnance that he could use, and his
muskets were unserviceable with rust. The Turk
lay across his hawse, so as he was forced to shoot
through his own hoodings, and by these shot
killed many Turks ; then the Turk lay by his side
and boarded him with near 100 men and cut all
the ropes, etc., but his shot having killed the cap-
tain of the Turkish ship and broken his tiller, the
Turk took in his own ensign and fell off from him,
but in such haste as he left about 50 of his men
aboard ; then the master and some of his men came
up and fought with those 50, hand to hand, and
slew so many of them as the rest leaped overboard.
The master had many wounds on his head and
body and divers of his men were wounded, yet but
one slain, so with much difficulty he got to the
island (being in view thereof), where he was very
courteously entertained and supplied with what-
soever he wanted."

The passengers coming from England were con-
tinually bringing money, and so long as that lasted
trade prospered. They had left England because
the posture of affairs in the homeland did not suit

JOHN WINTHROP 131

them ; and when at length tidings came that the
Scots had entered England, that a parliament was
to be called, and there was a hope of a thorough
reformation, many began to think of returning
home ; some did return home, and certainly the
tide of immigration ceased. At the same time
there was a failure of the crops ; Virginia was
offering strong inducements to colonists and the
most tempting reports were being received from
the West Indies. The New England colony was
on the verge of ruin. This was Winthrop's hour.
Ships no longer arrived with money and commod-
ities in exchange for the products of the colony.
The quick market and good profits were at an end.
Money had disappeared, as it has a habit of doing
in hard times. The price of cattle fell to one half,
to a third, to a fourth. Corn would buy nothing ;
merchants would sell no wares but for ready
money, and prices of foreign goods were rising.
The country was on the verge of bankruptcy ; it
could not pay its obligations abroad.

When these difficulties began to be felt the
magistrates resorted to the usual expedients.
They made an order that a musket bullet should
pass for a farthing ; that corn should pass at
a specified rate ; that carpenters should work
for a certain wage. The ministers applied their

w

132 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

wisdom to the situation. Mr. Cotton on the next
lecture day, laid it down as a false principle that
a man may sell as dear and buy as cheap as he can ;
if he lose by casualty at sea in some of his com-
modities, that he may raise the price of the rest ;
that he may sell as he bought, though he pay too
dear and though the price of the commodity be
fallen in the mean time ; that as a man may take
the advantage of his own skill or ability, so he may
of another's ignorance or necessity. Thereupon
the minister laid down the true rules for trading :
that a man may not sell above the current prices ;
when a man loses in his commodity for want of
skill, he must look to it as his own fault or cross,
and must not lay it upon another ; when a man
loses by calamity at sea, it is a loss cast upon
himself by Providence, and he may not ease him-
self of it by casting it upon another. This was
as wise as most theories upon economics, but the
result was the same : the country was still closer
to ruin. The people went so far as to prosecute
the traders, amongst whom was that Kaine who
figured so largely in the " sow business."

This man was made the object of peculiar ani-
mosity, because M he had been an ancient professor
of the gospel, a man of eminent parts, wealthy,
and having but one child, having come over for

JOHN WINTHROP 133

conscience' sake and for the advancement of the
gospel ; " this added aggravation to his sin in the
judgement of all men of understanding ; yet most
of the magistrates acknowledged clearly enough
that the deputies had gone too far ; because there
was no law in force to limit or direct men to
appoint a profit in their trade; because of the
common practice in all countries for men to make
use of advantages for raising prices ; because a
certain rule could not be found out for an equal
rate between buyer and seller. There is wisdom
in that judgement.

Governor Winthrop took the matter in hand
and discovered the true and only device for the
prosperity of a nation or an individual — that is,
self-dependence. He decided to build ships. He
allowed the artisans to go where they did best,
" employing persuasion alone in a voluntary
way." He set the people to work curing fish,
sawing clap-boards and planks, sowing hemp and
flax, making their own cotton from materials
obtained by exchange in the West Indies, breed-
ing their own cattle, and practising economy.
Through the intervention of friends in England,
he had all goods proceeding to and from the col-
ony declared free ; by another ruling all stocks
employed in fishing were relieved from any pub-

, 1 1

134 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

lie charge for a period of seven years. Finally
he sent commissioners to England to explain to
their creditors the true state of affairs, and the
colony was saved.

The tendency of colonists is to become entirely
absorbed in their own local affairs. It was not
so in New England. From their first landing they
became engaged in high politics of far-reaching
effects ; and by the wisdom, insight, and modera-
tion of their first Governor, they laid a founda-
tion in the world's history which has never been
removed. Their conduct towards Lord Sey, and
towards the Commissioners who arrived, or whose
coming was threatened from England, was marked
by consummate wisdom. In one case they got
out of their difficulties by proving that " the com-
mission itself stayed at the seal for not paying
the fees." The King must not be defrauded.
This scrupulosity for the King's authority stood
them in good stead on many occasions, and for
men so well versed in the scriptures of the Old
Testament it was easy to find a suitable answer
to the most embarrassing demands. When they
were in doubt as to whom they should assist. La
Tour or D'Aulnay, in the struggle for supremacy
in the French possessions, they took time to dis-
cuss the line of conduct which was pursued under

JOHN WINTHROP 135

similar circumstances by Jehosheba, Ahab, Josiah
and Amazia. By the time they had solved their
doubts all necessity for action had passed away.
In our own day we have seen the admirable re-
sults of this subtle method of diplomacy.

When trouble arose with the Dutch of New
Netherland, and an ultimatum was received,
either the day was too wet to consider it, or the
magistrates were not at home, or the matter
would have to be referred to a general court;
so, meanwhile, the Governor would write in his
own name, giving his own private views, being
compelled thereto by the unfortunate circum-
stances of the case, and "his answer for the
present must be rather a declaration of his own
conceptions, than the determination of their
chief est authority, from which they would receive
further answer in time convenient." In the mean
time the Governor would declare his grief over
the difficulties between them, which might be
composed by arbiters in England, or Holland, or
elsewhere ; the difference was so small that it
was not worth considering in view of their past
amity and correspondence, nor worthy to cause a
breach between two peoples so nearly related and
in possession of the Protestant religion ; and if
the matter should be decided against the Dutch,

136 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

as it probably would be, they, being a God-fear-
ing people, would see the wisdom of it and refrain
from following in an unrighteous course. Also,
but always in the mean time, the Governor would
take occasion to remind the Dutch of a claim for
forty pounds which a godly seaman of Piscat had
against them for having fired upon him and com-
pelled him to weigh anchor, and that upon the
Lord's Day. There is only one person known to
modern history, and that a Dutchman, who could
frame a suitable rejoinder to such a letter as
that.

If Governor Winthrop were known to us merely
as the leader of that colony which overshadowed
all New England, as the only statesman who ever
granted, without prejudice, constitutional govern-
ment to a people whom he was entitled to rule, and
did rule until the time came, with justice and
humanity and wisdom, it would be easy to mark
his proper place in history. But he had to descend
to the smallest affairs of village life and perform
duties which are usually left to the curate or
minister, the schoolmaster, the constable, or the
meanest police magistrate. To many persons he is
known only by his performance of these trivial
functions.

Being without a body of laws, without any

JOHN WINTHROP 137

defined responsibility, or any real notion of his
rights and privileges in relation to the other ele-
ments in the community, "Winthrop was compelled
by necessity to adjudge specifically every manner
of offence, from excessive adornment of the per-
son, the intemperate use of alcohol and tobacco,
desertion from service, seditious speeches in pri-
vate and public, to the weightier matter of English
jealousy and Dutch intrigue. It is quite true that
his estimation of the relative heinousness of crime
was at variance with our notions of jurisprudence,
and that his judgements were drawn aside by his
religious nature and his abhorrence of sin. For
example, he had before him two men who had
committed an offence arising out of a mutual
though perverted regard for each other. The
animus of the prosecution seems to have been
directed less against the crime itself than against
the fact that it had been committed " on the Lord's
Day, and that in time of public service." A ser-
vant, "a very profane fellow given to cursing,
etc., did use to go out of the assembly upon the
Lord's Day to rob his master ; " being threatened
with an appearance before the magistrates, he was
far-sighted enough to go and hang himself.

Taking into account the barbarity of the Eng-
lish law, in which Winthrop had been trained, the

138 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

worst of the punishments which he inflicted were
humane, merciful, and reasonable, and usually
were awarded with good sense. One godly minis-
ter, for example, upon conscience of his oath and
care of the commonweal, discovered to the magis-
trates some seditious speeches of his own son, de-
livered to himself in private. The magistrates did
not think it proper to take notice of the charge,
being loath to have the father come out in public
as the accuser of his son, so they had resort to the
rather indirect method of seeking out other and
more easily proven charges against the boy. In-
deed, Winthrop was often brought to task for his
leniency, and was convinced " that it was so." He
promised "that he would endeavour, by God's
assistance, to take a more strict course, whereupon
there was renewal of love " between him and his
advisers.

The domestic servants had to be dealt with, for
they were a source of annoyance then as now.
One troublesome fellow was merely " put in mind
of hell, but he made no amendment, and shortly
suffered a manifest judgement of God, by being
drowned." In these days, it would appear as if
the loss of a servant were a judgement which was
manifest upon the master. At another court " a
young fellow was whipped for soliciting an Indian

JOHN WINTHROP 139

squaw to incontinency ; she and her husband were
present at the execution, and professed themselves
to be well satisfied." The following year, a trader
in Watertown was convicted for selling a pistol
to an Indian ; he was whipped and branded on the
cheek. The persons who were whipped were
almost invariably menials, and whipping was a
common method of remonstrance against their
misdoings in many well-ordered families. It ill
becomes us to set up our opinion upon the manage-
ment of servants, seeing the pass to which we our-
selves have been brought by the abandonment of
that salutary practice.

Justice, indeed, was often tempered by worldly
wisdom. Captain John Stone, though a most
troublesome individual, was a stout soldier. He
carried himself dissolutely and was finally taken
in adultery; his punishment was a fine, which
was not levied, and the woman was bound to her
good behaviour. At the same time a luckless in-
dividual, named Cole, was condemned to wear a
red D about his neck for the unaggravated offence
of drunkenness. The practice of adultery was one
which gave great trouble to the magistrates, and
from Winthrop's account it would appear as if
Samuel Johnson's conclusion had some foundation
in fact, that the disorder is as common amongst

140 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

farmers as amongst noblemen. In Captain Under-
bill's case it was looked upon as a frailty ; in tbe
case of tbree otber persons wbo were tben in
prison, a point of legal niceness arose as to tbe
constitutionality of tbe scriptural practice. How-
ever, " it was thought safest that they should be
whipped and banished," probably a satisfactory
issue to the case. The misconduct of Stephen
Batcheller was unmistakeably heinous, for he was
pastor of the church at Hampton ; he had suffered
much at the bands of the bishops in England ; he
was about eighty }rears of age, and " had a lusty
comely woman to his wife, yet he did solicit the
chastity of his neighbour's wife, who acquainted
her husband therewith." The whole case is very
painful. The pastor of Dover also fell into a
similar unfortunate situation, but it is always
difficult to arrive at the facts of an affair between
the pastor and a widow of his flock. The case of
James Britton and Mary Latham, both of whom
suffered death, is well known. Their conduct
certainly was shameless.

This Captain Underbill was a turbulent per-
son. He was continually under censure for his un-
seemliness of conduct, his looseness of behaviour,
and incautious carriage, and as often repenting
and promising amendment : " yet all his con-

JOHN WINTHROP 141

fessions were mixed with excuses and extenua-
tions, and he was cast out of the church ; whilst
he remained in Boston he was very much dejected,
but being gone home again, he soon recovered
his spirits and gave not that proof of a broken
heart as was hoped for." He must have been
a proper rake indeed, for we find him " charged
by a godly young woman to have solicited her
chastity under pretence of Christian love ; " yet
he was elected Governor of Piscat, and committed
one of his fellow magistrates to prison for declar-
ing that he would not sit with an adulterer. In
the end, however, by the blessing of God upon
the excommunication, the captain came before
the church, " in his worst clothes, being accus-
tomed to take great pride in his bravery and
neatness, without a band, in a foul linen cap
pulled close to his eyes, and standing on a bench
he did with abundance of tears lay open his
wicked course." If the remainder of his oration
is correctly reported, he must have been a pro-
found theologian, for Winthrop commends his
doctrine of sin, " save for his blubbering, etc."
It is questionable if his amendment was sincere,
for we come upon his tracks for years afterwards
in strange places for a man of a humble and con-
trite spirit.

142 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

I have said that the colonists were cast up in
a new world, without laws or traditions for regu-
lating the affairs of church, state, or society at
large, and contrary to belief there was a consider-
able number of vicious persons who required the
strongest measures to compel them to conform to
the ordinary usages of civilized men. It is the
pressure of public opinion alone which prevents
the average man from adopting the habits of
a beast. We all know what went on in the days
of the early adventurers to Canada, when it was
looked upon as a noble act of self-abnegation for
a trader to possess only one wife in each village.
We also know the means which were required in
the Western mining communities, not so very
long ago either, to restrain the more unsocial
vices. The authorities in New England had the
same difficulties to face. There was amongst the
colonists a large number of male house-servants,
a class which has been in possession of special
vices from the time of Pliny until now. Gov-
ernor Winthrop had no hesitation in referring
to their habits ; he had as little hesitation in
applying the correction, the rope and the whip,
two incitements to decency, which are by no means
to be despised.

The vice of drunkenness was not common, and

JOHN WINTHROP 143

as such was not dealt with, save that a general
court put itself on record by making an order to
abolish the custom of drinking healths, on the
ground that it was a thing of no good use, that
* it was an inducement to drunkenness, and occa-
sion of quarrelling and bloodshed, that it occa-
sioned much waste of wine and beer, that it was
troublesome to many, especially to masters and
mistresses of feasts, who were forced to drink
more often than they would.

There were, of course, many instances of drink
being associated with disorders. A troublesome
business arose in Boston over its effects. A ship
arrived from Portugal and left behind two Eng-
lishmen. According to the inalienable right of
his race, one of them became " proper drunk,"
and was carried to his lodging. The constable,
"a godly man and zealous against such disor-
ders," took him from his bed and placed him in
the stocks. A Frenchman of the entourage of La
Tour, who was then in the town, was passing that
way and released the prisoner. The constable
sought out the Frenchman, and " would needs
carry him to the stocks," but he refused and drew
his sword, at the same time protesting his willing-
ness to go to prison, but not to submit to the
indignity of public exposure. He was disarmed,

144 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

and with a curious reversal of procedure, he was
first set in the stocks, then as if to meet his for-
eign scruples, he was taken to prison, and finally
was brought before La Tour. The magistrates
" admonished the constable in private for having
without warrant or authority taken a man out of
his bed, and in the second place for not setting
a hook upon the stocks." With their usual com-
mon sense, they would lay nothing to his charge
before the assembly, but Winthrop in his private
journal expresses the necessity of upholding the
authority of the magistrates, and refers bitterly
to these " last fruits of ignorant and misguided
zeal." The sailors who came into those ports
would appear to have behaved in accordance with
the habits of their time and the tradition of their
race, and Winthrop found a melancholy satisfac-
tion in recording the disasters by which they
were overtaken. But as nearly all the mariners
of that time came to an untimely end, it does not
appear that vengeance followed them specifically
for the deeds of drunkenness, quarrelling, and
evil speaking which are recorded against them.

The thing that seems intolerable to us in Win-
throp's conduct is his punishment of men and
women for their opinions. The Governor of New
England was quite frank about the matter. He

JOHN WINTHROP 145

thought it entirely proper that if a person uttered
opinions which were dangerous to the community
he should be punished for it. In this the Governor
was right : " the government must be carried on."
But the punishments inflicted for political offences
were not numerous — perhaps a dozen in the twenty
years of Winthrop's influence. Henry Lincoln was
whipped and banished for writing letters to Eng-
land. We do not know what he wrote ; but even
if he wrote only the truth, he may have deserved
what he got. It is not an inalienable right of a
citizen always to tell the truth about his country
to his country's enemies, and England as a whole
was an enemy to the colony at that time. Major
Andre* was not allowed the opportunity of " writ-
ing letters into England." In New England, for
the time being, the church and state and court
were united into a trinity in which the personality
of each could not be distinguished, so rebellion
against one was an attack upon all three. In
these days, one who speaks against the church
may be a harmless fool or a sincere reformer,
neither of whom should be interfered with ; one
who rails against the court is liable to find him-
self in gaol, and it does not require a traitor's
ghost to come back to tell us what will happen to
those who plot against their country.

14G ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

As late as the second session of the Fifty-
Seventh Congress of the United States, held in
the present century, which is yet comparatively
young, an enactment was made commencing in
these terms : " No person who disbelieves in." It
does not matter for our argument what is the sub-
ject of belief or disbelief ; in this case it is disbelief
in all organized government, or affiliation with
any organization entertaining or teaching such
disbelief. The legislators of Massachusetts are
separated from the legislators of the United States
by the distance and events of three hundred years.
Their attitude toward this question of belief is
identical. The court of Massachusetts under Win-
throp punished men and women by banishment
and by whipping, not for the contrariety of their
opinions, but because their speech and conduct
made government difficult, and in the judgement
of the magistrates tended to make it impossible.

Of course, no one would think of going to the
Fifty-Seventh Congress as the ultimate lair of
political wisdom. It is not pretended that their
enactment was abstractly right ; but government
has never yet been carried on, and never will be
carried on, by an adherence to abstract principles,
even if those principles could be discovered. The
law in question will not be enforced, because the

JOHN WINTHROP 147

common sense and conscience of the people will
not permit it. In the early days the people had
less experience and more conscience, a phenome-
non which is common enough, and they did en-
force similar laws. But they laid a foundation of
government upon obedience and order, so that
their descendants can afford to neglect opinions
which seem for the time being to be contrary to
common sense, until it is fully proven that they
are not so. Then we shall have sense enough to
adopt them. Carlyle was wrong. The folly of the
fools is more precious than the wisdom of the
doctrinaires, for purposes of government.

The fascination which one finds in a study of
the men and events of early New England is akin
to that which a naturalist feels in watching the
growth of an organism in vitro : it is so small, so
simple, and the growth is so rapid. Every element
in a national life is seen in the colony, but all is
in miniature. Questions of free trade, of currency,
of exports and imports, of the inter-relations of
governor, magistrates, deputies, and voters, of the
balance between church and state, are all working
themselves out to their inevitable conclusions ; and
above all there is the spectacle of men and women
leading a life of intense activity, as if one were
observing a swarm of bees at work within a hive

148 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

of glass, and over this activity a wisely guiding
mind.

The same problems which still perplex eighty
millions of people perplexed that little colony, and
it is easy to discover the revelation which they
made of themselves in dealing with those pro-
blems. The stage was so small, the actors so few
and their parts so distinct, if one may employ
a profane simile in connection with so serious a
subject, that we have no difficulty in comprehend-
ing the slightest detail of the little national life,
and the finest characteristics of its governor.

Governor Winthrop himself was tender of con-
science, and those whom he had to govern were ten-
der of conscience, too ; that is, he disliked doing
what he thought was wrong ; and his people also dis-
liked doing what they thought was wrong. There
are always opposing views of right, and that is
what makes government difficult in a free country.
Government is always easy when one party is will-
ing to submit to what it believes to be wrong,
without bothering about it. That is what makes
government easy in the United States to-day. A
man may ease his conscience by the subterfuge
that his whole duty is performed in submitting to
the law, even if he think that law is wrong ; but
in New England that poor excuse was denied be-

JOHN WINTHROP 149

cause there was no law. The conscience had free
play.

What Winthrop undertook to do he failed in
doing. He demonstrated by his failure that an
identity of church and state is intolerable to free
men, and that the domain of religion lies entirely
beyond the reach of human authority. Cromwell,
by his failure, made the same demonstration in
England, but he died before he had found a bet-
ter way. Every one admits that it is possible to
attain to a union of the spirit of man with the
spirit of God, to a newness of life, to a fresh con-
ception of the heinousness of sin, and to a know-
ledge or assurance that evil can be transformed
into good. No one now pretends to say how that
state of affairs comes about — whether it has its
origin in some movement of the will of God from
all eternity, or whether the act of volition may be
initiated in the man himself — but all agree that
it is arrived at only by great strivings of spirit,
and not by human authority. It is in virtue of
this struggle after perfection alone that John
Winthrop and those exiled Puritans attained to
greatness.

ra

MARGARET FULLER

MARGARET FULLER

The literary history of the United States is full
of enigmas, which are unsolved to this day, be-
cause we have no contemporary criticism of any
value to guide us. All just appreciation is lost
in the adulation of friends and the calumny of
enemies. There has always been a lack of that
balanced judgement, which gives us so accurate
a notion of French and English writers of a time
even much anterior to that of which we are about
to speak. George Sand we know, George Eliot
we know, but what manner of person was Mar-
garet Fuller ?

The case is the more difficult, inasmuch as it
concerns a woman. A man can know very little
about a woman, even under circumstances the
most favourable for procuring knowledge. Lord
Byron admitted that much ; and he is generally
accredited with diligence in pursuing all paths
which might lead to information, and employing
every means that might minister to his curiosity.

One who writes anything worth reading is
bound to find dissenters, but the worst foes of

154 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

a literary person are those of his own household.
All that is required for the hasty condemnation
of any one is the publication of everything which
is publicly known, told secretly, or imperfectly
remembered. We know how the Carlyles and
Kuskins suffered ; but Margaret Fuller suffered
worst of all, because her friends were so highly
endowed with folly. Malice is powerless to bring
down a reputation ; silliness will lay it in the dust.

This "gifted woman" — it is well, at once, to
commence using the epithets of her biographers —
save for a little published criticism which now
seems obvious enough, left not behind her the
expression of a single thought which is essentially
worth remembering. Yet her friends have aspired
to set her in a place above Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, above the two Georges, Sand and
Eliot ; they have brought her lower than Mary
Baker Eddy. After the manner of all foolish dis-
ciples, they have so distorted the object of their
worship that it is now difficult to see her as she
was. That is why the personality of Margaret
Fuller is an enigma.

There are two methods of writing biography,
the exhaustive and selective. In the one case,
everything that is known or surmised is reported
with ^discriminating fidelity ; in the other, the

MARGARET FULLER 155

facts, surmises, and probabilities are taken as a
whole and duly considered. The writer himself
forms an image and presents it as a true epitome,
after the manner of any artist. At first sight it
would appear that if we had all contemporary
knowledge of individuals, we should know them as
they are ; but this is not so. We have to create
the image for ourselves, and it will be coloured
by the insistence which we place upon this fact
or upon that. But, after all, the manifestations of
the individual life are too elusive to be caught
and transmitted in any such rough fashion, even
if we admit the utmost good faith on the part of
the reporters ; and that is an admission which we
are not always justified in making.

Margaret Fuller's life has been treated in this
exhaustive way. The hysterical vagaries of her
childhood, the follies of her over-mature youth,
the absurdness of her young womanhood, are all
preserved to us by writers little less hysterical
and quite as absurd as herself. This mass of
pseudo-information is contained in five bulky vol-
umes of printed and written material, in volumes
of letters to and from notable persons of the
time, in diaries, numerous and minute, and in
reminiscences by every one who might remember
anything. These reminiscences, however, were

156 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

written for the most part at a time when their
authors' memories had failed, and they spent a
great deal of labour in remembering very unim-
portant things.

This raw material has been handled over and
over again : in earlier days by James Freeman
Clarke, William Henry Channing — cousin of
one William Ellery and nephew of the other. It
may be necessary to remind this generation that
Clarke was founder of the Church of the Disciples
at Boston in 1841, and pastor of the flock till his
death ; that Channing was close to the formula-
tors of American Unitarianism, and allied with
the Fuller family, his cousin Ellery having mar-
ried Ellen, the sister of Margaret. Neither was
Emerson himself wholly free from blame. At a
later date, Julia Ward Howe, herself an important
personage in New England, became Miss Fuller's
formal biographer, and still later, Mr. Higginson,
whose appreciation is in some degree tempered
by a just criticism.

Two or three illustrations will serve to show
what kind of doctrine we are likely to expect
from these biographers. In striving for an ex-
planation of Miss Fuller's authority, Mrs. Howe
never got beyond asking the question : M What
imperial power had this self-poised soul, which

MARGARET FULLER 157

could lead in its train the brightest and purest
intelligences, and bind the sweet influence of
starry souls in the garland of its happy bowers ? "
The present writer does not know. Again, when
Miss Fuller was passing through the stage com-
mon to all young ladies, and desired to protest
her resolution to remain in the unwedded state,
she expressed herself after this manner : " My
pride is superior to any feelings I have yet ex-
perienced, my affection is strong admiration, not
the necessity of giving or receiving assistance or
sympathy.'' In this innocent remark Mrs. Howe
finds proof that "she acknowledges the insuffi-
ciency of human knowledge, bows her imperial
head, and confesses herself human." Thirdly,
when Mr. Higginson is describing the diverse
elements present at the inception of that strange
literary product, the " Dial," he refers to it as
an " alembic within which they were all distilled,
and the priestess who superintended this intellec-
tual chemic process happened to be Margaret
Fuller." All this time, he admits, he had in his
possession documents pertaining to an early love
affair, which, if published, as they have since
been, " would bring her nearer to us, by proving
that she with all her Roman ambition was still
a woman at heart." If Margaret Fuller be treated

158 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

as an imperial being, who only in a mood of self-
depreciation, or in a moment of magnanimity
bows her head and confesses herself human ; if
she be looked upon as a Roman priestess superin-
tending a chemical process going on in an alem-
bic, or as a " rapt sylph " — this was Bronson
Alcott's view, expressed in sonnet form, as if she
were a Sixth Avenue seer — we shall never get
much further.

If, however, she be considered merely as a
woman, we may get some light upon her person-
ality ; but if this matter be too high for us, cer-
tainly we shall get some light upon the person-
ality of that strange group which has written it-
self down as her friends. They all lived together
during a period of folly, it is true ; but that is
not the whole matter. A New England prophet
has always had the most honour in his own coun-
try, amongst his own kin ; and, contrary to the
observation of Emerson, the ship from a Massa-
chusetts port has ever been more romantic to its
own passengers than any other which sailed the
high seas.

At any rate, Margaret Fuller was an interest-
ing personage, interesting even yet, and we shall
first show forth fully the presentation her bio-
graphers make, before enquiring what manner of

MARGARET FULLER 159

woman she really was. Mrs. Howe protests that
" to surpass the works of Clarke, Emerson, and
Channing is not to be thought of ; " but she has
surpassed them and made their " precious remi-
niscences " more precious still. She found ready-
to her hand a most unfortunate document, namely,
the introductory chapter to an autobiographical
romance, entitled " Marianna," written by Mar-
garet Fuller herself, which was seized upon and
dealt with as authentic history. It deals with her
childhood, and when elevated out of its proper
place, conveys an impression of the individual
which is totally wrong. Few men, and fewer
women, could desire that the vagaries of their
childhood should be remembered against them.
Even the sick-bed delirium of the neurotic child
is preserved for our admiration. As delirium it
is excellent, as biography it is misleading.

Margaret Fuller was a neurotic child and suf-
fered from actual hysteria. Ideas controlled her
body, and as the ideas of a child are of the
slightest fabric, it may be imagined what that
control amounted to. In the children of New
England from the earliest time there has been
a streak of hysteria which has occasionally broad-
ened out into a dark pool of human misery and
deception.

1G0 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

At nine years of age the little Margaret was
sent to school in Groton, where she amused and
tormented teachers and pupils by her fantastic
freaks. In return they penetrated a bit of plea-
santry upon her, with the result that she went to
her room, locked the door, and fell into convul-
sions. Quite naturally for a child in her condi-
tion, she "did not disdain to employ misrepre-
sentation to regain the superiority in which she
delighted," and when convicted, " she threw her-
self down, dashed her head upon the iron hearth,
and was taken up senseless." Old Judge Stough-
ton of Salem thought he understood the import
of such manifestations.

No wonder the child's character " somewhat
puzzled her teacher ; " it has misled her bio-
graphers too, and will be certain to puzzle them
till the essential nature of hysteria is disclosed.
They should not have been puzzled. By heredity
the child was endowed with a nervous organisa-
tion, mobile and abnormally sensitive, and her
environment was not peculiarly suited to her
temperament. All of her paternal relations wore
eccentric, some of them were of unstable will,
and she herself was accredited with genius. The
Puritan girl has ever been a pitiable and I
figure. The child's education could not have been

MARGARET FULLER 161

worse devised. Timothy Fuller, her father, was
a lawyer, politician, and son of a country clergy-
man, bred in the Harvard of those days, absorbed
in the interest and business of his profession, " in-
tent upon compassing the support of his family,"
all of which proves his incapacity as educator of
his own child. The mother is described as " one
of those fair flower-like natures," which abounded
in the early days. These pilgrim mothers doubt-
less had their own trials. Had the management
of the child been left to her, we might have
escaped all this pathological record of hysteria.
The incapacity of every father is now, I believe,
a subject of free and frequent comment in the
domestic circle ; in those days the father's wisdom
and authority went unquestioned.

The child's surroundings, we are told, were
devoid of artistic luxury, and that was quite
proper, if these surroundings be regarded merely
as the " prophetic entrance to immortality ; " but
she had to frequent them a weary time before she
found the door. Truly, as Mrs. Howe says, there
was an absence of frivolity and a distaste for all
that is paltry and superficial, — small danger that
her " inner sense of beauty would be lost or over-
laid through much pleasing of the eye and ear."
No wonder the child acquired a great " aversion

162 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

to the meal-time ceremonial, so long, so tiresome,"
that her aunts cried out upon the " spoiled child,
the most unreasonable child that ever was, if
brother could but open his eyes to see it." After
being kept awake for hours, waiting till her father
should return to hear her recite the labours of the
day, no wonder her aunts were puzzled at her un-
willingness to go to bed. These good women did
not know that as soon as the light was taken
away the little girl saw colossal faces advancing
slowly, the eyes dilating and each feature swelling
loathsomely, to return again after being driven
away by her shriek of terror. When at length
she did go to sleep, it was to dream of horses
trampling over her, or, as she had just read in her
Virgil, of being amongst trees that dripped with
blood, where she walked and walked and could
not get out, whilst the blood became a pool and
splashed over her feet, rising higher and higher
till soon she dreamed it would reach her lips.
No wonder she arose and walked in her sleep,
moaning, all over the house, or found drenched
with tears, in the morning, the pillow on which
she had been dreaming that she was following
her mother to the grave. Where was the mother
all this time ? Alas for our poor mothers !

Another example of her father's perspicacity

MARGARET FULLER 163

still remains, in his opinion that " she would go
crazy if she did not leave off thinking of such
things," little suspecting that he and his system
were the enchanters that called forth these night
monsters. At the age of six, this infant was em-
ployed in the study of Latin, though her young
life was " somewhat " enlivened by the lightness
of English grammar, " and other subjects various
as the hours would allow." At eight, the Latin
language had opened for her the door to many
delights, for the Roman ideal, definite and resolute,
commended itself to her childish judgement : in
Horace she enjoyed the courtly appreciation of
life; in Ovid, the first glimpse of mythology
carried her to the Greek Olympus — at least her
biographers say they think so, but that is probably
a guess. The modern counterpart of this " wonder
child " is the " laboratory child," whose food is
weighed and calculated in calories, the result of
it measured by all the processes of kinetics.

One Sabbath morning the young child was cast-
ing her eyes over the meeting for religious pur-
poses, in a vain search for the Eoman figures she
knew so well, for the characters from Shakespeare
that she loved. They only met the shrewd honest
eye, the homely decency, or the smartness of the
New England village ; or her gaze rested upon a

164 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

family occupying the next pew, which was her
particular aversion, for, as she tells us, " the
father had a Scotch look of shrewd narrowness
and entire self-complacency." As she looked
about, her attention was next arrested by a
woman foreign to that scene, with her fair face,
her strange dress, the unusual arrangement of
her hair, her reserved, self-possessed manner.
Such an " apparition " would arrest attention in
Cambridgeport even in these times. The stranger
proved to be an English lady who possessed the
two remarkable accomplishments of painting in
oils and playing on the harp. It appears that there
were others who admired the stranger in their
own way ; " but she lightly turned her head from
their oppressive looks and fixed a glance of full-
eyed sweetness on the child." The relation be-
tween the two was delightful, till at length the
stranger " went across the sea." They corre-
sponded for many years, as the habit then was,
and even her " shallow and delicate epistles M did
not serve to disenchant the growing girl. This is
not the usual result of a long correspondence.

Left alone, Margaret fell into melancholy
again, and her father, who further reveals himself
in his " distrust of medical aid generally," appears
to have had a conversation with his sisters, during

MARGARET FULLER 165

which some heat was manifested. At any rate,
he concluded to send his daughter to school with
her " peers in age." The school chosen was the
Misses Prescott's at Groton, as has already been
indicated. There, as Mrs. Howe observes, she
was content, " so long as she could queen it over
her fellow pupils, but the first serious wounding
of her self-love aroused in her a vengeful malig-
nity,"— fearful words to employ in relation to
a girl of tender years.

Doubtless these things occur in boarding-
schools at this day, if we can believe what we
hear; when they are made the material of an
autobiographical romance they are apt to assume
a false importance. It was in this school that the
foolish bit of pleasantry occurred. The children,
shocking as it may sound, were permitted to
indulge in play-acting, in which Margaret had
a peculiar facility. To help the illusion, they were
allowed to heighten the natural colour of the face,
but Margaret did not observe the unity of time
and place in respect of the rouge ; she employed
it at unseasonable times. The pleasantry arose
out of that, and was followed by the turbulence
of conduct on Margaret's part which " somewhat
puzzled " her teachers, as it would not have
puzzled the judges of Salem. Mrs. Howe further

1G6 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

notes that, during the progress of the affair,
" Margaret's pride did not forsake her ; she sum-
moned to her aid the fortitude of her Komans
and ate her dinner quietly," though she afterwards
conducted herself in a wholly Gallic fashion.

Fortunately the pupil was dealt with by a
teacher who wrought upon her by narrating the
circumstances of her own life, which had made it
one of sorrow and sacrifice ; a common enough
practice, I believe, amongst governesses, but one
would dearly love to know the secret story of
this New England school-teacher. At any rate,
Margaret left the school at the age of thirteen,
and returned to her father's house, "much in-
structed in the conditions of harmonious relations
with her fellows," qualities very essential to
peaceable living in the Cambridgeport of those
days.

Margaret, as her friends called her, omitting the
first name Sarah — they called Emerson. Waldo
— returned from school at the end of her thir-
teenth year. Dr. Frederic Henry Hedge, whose
one sufficient claim upon our notice is that he
was her friend, gives us a lively picture of her at
this time, lie was a student at Harvard : allow-
ance must be made for that, as students at Har-
vard, or any other college for the matter of that.

MARGARET FULLER 167

must not be followed absolutely in their estima-
tion of a feminine personality.

According to this authority, her precocity, men-
tal and physical, he also notes, was such that she
passed for a much older person, and had already
a recognized place in society. She was in bloom-
ing and vigorous health, with a tendency to over-
stoutness, which he thinks gave her some trouble,
though he does not quite specify in what way.
She was not handsome, nor even pretty, he admits,
but we all know the combination of feminine
features and qualities which college students con-
sider handsome and pretty. She had fine hair
and teeth, he adds with discrimination, and a
peculiarly graceful carriage of the head and neck
which redeemed her from the charge of plain-
ness. Sixteen years afterwards, this same neck
seems to have impressed Mr. Channing, who
dwells with much feeling upon its pliancy and
other qualities ; " in moments of tender and pen-
sive feeling its curves were like those of a swan ;
under the influence of indignation its movements
were more like the swooping of a bird of prey."
He mentions a habit of opening the eyes and
fluttering them suddenly, with a singular dilation
of the iris, which must have deepened this im-
pression of her likeness to a bird. Nor are we

168 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

left without Emerson's observations upon her
appearance : " She had a face and frame that
would indicate fulness and tenacity of life " —
the philosophers of those days were hard bitten
by phrenology. " She was then, as always, care-
fully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like
self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had
nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness, a
trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eye-
lids, the nasal tone of her voice, all repelled. Soon
her wit effaced the impression of her unattract-
iveness, and the eyes which were so plain at first
swam with fun and drollery." This was in 1836.
She was in her twenty-seventh year, he was
thirty-three — these facts are worth noting —
but in Mrs. Howe's judgement, " Emerson's bane
was a want of fusion, the ruling characteristic of
Mr. Channing a heart that melted almost too
easily."

Miss Fuller's studios did not cease upon being
admitted as a recognised member of Cambridge-
port society. Her " pursuit of culture " was ar-
dent, and she was resolute to track it to its lair.
She rose before five, walked for an hour, practised
on the piano till seven, had breakfast, read French
till eight, then attended two or three lectin
Brown's philosophy. At half-past nine she went

MARGARET FULLER 169

to Mr. Perkins's school, and studied Greek till
twelve, when she went home and practised on the
piano till two. If the conversation were very-
agreeable she sometimes lounged for half an hour
at dessert, though rarely so lavish of time. Then,
when she could, she read two hours in Italian ;
at six, she walked or drove, then sang for half an
hour before retiring for a little while to write in
her journal. This is doubtless what she intended
to do ; but as Sir James Fitzjames Stephen ob-
served, " you cannot always infer from the state-
ment of the fact to the truth of it."

It is true, however, that Miss Fuller was en-
gaged in serious study. Moved by the brilliant
expositions of Carlyle, she commenced the study
of German, and within a year had read Goethe,
Schiller, Tieck, Korner, Richter, and Novalis —
fine-sounding names. She was able to appreciate
" the imperfection of Novalis, and the shallowness
of Lessing." She thought him " easily followed,
strong, but not deep." Impressed with the value
of a fixed opinion on the subject of metaphysics,
she applied herself to the study of Fichte, Stuart,
and Brown — the Scotch schoolmaster who at-
tempted to fill in with hollow rhetoric the gulf
between youth and Presbyterianism. This ambi-
tious young woman, after a year's study of Ger-

170 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

man in New England, entertained the idea of
writing a life of Goethe, and constructing six his-
torical tragedies, which would have been a fairly
marvellous production. In spite of all this em-
ployment, she continued to feel " a merciful and
providential interest in her friends."

At twenty-one years of age this strange person
found " the past worthless, the future hopeless."
The occasion of this discovery was Thanksgiving
Day, the place, church. After dinner the outlook
was rather more gloomy, and she sought to free
herself from anguish by a long quick walk. This
was a thoroughly sound physiological proceeding,
and she hoped to return home in a state of
prayer. Luther in a similar case had recourse to
a draught of strong sweet wine. It was a sad
and sallow day, and, driven from place to place
by the conflict within her, she sat down at last to
rest beside a little pool, dark and silent, within
the trees. This must have been about five in the
afternoon ; dinner was at two ; we all feel that way
at times, but if we are wise we do not speak of it.
Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds, and
" the inward conquest was sealed by the sunbeam
of that sallow day." Then she saw that k% there
was no self, that it was only because she thought
self real that she suffered, that she had only to

MARGARET FULLER 171

live in the idea of the all, and all was hers."
This sounds strangely familiar in our ears.

Two years later, in 1833, Margaret Fuller and
her family, in the false language of the period,
"exchanged the academic shades of Cambridge-
port for the country retirement of Groton " — Mr.
Higginson himself speaks of Artichoke Mills on
the Merrimac as " a delicious land of lotos-eating."
She did not, we are glad to learn, take the position
of a malcontent, but busied herself in teaching
her brothers and sisters, in needlework, and in
assisting her mother, a thoroughly useful occupa-
tion. But soon we find her at a careful perusal
of Alfieri's writings and an examination into the
evidence of Christianity, for it would appear that
infidels and deists, some of whom were numbered
among her friends, had instilled into her mind
distressing sceptical notions. It will be observed
that it was deists, and not atheists, who poisoned
this young New England mind.

It was during this period that Margaret Fuller
met Miss Harriet Martineau, and the stranger
appears to have been rather free in her remarks,
for we have it on record that her depreciation of
Hannah More grated on Miss Fuller's sensibil-
ities. The two ladies went to church together, and
the minister gave them the distinction of being

172 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

prayed for. This induced Margaret herself to
utter a prayer which she afterwards committed to
writing, though the uttering of it may have been
a dramatic afterthought. Some sceptics affect to
question the efficacy of the minister's prayer, for
one of the persons to whom it was addressed be-
came in time an " enthusiastic disbeliever." This
imputed unrighteousness, however, occurred after
the publication of Miss Martineau's book, " So-
ciety in America," in 1836. In this work, as well
as in her " Autobiography," she indulged in some
tolerably plain speaking. She sets it down for a
fact that she found the coterie in Boston occupied
in talk about fanciful and shallow conceits which
they took for philosophy, and that Miss Fuller was
spoiling a set of well-meaning women by looking
down upon people who acted instead of talking
finely. However this may be, we have Margaret's
opinion of the book in an M immense " letter
addressed to its author, in which she tells her she
found in it a degree of presumptuousness, irre-
verence, inaccuracy, hasty generalization, ultra-
ism, and many other evil things. Ten years later,
the ladies met again, but no heat appears to have
been developed. It was to Miss Martineau the
young lady was indebted for an introduction to
Kinerson, " whom she very mueh wished to know,"

MARGARET FULLER 173

and all three became very good friends. Emerson
speaks of his impression of these early interviews
with a polite reserve, as if he were writing a letter
of commendation for a friend whom he wished to
be rid of. " I believe, I fancied her too much in-
terested in personal history, and dramatic justice
was done to everybody's foibles." It is pretty hard
to take any comfort out of that, yet again he
insists that "her good services were somewhat
impaired by a self-esteem which it would have
been unfortunate for her disciples to imitate." It
is certain that those disciples were not deterred
by this gentle remonstrance from manifestations
of self-esteem. It was unfortunate, but then
Emerson had already laid himself open to the
charge of " a want of fusion."

In the autumn of 1835 the father, Timothy
Fuller, died, leaving his property " somewhat di-
minished," as many a worse man has done. If it
were the present intention to deal with that heroic
period in the world's history of which the Puritan
development in New England formed a part,
especially dwelling upon the strength and splen-
dour of character therein displayed, we could not
do better than follow the fortunes of the Fuller
family up to its source. The origin of the family,
in America at least, was in Lieutenant Thomas

174 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Fuller, who came over in 1638. We have his
own word for it in verse :

In thirty-eight I set my foot

On this New England shore,
My thoughts were then to stay one year,

And here remain no more.

The great-grandson of this lieutenant and poet
was Timothy Fuller, and the eldest son of this
Timothy was another of the same name, the father
of Margaret. Miss Fuller's grandfather grad-
uated, or was graduated as it was the fashion of
that time to say, from Harvard College in 1760,
and settled in Princeton (Massachusetts) as a
clergyman.

It is the custom to suppose that the events cul-
minating in the American Revolution were of an
entirely spontaneous origin. As a matter of fact
there was much contention, much bitterness, and
many opponents of extreme measures. This cler-
gyman was a firm opponent, and on the occasion
of taking up arms he addressed his parishioners
from a text which is susceptible of much vindict-
iveness in the handling. As a result he was dis-
missed from his charge, and he brought suit to
recover his salary. The affair appears to have
been adjusted, for we find him once more in
his pastorate, but recalcitrant as ever, voting in

MARGARET FULLER 175

the State Convention against the acceptance of
the Constitution for the United Colonies, on the
ground that that instrument did not define the
relation of human slavery to free institutions.
Some will consider this old Puritan a far-seeing
man. His five sons were all lawyers, and so far
as one can judge did not attain to any great emi-
nence for winsomeness of nature or agreeableness
of behaviour. It would appear that Margaret
inherited some of those qualities which are not
designed to win the public heart; indeed, one
observer, himself a man of intemperate speech,
thought he found in her " the disagreeableness of
forty Fullers."

Margaret's father was the eldest of these five
lawyers, not to designate them by so humane a
name as sons, and he must have been a person of
some consideration. He was, of course, a gradu-
ate of Harvard, a representative in Congress,
Chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs,
and an intimate friend of John Quincy Adams.
Indeed, the President visited Mr. Fuller and was
present at a dinner and ball given in his honour.
At this time Mr. Fuller lived in the fine old
house built by Chief Justice Dana, and, what is
of more interest to us, this was the occasion of
his daughter's first public appearance.

176 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

To show how faithfully the field has been
gleaned, we are not left without an exact account
of the figure that the young lady made at this
ball. She is described as a young girl of sixteen,
with a very plain face, half-shut eyes, and hair
curled all over her head. She was laced so tightly
that she had to hold her arms back as if they
were pinioned. Her dress was of pink silk with
muslin over it, low in the neck, and badly cut.
She danced awkwardly, and was so shortsighted
that she could hardly see her partner. It will
appear at once that this description is by another
young lady, and therefore that the reporter's con-
temporary was of an attractive personality.

The Fullers did not long occupy this mansion,
but made several moves before retiring to Groton
in 1833, where the father died two years later.
The consequent family cares prevented the daugh-
ter's acceptance of a proposition made to her by
Mr. Farrar, professor of astronomy at Harvard,
and his wife, to visit Europe in company with
Miss Martineau. Margaret prayed that she might
make a right decision — an operation wholly
needless, one woidd think, as the answer was so
obvious from her resources. In the pious enquiry
of one of her admirers, " Of all the crownings
of Margaret's life, shall we not most envy her

MARGARET FULLER 177

that of this act of sacrifice? " one finds a revela-
tion of the meretricious surroundings in which
she lived — as meretricious as the surroundings
in which Mark Pattison lived at the same time,
when Oxford also was overtaken by folly.

In 1836 the young woman went to Boston, under
engagement with Mr. A. Bronson Alcott to teach
Latin and French in his school. To these lan-
guages she added Italian and German. One would
think from the published accounts that she had
the gift of tongues, and was able to confer it upon
her pupils — a gift of doubtful utility where
women are concerned, as a wise old Puritan
observed in the bitterness of his spirit, during the
troubled time when Mrs. Hutchinson was turn-
ing the world upside down. One young woman
maliciously circulated the report that their teacher
thought in German. Yet when Miss Fuller went
to Paris she " might as usefully have been in a
well," for all the good her French did her. When
she met her Italian husband in Rome, she could
only exchange a few guide-book words; six
months after that meeting, she still " spoke very
bad French fluently." When she called upon
George Sand, that lady greeted her with the
familiar " C'est vousf " Miss Fuller replied : "21
me fait de bien de vous voir" which is bad French,

178 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

but amusing. Her biographers are careful to
alter the expression to "II me fait da Lien de
vous voir" which is better ; but the incident
illustrates their incapacity to tell of a thing as it
occurred and their uncontrollable desire to exag-
gerate.

It appears there were " worldlings " in Boston
in those days and that they held Mr. Alcott in as
much honour " as the worldlings of ancient Athens
did Socrates." It " made them smile " to hear
their verdict confirmed by Miss Martineau from
the other side of the Atlantic : hence the vigour
of speech in the letter condemning her book. Mr.
Alcott appears to have had his own troubles.
There was a serious proposition to prosecute him
for blasphemy, and on the appearance of his book,
"Conversations on the Gospels," a professor of
Harvard is quoted as affirming that one third of it
was absurd, one third blasphemous, and one third
obscene. In a very short time this famous school
contained only five pupils — three of them Mr.
Alcott's daughters, a colored child, and one other.
Miss Fuller's labours as a teacher in Boston were
at an end, so she went to Providence to teach in
Colonel Fuller's school. Her salary was to be
a thousand dollars, but there is some question as
to whether it was ever paid. Miss Fuller re-

MARGARET FULLER 179

mained in Providence two years, and during that
time made the acquaintance of many persons
whose names we know, amongst them Kichard
Henry Dana, and his son, who had just returned
from his wanderings over the sea. Colonel Ful-
ler, who was no relation of Margaret, shortly
afterwards went to New York on the staff of the
" Mirror," then conducted by K P. Willis and
George P. Morris, but he did not remain long, as
he " got tired of supporting two poets." In those
days, it would appear, newspapers were conducted
by men of literary taste, and this course seemed
as natural to the readers as that a ship should
be commanded by a sea-captain.

All these volumes of memoirs, reminiscences,
letters, and diaries, and even these present writ-
ings, may seem a great thing about a very small
matter, for we have not yet heard one word of
sense from Margaret Fuller herself. But that is
part of the enigma. If you ask her biographers
wherein consisted the capacity of this woman,
they will answer with one accord, " in her conver-
sations ; " a statement obviously difficult to dis-
prove at this distance of time. The converse of the
Platonic proposition, that ideas are inseparable
from speech, is not universally true, and we can-
not now say what was the ratio of ideas to words.

180 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Certainly there was a great deal of speech. All
authorities agree upon that, though Miss Marti-
neau for one did not attach any high value to it.
Dr. Hedge, one of Miss Fuller's earliest admirers,
remarked upon her conversation, " brilliant and
full of interest, but with a satirical turn, which
became somewhat modified in after life." Mr.
Clarke bears the same testimony, but admits that
she was haughty and supercilious to what he calls
the multitude, and attributes this to her being
" intensive " rather than " extensive," though this
explanation does not advance our enquiry very
far. Strangers, we are further told, were wary
of her on account of a haunting fear of being
reduced to an absurdity. For all these reasons
we must infer that her talk was interesting to
the immediate circle of her friends.

When Miss Fuller returned from Providence,
she decided to turn to account her ability to talk,
and in 1839 began her celebrated " Conversations"
in Miss Peabody's rooms, West Street, Boston.
She talked for five years, not without intermissions
of course, but that was her principal occupation
till she left New England. M Unfortunately." as
Mrs. Howe judged, " the pulpit and the platform
were interdicted to her sex, but here was an oppor-
tunity to arouse women from their prone and

MARGARET FULLER 181

•

slavish attitude." At the first meeting twenty-
five ladies were present, " who showed themselves
to be of the elect by their own election of a noble
aim " — Unitarian doctrine truly, Arianism, Socin-
ianism, for less than which men, and women too,
had been hanged in that very Boston. The first
Conversation was devoted to Mythology, as being
sufficiently separated from all exciting local
subjects; but it is hard to say what subjects
might not have excited the Boston of those days ;
it became excited over less.

In spite of the evidence of direct observers to
the contrary, Margaret Fuller is said to have ap-
peared positively beautiful in her chair of leader-
ship ; even her dress was glorified, although it was
known to have been characterized by no display
or attempted effect. However that may have been,
it is certain that these people could not see
clearly, for we are asked to credit the statement
that twenty-five Boston ladies of the year 1840
" seemed melted into one love." In addition to
the meetings for ladies, there was a series of five
meetings to which " gentlemen " were admitted.
Mr. Emerson was present at one of them, and he
testifies that it was encumbered by the headiness
or incapacity of the men.

These happy labours continued for six winters,

182 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

•

and came to an end in April, 1844, but in the
mean time they had not consumed all of Miss
Fuller's energy. She was actively engaged in the
study of art. The masters of art were studied by
means of casts in the Boston Athenaeum, in a
collection of Allston's paintings, and some sculp-
tures of Greenough and Crawford. Upon these
rather fragmentary data she appears to have at-
tained to some finality of opinion, though, accord-
ing to Emerson, a certain fanciful interpretation
of her own sometimes took the place of a just
estimate of artistic values. If the Boston of those
days was less rich in art treasures than it is now,
we have it on high authority that it was " richer
in the intellectual form of appreciative criticism."
It may be so ; one of their own has said it. At
any rate, Emerson considered that Miss Fuller's
taste in art was not based on universal but on
idiosyncratic grounds. No one blames the young
woman for being so foolish, but the people around
her must have been extremely foolish to listen and
to praise her. And so she lived surrounded by flat-
terers, and the most subtle flattery of a woman ii
that which is addressed to her intellect, because
it helps to allay the suspicion that she has none.
There are but two incidents yet to relate before
emerging into the air. The one is Miss Fuller's

MARGARET FULLER 183

editorship of the " Dial ; " the other, her connec-
tion with Brook Farm. The painter Newton
made the remark that in London he met occa-
sionally such society as he met in Boston all the
time, which in itself is a dark saying, but at any
rate it was necessary that these friends should
have an organ of printed speech. As Leigh Hunt
said of one of the fraternity, they were wavering
between something and nothing, and now they
looked for permanency in the " Dial." This jour-
nal appeared in 1840, and was issued at intervals,
more or less regular, for four years. Good or
bad, it cost a great deal of precious time from
those who served it, and from Margaret most of
all ; that was Emerson's view of the publication.
The idea of a journal was promoted by the appear-
ance in England of the "New Monthly Maga-
zine," whose editor, Heraud, is described by
Carlyle as " a loquacious, scribacious little man,
of middle age and a parboiled greasy aspect."

The " Dial," then, was the organ of the Tran-
scendentalists — the word would slip out at last ;
the meaning of it is that their utterances had
passed beyond the limits of good sense — and as
such it is a treasury of information, containing,
as it does, work fresh from the hand of Emerson,
Lowell, Thoreau, Cranch, the Channings, Alcott,

184 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

and Parker, upon such subjects as, the Interior
of the Hidden Life, the Outworld and the In-
world, and many other large subjects, which we
do not now comprehend. It would appear that
even in those days of enlightenment there were
some who cared for none of these things, and the
editor of the Philadelphia " Gazette " so far for-
got himself as to call the writers a pack of zanies,
and to apply to them other opprobrious epithets
of plainer meaning.

Those were curious times ; men were full of
hope and everybody had a gospel of his own.
Graham preached the regeneration of the world
through the medium of unbolted flour, and we
have not yet freed ourselves from the heresy ;
Alcott preached a " potato " gospel, and Palmer
re-discovered the source of evil to be, not in the
love of money, but in money itself. A strange
fruit of the materialism of their doctrine is found
in the fact that the best reward they held out was
a long life, as if that in itself were a wholly desir-
able thing.

It is easy at this distance of time to speak of
that ingenious experiment in altruism known as
Brook Farm with calmness and understanding.
It was an innocent form of folly and the motives
of the associates were wholly good. These ex-

MARGARET FULLER 185

tremely speculative persons manifested a pure
and fresh spirit, and an unquestioning faith in
the regeneration of men, qualities excellent in
themselves, but the leaven was very little and its
force soon spent. Including the preliminary
period of talk, the whole fanciful affair only lasted
some four or five years, and then vanished into
the void with other good and aimless intentions.
There was abundant enthusiasm and amiability,
qualities one may see in a company of otherwise
serious-minded men riding through the streets of
a Western town on the backs of camels, with
strange banners in their hands ; but, as Mr.
James observes, there were degrees of enthusiasm,
and there must have been degrees of amiability
too. The failure of the experiment arose from the
nature of the case. J. Gr. Holland, who was one
of them, wrote :

We hope, we resolve, we aspire, we pray,
And we think we mount the air on wings
Beyond the recall of sensual things,
Whilst our feet still cling to the heavy clay.

Precisely ; this is not very good poetry, but it is
good sense. Their feet too were in the clay.

The people who composed the Brook Farm
community were for the most part insignificant.
Emerson was gently sarcastic and mildly critical

186 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

throughout. In the cloud of talk we hear his
voice : u truly it is not instruction, but provoca-
tion, I can receive from another soul." Haw-
thorne gloomed in a corner for hours at a time,
holding a book before him, but seldom turning
the leaves. His companions accused him of com-
ing to the place as a sort of vampire, for purely
psychological purposes. His attitude is revealed
in one of his notes : " I was invited to dine with
Miss Margaret Fuller, but Providence had given
me some business to do, for which I was very
thankful." Even Margaret herself thought that
one of the best things about the Farm was its
nearness to the woods, and escape so easy : she
was sagacious enough to observe a "great tend-
ency to advocate spontaneousness at the expense
of reflection." A curious way in which this spon-
taneity revealed itself was in designating the
cows by the names of the inmates. Margaret felt
the evils of want of conventional refinement in
the impudence with which one of the girls treated
her. This same young woman, however, was
afterwards brought to see the enormity of her
offence, and on the following Saturday, as Mar-
garet was leaving, u she stood waiting with a
timid air " to bid her good-bye. On another occa-
sion she observed a M lack of the deferenee she

MARGARET FULLER 187

needed for the boldness and animation of her
part, and so did not speak with as much force as
usual."

The movement illustrates well the vagaries of
philosophic speculation. No one can tell whither
it leads or where it will end if it be allowed free
play. It would be long to trace the origin of the
movement, for its ways were long and devious.
It is sufficient to say that it came from France,
through Fourier, who in turn derived his inspi-
ration from Rousseau, and he in turn from Locke
and his school ; but that is far enough.

In England, when the speculation had reached
a certain point and the conclusion was seen to be
logically inevitable, the common sense of the
English mind came to the rescue. The people
perceived that the course of life can never be
determined by a priori reasoning. In France the
doctrinaires gained control, and were determined
to push their reasoning to a conclusion. The issue
was the entirely logical Eevolution, and they
accepted it, just as the Calvinist accepts hell.
Their great cry was " Eeturn to Nature," but it
was modified by the German voice, and modu-
lated by some suggestions of Hellenism, before
it came across to New England as a faint echo.

There was a new spirit in the air. In England

188 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

people had turned aside and applied themselves
to the amendment of their lives, after the method
of AVesley ; in America its result was seen tempo-
rarily, and perhaps accidentally, in the clouds
of transcendentalism — if that be not too for-
midable a word to employ — but finally in the
humanizing results of the great Unitarian move-
ment.

Margaret Fuller herself was quick enough to
perceive that Fourierism was entirely material-
istic in motive and aim, " making the soul the
result of bodily health, instead of body the mere
clothing of the soul." It is not by any material
thing that either the individual or the mass will
be altered for the better.

But, after all, is Nature only Nature as seen on
a rare day in June, in the sweet fields and woods
of New England ? Is it not to be looked for also
when we lift up our eyes to the mountains, scarred
by catastrophe or seamed by the frosts of winter,
and proclaiming the effect of the slow invulner-
able forces that make for disintegration and
decay? If those who carried this cry farthest had
ears to hear, and had listened on the sweetest
evening, they would have heard the rustle of the
viper in the dead leaves, the stealthy tread of
some small beast relentlessly pursuing a smaller

MARGARET FULLER 189

beast of prey ; they would have heard the cry of
the hunted and the anguished scream of the last
agony. The very wood of West Koxbury was
a world of plunder and death ; Nature, there too,
was one with rapine ; the Mayfly was torn by the
swallow; the sparrow speared by the shrike — •
that is, if shrikes inhabit New England in June.

It is only in semi-rural communities that there
is a desire to escape farther from civilization.
Zola knew the soil and what it brings forth —
squalor and brutality. Nature worship is as false
a religion as the worship of any other material
thing. It is Ashtoreth in another guise, save that
amongst the Brook Farmers the false worship was
not in the slightest degree associated with sexual
immorality, and that was the only strange thing
about it. Yet platonic love is always silly, and
sometimes it is dangerous, according to the judi-
cious observation of the Master of Peterhouse.
Not since the days of the Assyrian King have
men become sane by being turned out to grass ;
and those who talk of the regeneration of the
race through Nature, " talk as a bull would talk."
We have Johnson's word for that.

These people attempted to realize Dryden's
dream of an early age, " when wild in woods the
noble savage ran," or in reality, as Mr. Bagehot

190 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

prefers it, " when lone in woods the cringing
savage crept." Emerson tried to teach them that
heroism lies in doing the daily work. Innes after-
wards proclaimed that beauty is in the meadow
and the woodland of the back lot, as he had
learned from Rousseau, Dupre, Daubigny, and
Millet, that the paysage intime contains that
beauty which we are all prone to go far to seek.
Innes was always protesting that " rivers, streams,
the rippling brook, the hillside, the sky, and the
clouds can only convey their sentiment to those
who are in the love of God and the desire of the
truth."

The Transcendentalists of New England had
those two qualities, love of God and love of the
truth, and any Calvinist could tell where they ob-
tained them. Certainly it was not in West Rox-
bury. And yet to this day these devotees are
unthinkingly held up to our admiration — men
who declined the duties of everyday life, who, like
the melancholy Democritus, M forsook the city,
lived in groves and hollow trees upon a green
bank by a brookside or confluence of wati
day long and all night." They saw the evil that
is in the world as clearly as we see it, but they
thought there was a remedy in exchanging the
old physicians for new quacks. We know there

MARGARET FULLER 191

is none, save that which comes in the ordinary-
course of events.

It must not be supposed that Margaret Fuller
and her friends had it all their own way. The
American public saw to that. There was humour
in the land then as now, and there was common
sense. The little coterie made a large noise and
their successors took up its echoes, but it must
not be inferred that the voice of the men of com-
mon sense was either still or small. They met
with neglect and ridicule ; Cranch made carica-
tures ; Lowell wrote doggerel. One of his stanzas
in "A Fable for Critics" thus describes Mar-
garet Fuller under the guise of Miranda :

She will take an old notion and make it her own

By saying it o'er in her Sibylline tone,

Or persuade you 't is something tremendously deep,

By repeating it so as to put you to sleep ;

And she well may defy any mortal to see through it

When once she has mixed up her infinite me through it.

In short, then, Margaret Fuller became, in the
minds of sensible people, the watchword for all
that was eccentric and pretentious, the embodi-
ment of all that was ungraceful and unf eminine ;
yet if any of those scoffers thought Margaret
Fuller a fool, he was vastly mistaken, though there
was something to be said for that view of the case ;

192 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

if lie arrived at the same conclusion in respect of
her friends, who fostered all this folly, this is not
the place to contradict him.

In 1844 Margaret Fuller went to New York.
She seems to have had her eyes opened to the
futility of the life in Boston. In a letter to a friend
written not long before the change, she confessed
she had " gabbled and simpered long enough ; "
but we do not know if the confession was made
with as much sincerity as the occasion demanded.
The immediate cause of her departure was an en-
gagement with Horace Greeley to join the staff of
the " Tribune," and she lived in his house so long
as she remained in the United States. There is
a fact to quiet mirth. Horace Greeley knew merit
when he saw it. He knew good work and good
writing, and his opinions upon the members of
his staff were always full of matter. He has left
it on record that the new contributor won his
favour by her solid merit, by her terse and vigor-
ous writing. At first their relation was one of
friendly antagonism. Mr. Greeley himself tells
us so, and that he kept his eye clear, resolute to
resist the fascination which, he had heard, she
exercised over her former friends. On her side
she considered her employer " a man of plebeian
habits, but with a noble heart, his abilities in his

MARGARET FULLER 193

own way great, and believing in hers to a surpris-
ing extent." Therefore, they became great friends.
After three years she was the one to whom Mr.
Greeley wrote, when his little boy died: "Ah,
Margaret, the world grows dark with us; you
grieve, for Rome is fallen ; I mourn, for Pickie
is dead."

Miss Fuller was placed in charge of the literary
department of the " Tribune," and whilst she held
sway in that office she had occasion to deal with
the writings, then coming out in rapid succession,
of Emerson, Lowell, Browning, Elizabeth Barrett,
Carlyle, George Sand ; and it is in her critical
analysis of them that she first reveals her power.
One or two illustrations of her method will be
enough.

An illustrated edition of Mr. Longfellow's
poems had just appeared, and it was reviewed by
her. It is easy enough now to say and to see
what she then saw and said, but it demanded in-
sight to see and courage to say what was entirely
missed by that generation : " Longfellow is arti-
ficial and imitative. He borrows incessantly and
mixes what he borrows, so that it has a hollow,
second-hand sound. He has a love of the beauti-
ful, and a fancy for what is large and manly, if
not a full sympathy with it. His verse breathes

194 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

at times much sweetness, and though imitative,
he is not mechanical. Nature with him, whether
human or external, is always seen through the
windows of literature."

Lowell got his dose too : " He is absolutely
wanting in the true spirit and tone of poesy.
His interest in the moral questions of the day has
supplied the want of vitality in himself. His great
facility at versification has enabled him to fill the
ear with a copious stream of pleasant sound."
There are fables for poets as well as fables for
critics.

Browning is introduced to the American public
for the first time in " Bells and Pomegranates,"
and with singular fitness the reviewer was com-
pelled to send to Boston for his poems, as they
could not be obtained in New York. Miss Fuller
recognized at once in Miss Barrett's poetry
"vigour and nobleness of conception, depth
of spiritual experience and command of classic
allusion, the vision of a great poet, but little of
his power."

George Sand was at that time at the height of
her fame, to some the female incarnation of evil,
to others an inspired prophetess ; but this Yankee
woman was not deceived : kk George Sand smokes.
wears male attire, wishes to be addressed as mon

MARGARET FULLER 195

frere. Perhaps, if she found those who were as
brothers indeed, she would not care whether she
were brother or sister. Those who would reform
the world must show that they do not speak in
the heat of wild impulse; their lives must be
unstained by passionate error, if they would not
confound the fancies of a day with the requisi-
tions of eternal good." Margaret Fuller was
right. The world is yet unreformed, and it is
not by George Sands or George Eliots that the
work will be done.

About this time, too, appeared her " Women
in the Nineteenth Century." The edition was sold
in a week, and eighty-five dollars were handed
to her as her share. " This was a most speaking
fact ; " that she could hear the voice, speaks for
her growing, sense. The book enlarged her repu-
tation and made her name known abroad. It
proclaimed her opinion of the capacity of women
for a wide activity and demanded an outlet for
it : " Let them be sea-captains if they will."

But her most formal work was a series of
papers on "American Art and Literature." In
the outset she sets herself right by disarming
" critics who may accuse her of writing about a
thing that does not exist." She accords to Pres-
cott industry, the choice of valuable material,

1% ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

the power of clear arrangement, with an absence
of thought ; to Bancroft, leading thoughts by
whose aid he groups his facts. There is the true
doctrine of history. Bryant is placed at the head
of the poets, though his genius is " neither fertile
nor comprehensive." Irving, Cooper, and Miss
Sedgwick are spoken of with " characteristic
appreciation ; " and finally, the Magazine itself
comes in for its share. " The style of story cur-
rent in them is flimsy beyond any texture that was
spun or dreamed of by the mind of man." It
would be interesting to have her opinion of Haw-
thorne, who it will be remembered declined at one
time to dine with her at Mr. Bancroft's house.

The way this young woman talks back at
Carlyle proves her courage, good sense, and in-
sight. " We shall not be sneered or stormed at,"
she says, and that, too, at the time when Carlyle
was yet alive. " If he has become interested in
Oliver or any other pet hyena, by studying his
habits, is that any reason why we should admit
him to our Pantheon ? He rails himself out of
breath at the shortsighted, and yet sees scarce
a step before him."

Of Alfred de Vigny, she says : M To see and
to tell with grace, often with dignity and pathos,
what he sees is his proper vocation ; M of IV'rauger :

MARGARET FULLER 197

" his wit is so truly French in its lightness and
sparkling feathery vivacity, that one like me, ac-
customed to the bitterness of English tonics and
Byronic wrath of satire, cannot appreciate him at
once." Nor did Miss Fuller disdain poetry on
her own account. Some of it is as good as some
of George Eliot's, though this latter writer does
not usually pack into a sonnet line more feet than
the law demands, a matter about which Miss
Fuller was not so particular.

All this is good criticism, strong and keen, and
its author cannot have been the absurd creature
her glorifiers would have us believe. Even in New
York they could not leave her alone. She was not
allowed to visit Blackwell's Island without " shed-
ding the balm of her presence upon the hardened
and wretched inmates, because she came like the
great powers of nature harmonizing with all the
beauty of the soul or of the earth." This of
course is rubbish. What these people said about
their own inward state may have seemed to them
true enough ; they were incapable of telling the
truth about the common things of which truth
can be told.

Now that we know the nature of the person
with whom we are dealing, we shall be able to
estimate the value of the words which she employs.

198 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Words depend for their meaning upon the one
who uses them. "When Carlyle said remorse, he
meant regret ; when his wife spoke of the cruelties
she endured, she merely referred to the ordinary
inconveniences of the married state. Victor Hugo
described Sainte-Beuve as an eagle, and a royal
meteor ; but in France all writers are masters, and
those who attain to any distinction are immortal.
We find Tennyson charging his niece to reveal to
the world how great a sacrifice he made, when at
length he placed on his head the coronet which
had been thrice pressed upon him and twice put
away. Artists in colours are incapable of repre-
senting with truthfulness the things that any one
can see. Artists in words, as a rule, are unable to
tell of a thing as it occurred, unless it be Thomas
Campbell, who alone is remarkable for his fidelity
to fact, as in his relation in verse of the founder-
ing of a troop-ship. But when a literary artist
attempts to reproduce in words his own mental
processes, then it is obviously very hard to con-
tradict him.

Margaret Fuller set down on paper a relation
of the impression made upon her mind by a man :
which is to say she wrote a series of documents
known as love-letters. Fortunately, most persons
pass through that stage before they have attained

MARGARET FULLER 199

to the power of expression, and the emotion ex-
pends itself in sighs, in secret verse, and in toss-
ings to and fro. But she had arrived at complete
fluency and produced a volume of correspondence
which is peculiarly near being nonsense. The
letters are addressed to a Hamburg Jew, Nathan
by name, who died not many years ago, and they
have only recently been made public, though their
existence has always been known to those who
were interested in such matters. One example
will help to show the inconvenience of experi-
encing the passion after the glory of youth is
fled, or at any rate the folly of simulating it in
the maturity of life. The Hebrew lover disap-
pointed the lady by not coming to a concert of
music at Horace Greeley's house, and the next
day he received the following letter :

" The shades and time of evening settled down
upon me as dew upon the earth. You came not —
And now I realize that soon will be the time when
evening will come always, but you will come no
more. "We shall meet in soul — but the living eye
of love, that is in itself almost a soul, that will
beam no more. O heaven, O God, or by what-
soever name I may appeal, surely, surely, O All
Causing, thou must be all sustaining, all fulfilling
too. I, from thee sprung, do not feel forced to

200 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

bear so much as one of these deep impulses in
vain. Nor is it enough that the heavenly magic
of its touch throws open all the treasure chambers
of the universe, if these enchanted doors must
close again. "Wilt thou prepare for me an image
fair and grand enough of hope? Give that to
man at large, but to me send some little talisman
that may influence the secret heart. And let it
have a diamond point that may pierce without any
throb swells. I would not stifle one single note,
only tune all sweet. My head aches still and I
must lean it on the paper as I write, so the writ-
ing goes all amiss. "

As Mr. Birrell says of Hazlitt, we must be on
our guard against the sham raptures of literary
persons, since great gifts of expression always de-
mand employment. At that very moment the fas-
cinating Jew was preparing to sail for Germany.

In 1846 Miss Fuller accomplished her desire to
visit Europe. She sailed from New York on the
old Cambria of the Canard Line. Pier biographer
still pursues her, and finds her, upon the moment
of landing in Liverpool, paying a visit to the
Mechanics' Institute, and afterwards " expressing
appreciation of the British Museum." The a
in the Boston Athenaeum, about which we have
heard so much, loomed large in those days.

MARGARET FULLER 201

The traveller visited Wordsworth at his home,
and found " a reverend old man, clothed in black,
and walking with cautious step along the level
garden path." She met Dean Milman at the
Martineaus', Dr. Chalmers and De Quincey in
Edinburgh, and there saw the portrait of " hate-
ful old John Knox, and his wife who was like
him."

During an excursion to the Highlands, Miss
Fuller had a misadventure and passed the night
on the hills in a Scottish mist, and was none the
worse for it. This would appear to dispose of
the fiction of her frail health. Eeturning to
England, she was soon installed in London ; it
was the London, and those were the days, of
Dickens, Thackeray, Sidney Smith, Moore, Lord
Brougham, the Duke of Wellington, and Car-

lyle.

Miss Fuller began in a small way by visiting
Joanna Baillie, and then felt competent to pre-
sent her letter of introduction from Emerson to
Carlyle. It does not matter now what Margaret
thought of Carlyle, though she did say two or
three things that seem very probable ; it matters
a great deal towards our enquiry what Carlyle
thought of her, for he had some knowledge of
women and knew a fool when he saw one. He

202 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

has put it on record that he and Mrs. Carlyle
held Miss Fuller in real regard, that he found
in her papers " something greatly superior to all
I knew before, in fact, the undeniable utterances
(now first undeniable to me) of a true heroic
mind, altogether unique as far as I know among
the writing women of this generation, rare enough
too, God knows, among the writing men. She is
very narrow sometimes, but she is truly high.
Honour to Margaret and more and more speed
to her." Honour to Margaret, to the real Mar-
garet, not the ridiculous precieuse of the Xew
England coterie.

Two other persons she knew before going to
Paris : Mazzini intimately ; and casually, " a
witty, French, flippant sort of a man, who told
stories admirably, and served a good purpose
by interrupting Carlyle's harangues.' ' This could
be none other than George Henry Lewes. The
meeting with Mazzini was a fateful one to her.

In Paris Miss Fuller was not unknown, for
translations of her social studies had appeared in
the " Revue Independante." She was at once
taken up by George Sand, and introduced to
Chopin, with whom that illustrious moralist had
formed an M alliance " — that, Sir Leslie Stephen
believed to be the correct word to employ in such

MARGARET FULLER 203

cases. It is altogether likely that much which
went on in that household was concealed from the
short-sighted vision of this middle-aged Puritan
maiden. It was no place for her — if we can
trust Browning's description of the society which
was to be encountered there : " the ragged red,
diluted with the low theatrical ; men who worship
George Sand a genou 5as, between an oath and
an ejection of saliva." Artists resemble Calvin-
ists in this respect alone, that they have a com-
mon tendency to fall into the Antinomian heresy
of John Agricola, and hold themselves superior
to the obligations of the moral law ; of course, the
mental process by which they arrive at this com-
forting conclusion is not identical in each case.
The great musician played to her, and Mickiewicz
talked to her whilst the music was going on. She
heard the debates in the Assembly and saw the
Queen at a ball; also Leverrier, the discoverer
of Neptune, " wandering about as if he had lost,
not found, a planet." That is what might be
called " smart."

From all this it will appear that Miss Fuller
was a person of some consideration in the highest
literary circles of Europe. But we must not over-
rate the importance of this. Literary people, as
a rule, are ignorant of many things, and easily

204 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

swayed one way or the other by influences of
slight force. It may have been that they were
carried away by wonder, not that Margaret Fuller
could write so well, but that this outland stranger
of unprepossessing appearance and nasal voice
was a woman and could write at all — like Dr.
Johnson when he saw the dancing bear.

In May, 1847, Margaret Fuller arrived in
Rome, having come by way of Marseilles, Genoa,
and Naples. There she remained two months,
and then proceeded northward by way of Perugia,
Florence, Ravenna, and Venice, to Milan. From
that place she visited the Italian lakes, went on
to Switzerland, and returned to Milan early in
September, and to Rome by way of Florence
near the end of October. At Lake Como she
enjoyed the society of the Marchesa Arconati
Visconti, whom she had previously met in Flor-
ence. The impression she made upon the accom-
plished Italian is recorded in a letter from that
lady to Emerson :

" Je n'ai point rencontre, dans ma vie, de f emme
plus noble, ayant autant de sympathie pour ses
semblables, et dont Tesprit fut plus vivifiant.
Je me suis tout de suite sentie attireo par elle.
Quand je fis sa connaissance, j'ignorais que ce fut
one femme reinarquable."

MARGARET FULLER 205

Though Miss Fuller had now been in Italy less
than half a year, and that spent mostly in travel-
ling, she had already gained the complete con-
fidence and esteem of Young Italy, the revolu-
tionary party, whose watchword was the unifica-
tion of the Italian States into a republic. This
intimacy was but natural, for a strong bond of
sympathy had been established between her and
Mazzini in London. Being interested in ideas
herself, she enjoyed the company of these young
radicals, and as she belonged to a republic, and
as a republic was believed to have something to
do with liberty, they had much in common. /In-
asmuch as Miss Fuller's future was afterwards
bound up with theirs, and as out of this union
arose the tragedy of her life, it will be necessary
to indicate briefly the posture of public affairs.

At the collapse of the fabric which Napoleon
had so painfully reared, the little Italian sover-
eigns returned from their exile more resolute than
ever in tyranny, with Austria approving of their
reign of terror. Tyranny was met with con-
spiracy, and revolt with vengeance. This state
of affairs lasted till 1847. Most men were agreed
that a change must come; there was no agree-
ment as to what that change should be. Italy
must be unified ; one party was for unity under

206 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

republican forms, another party was in favour of
a limited monarchy. Mazzini was for a republic,
Cavour and Garibaldi put their trust in a king.
The faith of Cavour and Garibaldi was afterwards
justified, but only through much shedding of
blood. The revolution in France, which drove
Louis Philippe from the throne in February,
1848, encouraged Mazzini and his friends. Some
months previously, the miracle of all miracles
had happened ; a gleam of political sense eman-
ated from the papal throne. Pius IX declared
himself a liberal ; he proclaimed a political am-
nesty ; he organized a national guard, and began
to form a constitution for the Roman State.

Things looked promising for Mazzini and his
friends, and Margaret Fuller was of their num-
ber. Another of her friends was the Marchese
Ossoli, a young Roman of twenty-eight, of a noble
but impoverished house. In less than two months
the pope had fled from Rome, and was breathing
out threats of excommunication against his recent
allies. In February, 1849, Rome was declared a
republic under three dictators, with Mazzini at
their head. A few days later the dictators escaped
on board a British warship ; in April, the French
were at the gates of Rome, and after a successful
assault held the city for the pope. The dream

MARGARET FULLER 207

was at an end. Margaret Fuller had " played for
a new stake and lost it." That was her view
of the case as contained in a letter to Emerson,
dated July 8, 1849. What was the nature of
that " play " ?

Shortly after her arrival in Rome, in the spring
of 1847, Miss Fuller, on the evening of Holy
Thursday, went to vespers at Saint Peter's with
some friends. The party became separated and
she was at a loss what to do. " Presently a young
man of gentlemanly address came up to her, and
begged, if she were seeking any one, that he might
be permitted to assist her." At last it became
evident beyond a doubt that the party could no
longer be there, and as it was then quite late and
the crowd all gone, they went into the piazza to
find a carriage. There were no carriages, so
Margaret was compelled to walk with her stranger
friend the long distance between the Vatican and
the Corso. At her door they parted, and Mar-
garet, finding her friends already at home, related
the adventure. This is Mrs. Story's account.
This chance acquaintance was the Marchese
Ossoli. Within a few weeks he made an offer of
marriage, which was declined, and Miss Fuller
left for the North. They met again in the follow-
ing November, the offer was renewed, and within

208 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

a few weeks the pair were married. When, where,
or by whom, we do not know to this day.

" I have heard that from the beginning," says
Emerson, " Margaret Fuller idealized herself as
a sovereign. She told a friend that she early saw
herself to be intellectually superior to those
around her, that for years she dwelt upon the idea
that she was not her parents' child, but an
European princess confided to their care." Here,
then, was an opportunity ready at hand for realiz-
ing this very un-American ideal. If the revolu-
tion had succeeded, as seemed not at all unlikely
to the revolutionists, she would have come pretty
near being a " European princess " — at any rate
she would have been the first lady in the land, and
that is closer than one usually comes to the real-
ization of one's childish fancies.

This is not offered as the whole explanation of
Miss Fuller's conduct — the motives for any mar-
riage are never very simple — but it is a pretty
good guess at her central thought. All we know
of the Marchese is entirely to his credit, and it is
altogether probable that Miss Fuller, " wearied
with the over-intellection and restless aspiration
of the accomplished New Englander of that time,
found in the simple geniality of the Italian na-
ture all the charm and novelty of contrast." Let

MARGARET FULLER 209

us hasten to add that no word ever escaped her
or her friends, that would indicate the least re-
gret for her hasty action.

The action was hasty. In May, 1847, let us
repeat, she arrived in Eome for the first time,
and remained only two months. She was back
again in Eome at the end of October, and her
child was born on the 5th of September follow-
ing. That would be considered hasty in Ameri-
can society in these days at any rate.

The central fact in the life of Margaret Fuller
is, as in the life of most women, that she married
and became a mother, and it made a correspond-
ing noise. The whole proceeding was perfectly
regular, natural, and simple. She gives us a
straightforward and truthful account of the se-
quence of events, which is entirely convincing
until her friends begin to supply evidence upon
a subject on which no evidence was needed. That
makes us ask, not what they say, but what they
can prove.

During the winter in Eome after the child was
born, when her trouble was sore upon her, the
Marchesa, as she now was, sent for Mrs. Story,
wife of William Wetmore Story, the sculptor,
and confided the " secret " to her. She also gave
to her confidante certain papers and parchment

210 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

documents to keep, in view of her death, which
she feared was impending. Mrs. Story, with
laudable self-abnegation, declined to read the
papers, save one or two, though she had perfect
liberty to do so. We could now wish that she
had read them all, and informed us of her re-
searches, or else kept absolutely quiet about the
matter.

At the time of Mr. Higginson's writing, he
had before him Mrs. Story's original letter, and
on the strength of it states that Margaret showed
to Mrs. Story the certificate of her marriage with
Ossoli. This same letter had been published long
before in the Memoirs. All that Mrs. Story tells
in the letter is, that, at the time of handing over
the packet, they read together a document written
in Latin on a piece of parchment. The utmost
she claims is that it was a certificate given by a
priest to the effect that Angelo Eugene Ossoli —
the name of the child was Angelo Eugene Philip
— was the legal heir to whatever fortune and title
should come to his father. To this was affixed
his seal, with those of the other witnesses, and the
Ossoli " crest " was drawn in full upon the paper.
This is the relation, and this is the document to
which Mr. Higginsou refers as a marriage certi-
ficate, with Mrs. Story's original letter before

MARGARET FULLER 211

him. If this be offered as evidence, then it is fair
to say it is no evidence at all. Mrs. Story prob-
ably could not read Latin, especially the Latin
likely to be written by an Italian priest of those
days ; the document, according to her showing,
could not have been a marriage certificate, for
the name of the heir is not usually specified in
such writings; the "crest" drawn in full upon
the paper does not increase its authenticity,
and the witnesses were witnesses — to what ?

When the crisis was past, the papers were
returned to the Marchesa, and were lost in the
final disaster. In her own writings, so far as
published up to this time, Margaret assigns no
date to her marriage, though she probably gave
the details in a "little book" which perished
with her. Her friends conclude, on purely physi-
ological grounds, that it took place on or before
December 5, 1847. Therein lies the penalty of
all secret marriages.

The motives for keeping the marriage a secret
are perfectly obvious. The old Marchese Ossoli
was about to die and the patrimony to be divided.
He had three sons, one employed in the Papal
Court as Secretary of the Privy Council, one as
a member of the Guard ; the third and youngest
was on the side of the Ke volution; he was a

212 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Catholic, married in secret to a Protestant ; the
courts, civil and ecclesiastic, were in the hands of
his enemies. Above all, the success of his cause
was not yet assured.

The situation of the woman was pitiable. Mar-
ried in secret, and secrecy in such cases carries
shame ; without a friend to share her trouble, in
the midst of the alarms of war, her husband's life
in peril, she retired to the mountains of Rieta in
poverty and solitude, and there endured the curse
of Eve and inherited the blessing. In seven weeks
the brave New England woman was back in
Rome, and spent the momentous winter of 1848
in the city, with occasional visits to Rieta, where
she had left her child in the hands of attendants
who proved both cruel and treacherous. In April
came the horrors of the siege ; long days and
nights in hospitals filled with wounded and fever-
stricken, her husband at his post of danger on the
walls, and she at times by his side. There was the
real Margaret Fuller, the Puritan woman in her
New England heroism and austerity. 'By the first
of July all was at an end ; at an end, too, all
foolish dreams of unreal greatness. Then she
wrote the whole story to her mother.

The friends of Margaret Ossoli were naturally
much surprised, but most of them were too well

MARGARET FULLER 213

bred to manifest it. Her mother sent her words
of comfort and expressions of endearment. The
Marchesa Arconati loved her the more, " now that
we can sympathize as mothers." To Mr. Story,
who appears not to have received the secret from
his wife, she wrote, " Moral writers cannot exag-
gerate the dangers and plagues of keeping
secrets ; " and she had brotherly love in return.
There was at this time a large colony of her fel-
low countrymen in Italy, for we have heard her
desiring to be delivered from the sound of the
English language ; and from them she received
every consideration. At home, she complains,
there was some meddling curiosity. Her letters,
written during the period when the marriage was
yet unacknowledged, have a curious interest, par-
ticularly those addressed to Emerson. They are
singularly truthful and sincere, and yet disclose
nothing.

Notwithstanding the loss of the intellectual
riches of New England, those days of Italian
poverty were Margaret's happiest days. In a let-
ter to her sister, the wife of William Ellery Chan-
uing, she says : "In my child I find satisfaction
for the first time to the deep wants of my heart."
She dwells upon the purity and simple strength
of her husband's character. "He is capable of

214 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

sacred love ; he showed it to his father, to Rome,
to me ; now he loves his child in the same way."
To her mother she wrote : " Of all that is con-
tained in books he is entirely ignorant, yet he
has excellent practical sense, a very sweet temper
and great native refinement. I have never suf-
fered a pain that he could relieve ; his devotion
when I am ill is to be compared only with yours."
This is not a bad assemblage of qualities in a
husband, and her testimony is confirmed by all
the Americans in Italy who knew him, Mr. and
Mrs. Story, Lewis Cass, W. H. Hurlbut, Horace
Sumner, Mozier, Chapman, and the Greenoughs.

The family remained nearly a year in Italy
after the fall of Rome, chiefly in Florence. Of
this halcyon time Mr. Hurlbut, consul at Turin,
gives rather a free account. He admires their
domestic life without stint, and gives a pretty
picture of Ossoli, seated by his wife, dressed in
a dark brown coat, reading some patriotic book.
Mr. Hurlbut always found him at home, save
when a number of American and English visitors
came in. On those occasions he used to take his
leave and go to the cafe, but we must not blame
him too severely for that.

Neither Margaret nor her husband, nor both
together, possessed the six hundred dollars a year

MARGARET FULLER 215

necessary for living in Italy, and as all avenues
of employment were closed to him on account of
his birth and politics, the pair turned their faces
to America, where the wife with rare courage
proposed to take up the burden on behalf of her
own family, which she had borne with such fidelity
for her father's.

From motives of economy, they sailed from
Leghorn in the merchant ship Elizabeth, a barque
commanded by Captain Hasty ; it was the 17th
of May, 1850, before the ship got under weigh.
Before Gibraltar was reached, the captain lay
dead of the small-pox, and on the ocean voyage
the child contracted the disease, but recovered
handsomely.

On Tuesday, the 18th of July, the Elizabeth
was off Navesink on the Jersey coast ; the weather
thick, the wind from south of east. To make a
good offing and in the morning run down before
the wind, past Sandy Hook, the mate, who was
now in command, stood to the east of north, sail-
ing well in the wind. By nine o'clock a stiff
breeze was blowing ; it grew into a gale, and by
midnight the weather was very heavy. The Eliza-
beth was now under reefed lower sails and head-
sails, everything aloft made snug, and all hands
on deck. The gale increased to such a hurricane

21G ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

as had not been known for years, and what with
wind and what with tide, the master of the Eliza-
beth overran his course, drifting to leeward all
the time, and piled up his ship about four in
the morning on Fire Island, the grave of many
another good craft before and since. The main
and mizzen were cut away, but in spite of the
relief the bow held hard ; the stern swung round
till the barque was broadside and hard aground,
and the seas made a clear breach over her. The
heavy cargo of marble went through the bilge,
and now the Elizabeth was at the mercy of the
sea. Between-decks everything was awash, and
the few passengers were huddled together to wind-
ward. By daybreak they gained the shelter of
the forecastle and saw the shore not a cable's
length away, with wreckers and their wagons
ready for salvage, but not for rescue. By noon,
eight hours after the stranding, a lifeboat arrived
from Fire Island, which was less than four miles
away, but not the slightest attempt was made to
launch it. Davis, the mate, behaved most credit-
ably, according to his own story. He devised
a plan of escape and proved its efficacy by swim-
ming ashore in company with the widow of his
late captain ; all but four of the crew also prow. I
its feasibility; the plan was primitive, though

MARGARET FULLER 217

practicable, and yet not the slightest attempt was
made to launch the lifeboat into a sea in which
men could swim with safety. By three o'clock
the cabin had gone adrift, the stern settled down,
the forecastle filled, and the refugees were driven
to the open deck, where they were soon huddled
about the foremast. Presently this went by the
board, carrying the decks away. Two remaining
members of the crew swam ashore and two were
drowned; the steward seized the child and
plunged in; their bodies were washed ashore a
few minutes later. Margaret and her husband
went down together. The mate said it was their
own fault; that is what he might have been
expected to say. Their bodies were never recov-
ered. When the lifeboatmen were derided for
their cowardice, they excused themselves by
saying they did not know there was any one of
importance on board.

The story of life-saving on the coast of the
United States goes back to 1786, when Noyes,
the blind physician of Boston, organized the
Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Mas-
sachusetts. The National Congress laid its para-
lyzing hand upon the movement in 1849, by
passing an appropriation of ten thousand dollars
for the work ; until 1876, the service was put to

218 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

the basest uses by the politicians, and during
that unhappy period more vessels than the Eliza-
beth were sacrificed to the greed of the crippled
and degenerate proteges of the politicians.

This was the end of the tragedy of Margaret
Fuller's life. The real tragedy would have
begun, had she had to commence again her life
with a foreign husband in New England.

If we possessed only the record of Margaret
Fuller's life from the time she left Boston and
came under the sane influence of the editor of
the " Tribune," until its untimely end, we should
miss much of the pathology of hysteria as mani-
fested in herself, in other women, and in the men
amongst their friends who were like women ; but
this record would show her to be entirely admir-
able. This normal life covered less than five
years. She died at the age of forty. George
Eliot was older than that when her first notable
work appeared ; Madame de Stael was forty-one,
and George Sand nearly as old.

It is useless to speculate upon what Margaret
Fuller might have accomplished had life been
spared to her. Nothing is more futile than such
speculations. If Kingsley had ceased writing at
thirty-six, and Mr. Kipling had succumbed to his
attack of pneumonia in New York, their names

MARGARET FULLER 219

would be held in mysterious reverence ; and the
public would busy itself with wonder as to the
nature of their future accomplishments and with
lamentations at their untimely fate. The public
mind would surely have been wrong ; probably it
is wrong also in surmising that Margaret Fuller
might have accomplished something.

Poor Chatterton understood the import of this.
Sad indeed his fate, but sadder still, had he lived
to see his pure stream stagnant in the sand, or
contracted into a brawling brook.

All we can say, to conclude the matter, is that
the personality of Margaret Fuller was a romantic
one, that she and her friends were in the habit
of talking romantically about it, that is, without
enquiring too clearly into the truth of what they
said ; that romantic things really did occur, and
that, with the irony usual in such cases, nothing
came of it after all.

IV
WALT WHITMAN

WALT WHITMAN

In the year 1855, a thin quarto volume was pub-
lished in Brooklyn. It was entitled " Leaves of
Grass," and the author's name was given as
Walt Whitman. The little book contained about
a dozen poems, or " pieces," as the contents were
designated by the writer, and it was ill received
by the public to whom it was addressed.

Most persons who are capable of forming an
opinion upon such matters are now agreed that
" Leaves of Grass " was the most important work
in poetry which had appeared in the United
States up to that time, and that the author, Walt
Whitman, is a poet in very truth, with all the
rights and privileges pertaining to that order.
Indeed, there are some who hold that he is the
greatest of American poets ; that is, if one poet
can with any degree of justness be compared with
another.

This question of the relative importance of
poets, it is unnecessary to discuss, even if it were
possible to arrive at a decision in such a case.
The present business is to enquire how it was

224 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

that the generation to which Whitman spoke
was so blind to the beauty of his poetry, and so
insensible to the significance of his philosophical
speculations, as to greet him with execration or
laughter. This task will involve some consider-
ation of the poetry itself, some estimate of the
personality of the writer, and obviously, some
comment upon the people amongst whom he
lived.

When a new method of literary presentation is
put forward, those persons whose business it is to
inform and direct the public mind have legiti-
mate employment, but the effect of their criti-
cism is merely for the time being. A critic is
always correct in his judgement of cases about
which it does not matter much whether he is
right or wrong. In the unusual case, which does
matter, he is sure to be wrong, because the prin-
ciples by which ordinarily he comes to a conclu-
sion fail to apply. He sees a man who is off the
beaten path, and by all the rules and directions
that man has lost his way. The critics must go
safely in the middle of the road. They have au
office to perform and a reputation to sustain:
the eulogists are under no necessity beyond
gratifying their own good-nature.

All things pertaining to literature will right

WALT WHITMAN 225

themselves if they be given time. The value of
all discussion, whether it be in the public speech
of the political assembly or in printed words, lies
in this, namely, that the matter is kept in a con-
dition of flux until it is entirely ready to assume
a permanent form. Most literature and all crit-
icism is merely talk about things. What was
said of Whitman — the railing of his enemies,
the adulation of his friends — is of value only as
an expression of the current thought of the time ;
it had no influence in shaping the estimate in
which he will finally be held. If men do not un-
derstand what a poet says, no amount of comment
will enlighten them. Poets have perceptions, but
no matter how great their capacity for resolving
those perceptions into words, they have little
power of compelling others to see immediately as
they see. The most they can do is to persuade
men to open their eyes. In time, somehow, men's
eyes do get opened, and they see things which
the poet saw long before. Then they say that the
thing is true, and that the man is a poet. The
value of criticism, then, is that it reflects contem-
porary thought, or rather discloses the main drift
of it. At its worst, it reveals the writer of it ; at
its best, it elucidates the opinions which were held
by the generation for which it assumes to speak.

226 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

This, in the main, is true of all poetry and
of all comment upon it. De Quincey, who was
one of Wordsworth's earliest friends and ad-
mirers, had occasion to quote one of his splen-
did passages, which contains the noble descrip-
tion :

There, towers begirt
With battlements, that on their restless fronts
Bore stars.

Yet De Quincey felt constrained to refer to
Wordsworth merely as "a great modern poet,"
and would not formally mention his name. " I
shrunk with disgust," he said, "from making
any sentence of mine the occasion of an explosion
of vulgar malice against him." Burns's poems,
when they first appeared, were, in the judgement
of the leading authority of the English-speaking
world, " nothing more than disgusting nonsense
written in an unknown tongue." To the same
reviewers the " Ancient Mariner " was " a rhap-
sody of unintelligible wildness and incoherence ; "
" Christabel " was rude and unfeatured ; M Tin-
tern Abbey " was " tinctured with gloomy, nar-
row, and unsociable ideas of seclusion from the
commerce of the world." The only world which
these reviewers knew anything about was tin4
mechanical world of their own Adam Smith.

WALT WHITMAN 227

Utopia and Paradise were less desirable to them
than a well-contrived iron mill, with its due
observance of the eternal relations between the
various kinds of capital, and proper division of
labour, with due profits upon its stock.

In the case of Walt Whitman, too, the wise
men were singularly unanimous in their judge-
ment ; and as it afterwards turned out, they were
mainly in the wrong. They were also wilfully,
and, upon the whole, viciously harsh. They were,
as usual, under the domination of their time ; yet
in the end, when we understand all the circum-
stances of the case, we shall not blame them, any
more than we blame the leaders of public opinion
upon that celebrated occasion which arose in
Judaea. Indeed, there is something worthy of
admiration in the conduct of any set of Pharisees
who resist a doctrine which they believe to be
false. To the generation which lived half a cen-
tury ago, Walt Whitman was nothing more than
the son of a carpenter, born of themselves, a man
who spent his life amongst the toilers, chiefly
where they suffered most ; a man who uttered a
few sayings which did not look like poetry when
they were printed in a book. So he was reviled
by the many and blessed by the few ; and these
few in their turn reviled his enemies. To complete

228 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

the relation, this poet endured great suffering of
mind and body, and died as the result of that
suffering, when he was a little past the middle
of life. Unfortunately, though he remained as
an amiable presence, he was not buried for long
years after.

The burden of the complaint against the poetry
of Whitman was not that it was strange and
queer and unmetrical, without good sense or
agreeable sound, but that it was unclean. We
are, therefore, compelled to examine the state of
mind of the people who laid this charge, as well
as to consider the poetry upon which the charge
was founded.

It is the fashion to speak lightly of the early
Puritans who settled in New England ; to explain
the narrowness of their lives by their hard en-
vironment; and to account for their insensibility
by the lack of stimulation. If their lives were
narrow, they were lofty ; if they were insensible
to what appeals to us in art and literature, they
had ideals of their own, which so far transcended
the things of this world that art and literature
were not worth bothering about in comparison
with them. To attain to a knowledge of God was
the end of their striving, and in the struggle
everything that we are making such a fuss about

WALT WHITMAN 229

was trampled under foot. When a man gets it
into his head that by searching he can find out
God, he cares very little for the flower in the
crannied wall, much less for the pictures of it or
for the rhymes which the poet makes. Of course,
it is not pretended that the infertility of the coun-
try to-day in the various forms of art is due to a
preoccupation with the things of God. The utmost
that is urged is that the bent of the people in
the early days was toward theology and away
from art, and that as time went on they finally
attained to an attitude of strict neutrality or
indifference to both.

The period preceding the events which led up
to the Civil War was, in many respects, the queer-
est in the annals of the United States ; and the
people who lived at that time could not know
that there was a poet in their midst speaking for
a generation which was not yet born. There was
very little value set upon artistic expression of
any kind, and but slight discrimination between
what was good and what was bad in any form
of art. Emerson was ranked above Montaigne
as an essayist, and even the pretension to an
acquaintanceship with Longfellow was enough to
make a man's reputation. The people were yet
under the shadow of their ancestral tree. They

230 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

did not care whether any given poetry was good or
bad. They had no interest whatever in poetry.
They knew that it was wrong to hold their fellow
men in bondage, and they were resolute to put an
end to that form of evil at least.

Every age and every community has its own
notions in a general way, as to what is right
and what is wrong. In Scotland, at one time,
unsoundness of theological doctrine was an
evidence of inherent viciousness ; cattle-lifting,
a national, and, under ordinary circumstances,
praiseworthy characteristic. In the early commu-
nities of the Western States no great stress was
laid upon correctness of belief, but a good deal
was made of the stealing of horses. To Cellini,
murder was a whimsical pastime ; to a publican,
the theft of his pewter pots is the ultimate expres-
sion of human depravity.

The New England community inherited such
a hatred of sin as a theological entity that they
were incapable of estimating the relative heinous-
ness of vices so far apart as piracy and sleeping in
church. The commoner forms of wickedness, Sab-
bath-breaking, profanity, and uncleanness, were
regarded together as equally deserving of God's
wrath and curse. But they had very especial and
very erroneous views upon the moral significance

WALT WHITMAN 231

of those acts which have to do with the propaga-
tion of the species ; and to this day the New
England mind has not rid itself of the conviction
that drinking and drabbing are worse than lying
and stealing. This state of mind at length came
to colour their whole view of life, to govern their
estimate of conduct, and influence their judgement
of art.

Foreign observers of American life are filled
with wonder at the fixedness of this attitude to-
ward conduct and life. They have seen a man,
dishonest in his relations with his fellow men,
with no religious convictions, or false to those
which he pretended to hold, recreant to the public
trust which had been confided to him, cynical
in his friendships and violent in his enmities,
yet observing the conventions in respect to his
domestic affairs — and he was advanced to still
higher place.

The invariable result of a narrow way of life is
a wrong perception between good and evil, and a
failure to recognize the relative and negative value
of the various forms of wickedness which prevail
in the world. Any given bodily action is in itself
neither right nor wrong. It is right or wrong,
only when taken with the whole contexture of
events of which it forms a part. Every vice is

232 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

the counterpart of some virtue. In a narrow
community the virtue and the vice are confused,
and the confusion results in prudery, which
quickly passes into hypocrisy. A moderate con-
sumption of alcohol is confounded with debauch-
ery; an enquiring mind is evidence of atheism
and proof of vicious living. Worst perversion of
all : the dominant passion of humanity is regarded
as being at one with libidinousness.

Thoreau, when he heard of Whitman, said,
" He is democracy." Lincoln, when he saw the
poet, cried out, " He is a man." But the mass of
the people were only dully conscious that he had
offended against the dearest traditions of New
England life. Whitman lived in New York, it is
true ; but the standards by which he was judged
were New England standards. The rule of life
which he transgressed was the Boston rule. From
the point of view which prevailed in New York, it
did not matter that a man, even were he a poet,
should have a ruddy face and wear big whiskers,
that he should cross the ferry in the pilot-house
of the steamer, that he should ride on the top of
an omnibus and talk with low people, even tread
with bare feet the shore of Long Island, or swim
naked in its waters.

The poets of Boston did none of these things.

WALT WHITMAN 233

They kept out of the rain and the sun. They found
enjoyment in things which Whitman disdained.
In a letter from James Russell Lowell to Miss
Emelyn Eldredge we have some indication of
what the great ones of Boston found entertaining :
" I, yesterday, returned from Salem, where we
had spent Fast Week. We had a very good time
indeed, doing, of course, just what we pleased.
We waltzed, or acted charades, or enjoyed tete-a-
tetes on the stairs or in the library, or joked, or
did something, all the time. An ingenious friend,
who was patient enough to count the number of
puns made in the space of twenty minutes, found
them to be seventy-five, or a little more than three
in a minute. The recoil from such a state of mind
is either into stupidity or a greater degree of non-
sense." Judging from some publications which
appeared about this time, it would seem that this
final observation of Lowell was probably just —
that such diversions are apt to lead to stupidity
and nonsense on the part of those who indulge in
them.

Nor are we left without knowledge of the kind
of jokes which passed current in the community,
scattered, as they are, through the pages of letters
which have been so ruthlessly made public within
the past five years. When William Wetmore

234 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Story was in Italy, Lowell wrote to him to en-
quire : " What do you do for cigars? I know that
the Virginian nepenthe is so much esteemed there,
that one of the popular oaths is Per Baccof I
know that Vesuvius smokes, but do the people
generally?" Lowell did not care whether the
Italians used tobacco or not ; he was only anxious
to find an opening for his little joke. The incident
is typical. The men of his time and class cared
only for certain aspects of life ; for them " litera-
ture" was the thing.

Mr. Story, in a letter to Lowell, dated from
Boston in 1855, bemoans that his fellow country-
men " have little blood and few sensual tempta-
tions." We may dissent at once from this impli-
cation, that the main office of the blood is to
minister to sensuality ; yet it is significant that
such was the connection in the New England
mind. To Whitman this spirit in the blood was
a noble creation for a divinely appointed and
glorious purpose. He magnified it and made it
honourable ; the wise men of New England strove
to put it underfoot ; or rather, the thing died of
inanition, and they took credit to themselves for
having destroyed it.

We may accept the statement of Story as
being correct, and we can find a natural explana-

WALT WHITMAN 235

tion of the phenomenon in the facts of physiology.
If we were more willing to follow the practice of
that Judaean king of perfect heart, and seek unto
the physicians for information upon these deep
matters, instead of laying them to the charge of
the Devil without further investigation, we should
have safer grounds for procedure. A good physi-
cian and great physiologist has written in his
book : " Idleness is the mother of lechery. There
are other altars than those of Venus upon which
a young man may light fires. He may practise
at least two of the five means by which, as the
physician Eondibilis counselled Panurge, carnal
concupiscence may be cooled and quelled — hard
work of body and mind."

From the time of the earliest settlement, the
inhabitants of New England had hard work of
body in their endeavour to subsist ; they had hard
work of mind in their endeavour — a vain one
as it afterwards proved — to discover the whole
purpose of God. In addition to this, there was
no organized class of idle rich or idle poor, and
so the people were unfamiliar with the vice of
uncleanness. To them it was a hideous monster.
Hatred of the vice caused a hatred of hearing
about the normal circumstances of which this
vice is the counterpart.

236 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

The chief end of man, notwithstanding a great
authority to the contrary, is to propagate his
species. The present writer has been told, by one
of the many philosophers who love to meditate in
secret, that life is the condition of matter which
enables an organism to perpetuate itself; and
that the eternal purpose of the Universe is to
endow matter with the capacity for sentient en-
joyment. The whole fabric of creation is indis-
solubly bound up with this natural propensity,
and with it the passion for maternity. As one
decays, the other dies. Numerical diminution
of the race and individual decadence go together.
That is the curse of Eve. But we are not speak-
ing of present times. The history of all society is
determined by the attitude which it adopts to-
ward this fundamental conception : and to come
to the matter in hand, it is only in communities
where a correct view prevails that fulness of life
is found, and artistic expression, the flower of life,
is possible.

The Puritans held other views as to the mission
of the race, either adopting Saint Paul's convic-
tion that the end of the human species, as such,
was at hand ; or Calvin's belief, that if any indivi-
dual of the species were to escape eternal punish-
ment, it would be but by the skin of his teeth ; or

* WALT WHITMAN 237

the judgement of Jonathan Edwards that the balk
of mankind was reserved for burning. Obviously,
a species with so gloomy an outlook before it was
not worth reproducing, and men had a ready
means of bringing to naught the sinister purposes
which they attributed to Providence. Yet Ed-
wards himself had ten sisters and eleven children,
which is a singular illustration of the slight degree
in which the dominant passion of humanity is in-
fluenced by extraneous beliefs. Whitman's career,
then, was in the nature of a revolt, and we should
fail to understand it, had we not, at some length,
gone into the matter against which he rebelled.

However much the literary coterie of New Eng-
land might pretend to be satisfied with their en-
vironment, in reality they were not so. They dis-
closed continually their discontent in the letters
which they were incessantly writing to each other.
To return again to the correspondence of William
Wetmore Story. In a letter to Lowell about
Allston, it is asserted that he " starved spiritually
— there was nothing congenial about him — he
was stunted by the cold winds of that fearful
Cambridgeport — the heart grows into stone —
there is no hearty love of anything." This was
in Boston. In more fashionable places it was no
better. When Mr. Story was in Newport, he

238 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM *

gave some account of the condition of affairs,
which he observed at a meeting of the aristocracy
in that resort of society : "I did not see a hand-
some face — all wan and worn and haggard.

There was a famous Miss , Jewish in style,

hollow -cheeked, with two drum-sticks for arms,
broken, and sharpened off at the elbows. To her
immense attention is paid, because she is rich.
All the talk here is about dollars, how much
money this and that one has got, and a dreary
and monotonous thing it is to hear it so con-
stantly." All this concerns merely the dryness
and dreariness of New England life. I have re-
frained of set purpose from making any mention
of the wickedness of it, though the letter-writers
of the time manifest no such reticence. In a let-
ter to Lowell from Story, the sculptor adds to the
bloodlessness and the absence of sensual tempta-
tions the fatal words, "but they do not resist
what temptations they have." This appears to
me to be merely ill-natured, though Mr. Story
does illustrate his saying by some shocking gossip
about the very delicate matter of cuckoldry — to
employ an old phrase. This, then, was society,
and Whitman had no social ambitions. He had
no desire to enter it. He was a force. He moved
in his own lines. He was untrammelled. Indeed,

WALT WHITMAN 239

there is a rumour to the same effect current in
the frontier stations of India in connection with
Mr. Kipling. That is the one thing which society-
will not tolerate — a lack of social ambition, an
outsidedness of all cliques.

Walt Whitman was born free from the con-
ventions, good or bad, which hedged in his fellow
countrymen. He had the virtues inherent in the
New England stock and was free from many of its
vices. His first American progenitor came from
England to Connecticut in 1635, in the True Love,
a ship only a little less famous than the Abigail
or the Mayflower. The family remained in New
England for two generations, then migrated to
Long Island, in the State of New York, and was
established there for four generations before the
poet was born. He came from a mingled blood.
His mother's people were Van Yelsors, and he
obtained a Celtic strain from his maternal grand-
mother, who was a Williams. The occupation
of the family is also worthy of note. The Whit-
mans, and the Van Velsors, too, farmed their
own lands, raised horses and cattle ; and some of
the younger members of the family, with Amer-
ican versatility, turned to seafaring, carpentry, or
other means of livelihood. Born anew in New
England, nourished in New York, enriched by

240 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

fresh strains of blood, ennobled by independence,
self-reliant through success in varied occupations,
such a family was well qualified for the produc-
tion of a free man.

Walt Whitman, then, was " well begotten, and
raised by a perfect mother," and soon proved him-
self worthy of his high birth and training. He
was the second of nine children, and was usually
called Walt to distinguish him from his father,
whose name also was Walter. The qualities in
the Whitman family, which have been already
enumerated, manifested themselves early in this
boy, and at the age of thirteen he was competent
to take his place in the great world. He began by
learning to set type, an occupation which has been
peculiarly fertile of great men. A thirteen-year-
old typesetter in a modern printing-office is usually
a product of domestic necessity. In those days an
American-born boy took to work as naturally as
English children of the same age obtained a com-
mand of men in the army or navy. The printer's
case soon lost its interest, and he forsook it in
order to teach a school. It was not long before
he was back in the world again, writing for news-
papers and setting the type, and at nineteen he be-
gan editing a paper for himself. Then he removed
to New York, where he remained for ten years,

WALT WHITMAN 241

setting type, printing, editing, writing, spending
summers in the country at farm work, speaking
at debating societies and political assemblies ; in
short, earning his living, and living in any way
that amused and interested him.

Whitman now knew the world in so far as it
was contained in New York ; but he wished to
know more. Being then about thirty years of age,
he began a slow journey with his brother through
the Middle and Southern States, and reached New
Orleans. He returned by the Western States as
far north as Canada, and, making a wide circuit,
returned to New York after an absence of two
years. He had seen the great American people at
work and was meditating upon what it meant ; and
whilst so doing, he continued writing and editing,
building, buying, and selling houses ; but " being
in danger of getting rich," he abandoned these
lucrative if absorbing employments.

The poet's education was now complete, and it
bore fruit in this little book of twelve pieces. It
was printed at the house of Andrew and James
Kowe, corner of Fulton and Cranberry streets,
Brooklyn. Whitman himself assisted in setting
the types, so that the strange arrangement of the
lines is not the fault of the proof-reader or printer,
as many alleged at the time of publication.

242 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Whitman had seen life at first hand, he was
now to look death in the face. In 1862 the news
came that his brother had been wounded at the
battle of Fredericksburg, and he started for
the camp on the Rapahannock. After caring for
his brother, he joined the hospital corps, and
assisted in conveying the wounded to Washing-
ton. There he remained for three years, min-
istering to the sick soldiers in the hospitals,
supporting himself in any way he could, chiefly
by writing letters to the newspapers. Then he fell
ill, and after a short visit to his home returned to
the hospitals. About the close of the war he was
appointed to a clerk's place in the Department
of the Interior, and was afterwards transferred
to the office of the Attorney- General, where he
became so efficient as to earn a salary of sixteen
hundred dollars a year. In 1873 he was stricken
with paralysis ; he removed to Camden, New
Jersey, where he lived on the edge of poverty
till 1892, and then died.

Walt Whitman, we have seen, was born free.
He lived a life of freedom. He saw that his
countrymen possessed some of the elements of
freedom, and he wished to set them wholly free.
He addressed them as a prophet, that is, as one
who speaks for another. He examined himself as

1

WALT WHITMAN 243

the son of humanity, and disclosed the record of
his observations. As a result the people said that
he was possessed of a devil, that he was insane ;
and when Emerson hailed the " Leaves of Grass "
in the words, " I give you joy of your free and
brave thought. I have great joy in it. I wish to
see my benefactor " — the " Boston Post " could
only account for the commendation of such a
"prurient and polluted work," on the ground
that Emerson also was suffering from temporary
insanity, and was impure-minded as well. " Woe
and shame," this newspaper cried, " for the land
of liberty, if its literature's stream is to flow from
the filthy fountain of licentious corruption. No
merits can atone for the exulting audacity of the
obscenity which marks a large portion of the
volume ; its vaunted manliness is the deification
of self and defiance of the Deity ; its liberty is
the wildest license ; its love the essence of the
lowest lust." It cannot be alleged that this was
a mere hasty utterance, for it was written in
1860, five years after the book appeared.

Another Boston newspaper writer was less
temperate; he thought the title of the book
ridiculous, and the work itself a heterogeneous
mass of bombast, egotism, vulgarity, and nonsense.
As if this were not enough, he continued : " The

244 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

beastliness of the author is set forth in his own
description of himself, and we can conceive no
better reward than the lash for such a violation ;
the book should find no place where humanity
urges any claim to self-respect, and the author
should be kicked from all decent society as below
the level of the brute ; there is neither wit nor
method in his disjointed babbling, and it seems
to us he must be some escaped lunatic raving in
pitiable delirium.', This was printed within the
year of the publication of the " Leaves of Grass."

The vilification of Whitman was not confined
to any one locality, but was general throughout
the United States. In Cincinnati, a writer for
the " Commercial " assumed that his readers were
ignorant of the achievements of Whitman, which
was probably not an unjustifiable assumption,
although the book had appeared five years pre-
viously. He then proceeds to enlighten them by
declaring that the author was " a person of coarse
nature, blurting out impertinence under a full
assurance of originality."

In New York the appearance of the book was
greeted with a general horror, which was well
expressed in the " Criterion : " " Thus, then, we
leave this gathering of muck to the laws, which
certainly, if they fulfil their intent, must have

WALT WHITMAN 245

power to suppress such obscenity. In our allu-
sions to this book we have found it impossible to
convey any, even the most faint, idea of its style
and contents, and of our disgust and detestation
of them. The records of crime show that many
monsters have gone on with impunity, because
the exposure of their vileness was attended with
too great delicacy. " The exposure of crime in the
United States to-day is not handicapped by any
such disability.

By the year 1857, "Leaves of Grass" had
grown to a volume of 384 pages, containing
thirty-two poems, and was published in New
York. The third issue was in 1860, by Thayer
and Eldredge, of Boston, a handsome volume, in
which were included one hundred and fifty-four
poems. It might be thought that after five years
of deliberation, and with so large a mass of mate-
rial, the writers for the best magazines in the
country should not have gone so far astray.

In 1876 a magazine in New York, bearing a
great name, went into the matter very fully, and
declared its settled belief that Whitman was " a
mere trickster." After falsifying all the history
of his life, and assigning to his most ordinary
actions the motives of a charlatan, that magazine
set down as its deliberate conclusion that " Leaves

246 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

of Grass " was " a performance of unparalleled
audacity, an outrage upon decency, and not fit to
be seen in any respectable house. Impudent and
ridiculous as the book was, it would not have
been easy to get it before the public, but accident
and the author's cunning favoured him."

The late Bayard Taylor, writing editorially in
the " Tribune," repeated the same conclusions,
and in 1881 that journal returned to the charge,
classing the " dilettante indelicacies of Mallock
and Oscar Wilde with the slop-bucket of Walt
Whitman. The verses have been printed irreg-
ularly, and read behind the door. Some have
valued them for their barbaric yawp, some for
their nastiness and animal insensibility to shame ;
it is the author's mission to proclaim that garbage
is as good as nectar, if you are only lusty enough
to think so ; neither anatomy, sentiment, nor
susceptibility to physical beauty has anything to
do with it — it is entirely bestial, and the gross
materialism of the verses represents art in its
last degradation."

This was about the time of the appearance of
the fourth edition of " Leaves of Grass," by James
K. Osgood and Company, and, as a result of the
outcry, the district attorney served a notice upon
the publishers that unless the issue were stopped,

WALT WHITMAN 247

the firm would be prosecuted in pursuance of the
public statutes respecting obscene literature. This
happened only twenty years ago.

As late as 1882 the leading magazine in the
United States, in its review of literature, could
spare only three lines to say of the final edition
of " Leaves of Grass " as we have it to-day : " It
is a congeries of bizarre rhapsodies, that are
neither sane verse nor intelligible prose.' ' The
same magazine, ten years later, a date which many
now living can remember, declined to publish an
original poem by Whitman, on the ground that
it was a mere improvisation. During the year just
ended a writer in an important American review
blamed Whitman, because " by his peculiarities
he had blinded men's eyes to the real masters of
American verse."

In certain quarters in England which were
dominated by the same ideas of morality, it was
no better. The " Critic," then, as now, an arbiter
of public taste, declared that Whitman was a
poet " whose indecencies stink in the nostrils,"
that he was " as unacquainted with art as a hog
with mathematics. His poems," that authority
protested, " are innocent of rhyme, and resemble
nothing so much as the war-cry of the Red In-
dians ; this Walt Whitman reminds us of Cali-

248 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

ban flinging down his logs and setting himself to
write a poem ; the man who wrote page 79 of the
4 Leaves of Grass ' deserves nothing so richly as
the public executioner's whip; we call it the
expression of a beast."

In one small circle in England, however, Whit-
man won instant recognition, and he was admitted
into that brotherhood which had for its motive
truth, sincerity, and earnestness, which appealed
to things themselves to find out if that, was true
which was being continually repeated about them.
Rossetti, indeed, published selections from Whit-
man's poetry, and lent to it the sanction of his
name and pledged the reputation of his friends.

It may be urged now that these expressions did
not represent the sentiments of the people at
large. We must not assume that everything which
is printed in a newspaper is necessarily false.
Besides, we have other evidence. Official notice
was taken of Whitman's conduct. In 1865 he was
employed as a clerk in the Department of the
Interior, under the Secretary, James Harlan, and
was dismissed from his post. The reason put
forward for his dismissal by Secretary Harlan
was that he had ten years before written a book
which was full of indecent passages, and that the
author was a very bad man and a free-lover. This

WALT WHITMAN 249

action of the Secretary for the Department of the
Interior met with general approbation, as may be
gathered from the newspaper comment upon it at
the time. Though James Harlan was Secretary
of the Interior, and had been a Methodist clergy-
man and president of a small college, he was not
a great man. A great man, a poet, who lived in
Cambridge, was visited by a stranger, who was
on his way to visit Whitman also ; but his host
turned him aside, affirming that the author of the
" Leaves of Grass " was no fit company for so
distinguished a personage, that he was " a com-
mon street blackguard, and nothing but a low
New York rowdy."

The defamers of Whitman were not all found
in newspaper offices. Even Emerson appears to
have repented of his first generous outburst. He
had intended sending a copy of the book to Car-
lyle, and described it as a nondescript monster,
which yet had terrible eyes and buffalo strength ;
but hesitated, as "it wanted good morals so
much.'' However, he thought better of it and
sent it to Carlyle, with this intimation, " After
looking into it, if you think, as you may, that it
is only an auctioneer's inventory of a warehouse,
you can light your pipe with it." Emerson had
a curious faculty for taking on the colour of his

250 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

environment, and for assuming the tone of the
persons to whom he wrote.

There is a vice of praising as well as a vice
of detracting, and Whitman suffered from both.
His friends, though few, were not silent. Indeed,
they were scarcely more temperate in speech
than his traducers. One of his chief advocates,
a warm-hearted, hot-blooded Irishman, described
an opponent of Whitman as a lewd fellow and a
dirty dog; another opponent, he asserted, had
a narrow mind and a rotten heart ; and the pub-
lishers were peddlers. This writer next turned
upon the critics, and called them poetasters,
plagiarists, hypocrites, prudes, eunuchs, fops,
poisoners, blackguards, snakes, hogs, gnats,
midges, vermin, monkeys, a paltry and venomous
swarm condensed into a demon in the garb of an
inquisitor, and by many other ingenious terms,
which he claimed were descriptive.

Intemperateness of speech is yet the character-
istic of American literature. This wildness of
statement, this unqualified praise and undiscrim-
inating blame, this defiance of standards, are
best observed in that form of art which is known
as magazine writing. In a number of the " Cen-
tury," so late as November, 1904, judgement is
passed upon Gilbert Stuart's portraits of men,

WALT WHITMAN 251

and the picture of Judge Stephen Jones is de-
scribed as a " living portrait, which for brilliant
colouring, bold handling, firm modelling, natural
pose, and strong individuality, must for ever stand
unsurpassed ; " and the dictum of " Jouett, the
Kentucky painter," is quoted : " Upon the whole,
the most remarkable face and painting that I
have ever seen." It may be so, but the evidence
is not sufficient to convince those whose taste in
portraiture is influenced by other standards than
those which prevail in Kentucky, or even in the
United States as a whole. The feeling yet re-
mains that such admirable painters as Velasquez,
and Rembrandt, and Raeburn are entitled to
some consideration. Similarly, the conviction
persists that neither the friends nor the enemies
of Whitman spoke the truth.

Indeed, Walt Whitman's reputation was not
much better served by his friends than by his
enemies. We have already seen that they were
intemperate in their speech, cursing where cursing
was unnecessary. They were also injudicious in
their praise and were continually putting foolish
notions into the poet's head. This was during the
twenty years of his illness, and few reputations
can stand up against twenty years of invalidism.
In the end his friends gathered together and

252 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

published a most foolish book, which contained all
that had ever been said for or against the poet,
and all that any one could remember of the most
unimportant details of his daily life. Even the
chart of a travelling phrenologist, whatever kind
of quack that may be, was pressed into service by
the poet's friends, to prove that he was not devoid
of admirable qualities.

Whilst Whitman had a vigorous life, we are
glad to hear of his noble physique, his cleanly and
comfortable, if unconventional dress, his daily
ablutions, the sweetness of his breath, the splen-
did flow and colour of beard and hair, and the
tint of his bodily integument. But we could well
spare the records of his long illness, of the med-
icines which he took, and the pharmacological
effects of his potions. The personal matters of
an old man are rarely lovely ; the chamber life
of an invalid is of interest only to a hospital
nurse when she converses with a house surgeon.
This spirit of curiosity did not cease to exist
even when Whitman was dead, and we are fur-
nished with the loathsome particulars of the
autopsy. Even to professed pathologists, it can
be of no interest to read that the dead poet's
sigmoid flexure was unusually long, or that the
pericardial sac contained an abnormally small

WALT WHITMAN 253

amount of fluid. Greatness was never claimed
for Whitman on the ground of the condition of
his entrails. As a matter of fact, the cause of
death was tuberculosis, but the autopsy does not
appear to have disclosed the nature of the lesion
which caused paralysis in a man of fifty-three.

There are many persons still living who knew
Whitman well, and it would be easy to fill a vol-
ume with their reminiscences of the poet, but it
would be a dull book. Those with whom I have
spoken testify with one voice to his candour, sim-
plicity, and winsomeness, and refer to a quality
which they call magnetic. They do not know what
magnetic means, nor we either, save that it has
nothing to do with magnetism. At any rate, he
had an attractiveness, which made even the most
casual acquaintance love him.

No task to which a critic can set his hand is so
difficult as the right appreciation of a book in
which he thinks that he discerns qualities of nega-
tive moral value. The people, high and low, offi-
cial and plain, missed the mark in their aim at
the morality of Whitman. They were insensible
also to the poetical value of his work. The book
of poetry and the book of nature lay open before
them, and yet their eyes were blind to the lyric
beauty of " Leaves of Grass." The temper of the

254 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

time will explain the opposition to Whitman's
doctrines ; it does not fully elucidate this strange
phenomenon of literary blindness. A new moral-
ity combined with a new poetry was too much.

Poetry is a strange, elusive thing, made up of
great thoughts, fitly, and, therefore, beautifully
spoken, with rhythm, cadence, and sometimes
rhyme. To be easily recognized it must have
form, and to the casual reader form is the great-
est of these qualities, greatest because most useful.
It is by its form they recognize the thing. We
are, therefore, compelled to examine the form of
Whitman's poetry; and we shall find that its
peculiarity, not to say its defect, of form, was
another cause which prevented its acceptance.

The makers of English poetry have only a few
established forms into which their verse can be
forced ; and verse which cannot be so fitted must
go with such form as they choose to provide.
French poets, on the other hand, have a form for
everything ; or rather, they have no verse which
will not fit the mould. It is as easy to write
French verse in general as it is to write an Eng-
lish sonnet ; it is as easy to recognize a French
poet as an English sonnetteer. When we consider
form in English poetry, the sonnet naturally
arises before the mind, because its rules are the

WALT WHITMAN 255

most firmly established. In modern literature the
sonnet is a poetical arrangement of fourteen
rhymed verses set in a prescribed order, but there
is to this day no agreement as to what that pre-
scription shall be. The practice of Petrarch was
to arrange the verses in an octave of two rhymes,
and a sextet of two or three rhymes. Pierre delle
Vigne arranged his verses in two quatrains and
two tercets, the alternate lines of the quatrain
rhyming ; and of the tercets, the first and fourth,
the second and fifth, the third and sixth must
rhyme. To mention one form more, for the sake
of completing the illustration, though there are
many others, Shakespeare set his verses in three
quatrains of alternate rhymes, and finished with
a couplet, though he made one sonnet entirely
of couplets — and only six of them ; he put fifteen
lines into one of the compositions and left yet
another with a broken verse.

To illustrate the confusion of mind that exists
upon the subject of form in English versification,
it may be recalled that there was a time when
many persons contended that Shakespeare did not
write sonnets at all, but only continuous poems
of fourteen lines each. If we enquire of the poets
what a sonnet is, they will tell us that they do not
know and do not care. They write the thing in

256 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

their own way. If we enquire of the wise men,
they will reply that it is a deep-brained thing.
They will compare it to the rise and fall of a
wave, to a sky-rocket, to the apocalyptic beast
with a sting in its tail. Wordsworth, who knew
something of the sonnet, tried his hand at defini-
tion, and the best he could do was to describe it
as a convent cell, a garden plot, a key, a lute, a
pipe, a gay myrtle leaf, a glow-worm lamp, a trum-
pet, and, finally, in despair, as a Thing.

The sonnet is the most firmly established form
in English poetical composition ; and yet no one
can tell what it really is, nor say which of its many
forms is the best. How, then, shall we decide in
what form poetry at large shall be written, and
by what law shall we cast aside Whitman's pieces,
upon discovery that they do not reveal a Miltonic
observance of the usual practice of composition ?

Now that we are so far entangled in this matter
of literary form, it is as easy to go forward as to
go back. Whitman, in a like case, freed himself
at one stroke, by declaring that there was no such
thing as style. He advised a person to write down
the thing which he had in his mind, in the most
suitable words which he could find, and if he found
fitting words, and the thing were worth finding
words for, then he would be writing in good style.

WALT WHITMAN 257

Similarly, he would advise a painter, who had a
great conception, to select suitable pigments and
lay them on in the proper way. A great artist
who has a thing to say can say it with the end of
a burnt stick. That was Whitman's method.

To say that Whitman's writings are not like
other poetical productions is to affirm that a fish
is not like a dog. Both are excellent creatures in
their own way. No one now finds fault with Mil-
ton because he failed to apprehend the humor-
ousness of early Japanese civilization, or of life
in the King's navy. That was left for Mr. W. S.
Gilbert, and he in turn lacks something of the
sobriety of the great Puritan poet; but we must
not find fault with him for that.

When Whitman said there was no such thing
as style, he meant that all things are not to be
said in the same way. There are different species
of compositions, as there are different media in
which an artist may work, though some may suit
his temperament better than others. Matthew
Arnold knew something about literary composi-
tion, and yet he once said to Mr. Russell : " People
think I can teach them a style ! Have something
to say, and say it as clearly as you can, that is the
only secret of style."

Whitman's friends took his saying literally;

258 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

and all writing which had a semblance of style
they declared to be false. Macaulay was their pet
aversion. They said that he had the one way of
saying everything, whether it was a description
of the battle of Marathon or the pelting of a
parliamentary candidate. One partisan was so
extreme as to characterize that great writer as
a brilliant, thimble-rigging, Scotch scoundrel.
Strange to say, that is the error into which Whit-
man has fallen. He evolved from himself a form
which was capable of expressing adequately the
supreme beauty of poetry. He misused it sorely
by putting it to purposes for which it was never
intended. He employed it on common occasions,
and it served badly. Prose would have answered
equally well for the most of his doctrine.

Yet there is something in the human mind
which revolts against the bizarre and grotesque,
only because it is unfamiliar, like Japanese draw-
ings, with their strange perspective, or even im-
pressionist pictures, with their masses of form
and colour. We cannot help it. There are some
who bewail in secret their incapacity to compre-
hend the poetry of Browning, and they are con-
sumed with envy of those who have the hardihood,
as they think, to pretend that they understand it.
An eminent critic has acknowledged the shame

WALT WHITMAN 259

he felt, because Whitman's poetry offended his
sense of form, and so provoked him to anger. It
was only when he read the poetry in the French
translation that he was able to enter into the
heart of it ; because what was uncouth in English
seemed probably enough to be an established
form in the French, and so did not offend.

A great poet sees the whole of life intimately
and records his observations in a beautiful way.
Life to him is so important and beautiful that he
has no inclination to dwell upon any particular
aspect of it. He has no doctrine to teach, no
dogma to enforce. Poetry is not the best medium
for propagandism. Other and greater poets than
Whitman have set their hands to the task of
enforcing political doctrine. Heine set out gayly
as a soldier in the Liberation War of Humanity,
and ended up in his " mattress-grave." Goethe
was more modest in his ambition, and aimed only
to be the liberator of Germany. "He became
eighty years old in doing it," and humanity and
Germany remained pretty much as they were.
Byron in our own country shattered himself
against forces which he did not understand ; and
Shelley beat himself to death in his divine rage.
Reform does not come in that way.

Whitman, also, was more concerned with his

260 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

doctrines than with his poetry ; and poetry is a
jealous muse. She will turn aside unless followed
wholly for herself. She is a kittle creature and
will balk or go lame, if compelled to drag any-
thing so heavy as politics or philosophy. Much
of Whitman's writing is not poetry at all. Indeed,
Whitman knew that as well as we do, and said so
openly. For a similar reason some persons say
that they find Browning's poetry unsatisfactory.
Indeed, Carlyle advised him in the strongest
terms to abandon the practice entirely and con-
fine himself to prose. That great writer also was
so absorbed in the deep things which he had in
his mind, that, occasionally, it seemed to him
quite unnecessary to find better rhymes than
" well swear " and " elsewhere ; " " monster " and
" at once stir ; " " is he " and " busy ; " kk lion "
and " eye on ; " " tail up " and " scale up."

But Whitman's fatal defect was that he did
not see clearly. His vision was blurred. He had
intuitions which he failed to resolve into adequate
words. Only at times did his vision pierce the
clouds, and extend to height and serenity, as in
"Memories of Lincoln," with its splendid lyric,
" Come, lovely and soothing death," and its noble
apostrophe : " O Captain ! my Captain ! Our
fearful task is done ; " which passes the measure

WALT WHITMAN 261

of words into " Tears ; Tears ; Tears." There is
a common belief that it is only Browning and
Wordsworth who wrote a great deal of bad
poetry. That is a delusion. There are passages
and pages in all poetry, with the single exception
of Spenser's, which can only be matched by those
gems of thought which find an adequate setting
in the corner of a country newspaper. Most
of Burns's poetry is bad; much of Browning's
is merely grotesque ; and some of Tennyson's is
silly. Wordsworth was not clearly revealed to
the world until Matthew Arnold had stripped
from his work what was merely a laborious
writing of tracts. If the same good office were
performed for Whitman, only a small pamphlet
would remain; but surely men are intelligent
enough by this time to perform that humble
editorial office for themselves.

Whitman had the poet's faculty for bringing
out the occult meaning of words in phrases which
have become part of the language. They are
scattered profusely in his writings, and appeal
instantly by their wonderful clearness and per-
fection: "the shuddering organ;" "with floods
of the yellow gold of the gorgeous sinking sun ; "
" the coming eve delicious ; " " the welcome night
and the stars ; " " the large imperial waves; " " the

262 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

huge and thoughtful night; " " the white arms out
in the breakers tirelessly tossing ; " " whom fate
can never surprise nor death dismay." To pass
from such phrases, taken at random, noble in con-
ception and felicitous in expression, as they are, it
would be easy to mention whole compositions of
sustained beauty and splendour : " When lilacs last
in the door-yard bloomed ; " " Out of the cradle,
endlessly rocking ;" "At the last tenderly;"
" Vigil strange, I kept on the field one night."

These things could not be so adequately said
in any other way, and no one but Whitman could
express them in that manner. That is the test of
style. When our first parents were engaged in
their great work of classification, it is claimed by
a high authority that a dispute arose over the
nomenclature of a genus which was typical of
the Rhinocerotidae : " Why do you call it a rhi-
noceros ? " " Well, what else could you call it ? "
was the sensible retort. So it was with Whitman.
How else could these pieces have been written ?
The sense and the sound are as inseparable as
the music and emotion of the Mcintosh's lament
when heard in a Highland glen.

When Whitman's poetry first appeared, it
was as full of poetical quality as it is now ; yet
the people who read it were so dominated by the

WALT WHITMAN 263

spirit of their time, and so confused by the
strangeness of its form that they could see in
it nothing save his unconventional speech, his
ungrammatical construction, his self-complacency,
his misplaced Spanish and French words and
phrases, and the turgid nonsense in much of his
serious poetry.

Apart from these spontaneous outbursts, Whit-
man strove to do with deliberation what great
poets have done unwittingly. His ambition was
to give an expression of the Cosmos, which he
understood to be the United States of America ;
and he spent most of his time in telling how he
was going to set about it. He was to do it by
a series of glittering images, and he does produce
the impression which he sought upon a reader
who will give himself unreservedly into his hands,
a willing victim to the poet's will. Wordsworth
produced the same effect in four lines, and he did
it quite incidentally, concerned as he was only
about the death of a child :

No motion has she now, no force ;

She neither hears nor sees ;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,

With rocks, and stones, and trees.

The bent of Whitman's mind, also, was in
reality toward the Infinite ; or rather he perceived

264 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

no severance of mind from matter, of the finite
from the infinite. That was a characteristic of
the best New England philosophy. Emerson had
it in perfection, and he was continually being
derided for his "pantheistic prattling." Whit-
man took the thing for granted. The specula-
tions of Spinoza were beneath him — that the
attributes of mind alone ; of Strauss — that the
attributes of matter alone ; of Hegel — that
the attributes of both together — are embodied
in the Universal Being. To Whitman as to all
the poets,

God dwells within, and moves the world and moulds,
Himself and Nature in one form enfolds,
Thus all that lives in Him, and breathes, and is,
Shall ne'er His power nor His spirit miss.

Whitman spoke for that large class which can-
not speak for itself, and, indeed, is not conscious
that it has anything to say. Mr. Kipling spoke for
the same class, but he did it with so much literary
skill that they did not recognize his voice for their
own. The mass of humanity does not express
itself in words. The firemen who live a life of
heroism amidst the disasters of a city ; the farmers
who spend their years in patient toil ; the open-
throated, hairy-breasted pioneers, cattle-breeders,
miners and frontiersmen, who have pushed their

WALT WHITMAN 265

way against barbarity and desolation — these
have quite other voices.

Whitman also spoke for the openly vicious,
and said to them, " Go and sin no more." To him
there was nothing common or unclean. Nothing
was outside of his sympathy. He sat at meat
with publicans and sinners, with female "peri-
patetics," who are technically called walkers-of
the-street. He indulged in a way of life which is
friendly to the knowledge of human nature and
good feelings. He said to his companions : " Not
till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you."

There is the gospel of hope. He went about
with the people amongst the soldiery in camp
and hospital, amongst the negroes of the planta-
tions, and the wandering journalists of great
cities. He perceived that out of one blood are all
men made, that toil and suffering is their portion,
and he proclaimed in strong, sinewy sentences
that the remedy for the evils which he witnessed
was Love — the same which Jesus proclaimed in
Nazareth. He strove to ameliorate the labours
of men by the Institution of the dear love of com-
rades :

By the love of comrades,

With the life-long love of comrades,

By the manly love of comrades.

266 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Upon the earlier occasion when the doctrine of
love was being preached, only a few of the Phari-
sees of Judaea were filthy-minded enough to sup-
pose that anything else was meant.

Whitman's outlook was so wide that he in-
cluded even the animals within his view. He
established the brotherhood between mankind
and the rest of the animal creation, though he did
not push it quite to a relationship with marine
engines and tramp steamships. Animals as well
as men pleased him. They brought him tokens of
himself :

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make one sick discussing their duty to God.

There is a common expression, " to stand on
one's manhood," which has now become the cant
of thieves. It is the habitual phrase in a news-
paper called the " Star of Hope," which, some may
not know, is an organ of opinion written entirely
by convicts in the prisons of the State of New
York. To Whitman the thing had a meaning.
Because a living creature was a human being, and
yet alive, however degraded or prostituted, in
virtue of his humanity he might yet stand up and
face the world. More than that, he proclaimed
the awful fellowship which we all hold with
" felons, with convicts in prison cells, with sen-

WALT WHITMAN 267

tenced assassins, chained and handcuffed with
iron," because evil is also in us.

Those who have had the patience to inform
themselves of the views upon human life which
prevailed during the time of Jonathan Edwards,
will observe that Whitman looked upon the mat-
ter in a different light. To those fathers in New
England, humanity was a poor thing, a vile worm,
loathsome, deformed, altogether filthy, and re-
served only for burning. Whitman looked on the
thing as it is, " not through the eyes of the dead,
not as a spectre in books." He went to the bank
by the wood. He looked at humanity undisguised
and naked. " Clear and sweet was its soul : clear
and sweet in all that is not its soul." To this poet
it was yet the evening of the sixth day, when God
surveyed everything which he had made, and
behold it was very good. The Puritan theologians
saw only that the wickedness of man was great
in the earth, that every imagination of the
thoughts in his heart was evil continually ; and
whatever may have been the sentiments of the
Creator toward His own handiwork, certainly it
repented them that man had been made on the
earth, and it grieved them to the heart.

To Whitman's eyes, everything was beautiful,
in the full light of the sun, which was ugly and

268 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

distorted in the fearful gloom which brooded over
the world of the theologians. That gloom was yet
heavy over New England when Walt "Whitman
came, crying out that all things should stand forth
in the light.

Fifty years have passed away since this loud
voice disturbed the New England calm. In this
half century there has been time for the people at
large, friends and foes, to return to their senses,
and apply a sane judgement to those two extreme
views. In so far as Whitman dealt with the domi-
nant passion of humanity, he was in the right.
But it is a ground of offence which can never be
removed, that he attempted to drag into litera-
ture those secret functions of the human body,
which, necessary as they are for carrying out its
purpose, are not fit subject for mention outside
of a laboratory, a hospital, or a sick-room. There
are subjects which a professor of physiology may
handle freely in his class-room. The consensus
of mankind is that he shall not mention them in
a mixed company which is not assembled for that
specific purpose. It is conceivable that such a
professor might consider it to be his duty to
utilize every occasion for propagating knowledge;
but such conduct would surely lay him open to
misconstruction. He might be animated by the

WALT WHITMAN 269

loftiest of motives, yet this conduct would render
him liable to be classed with insane persons and
beasts, who habitually conduct themselves in a
shameless way in public places. At least their
conduct seems shameless to us.

We admit to the uttermost that there is nothing
obscene in nature, save the single exception of
obscene persons. We also admit that there is
such a thing as good taste. Every community
and every age has its own notions as to what sub-
jects are fit for mention, and what for reticence.
In England there is a tacit agreement that the
Pulex irritans shall not be referred to in polite
society; the Pediculus, in all its varieties, is
a proper subject for discussion. In the United
States a contrary custom prevails. Half a cen-
tury ago, in New England, it was not considered
proper for women to regale each other, even in
private, with an account of the pathology of the
various organs of the body, as discovered by their
most recent medical adviser; and there remain
to this day some persons who consider such con-
versation to be essentially obscene.

Whitman's friends protest that there are not
more than eighty lines in all his writings which
can be challenged on this ground of offence, and
they enumerate far more in the Hebrew scriptures

270 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

and other writings of undoubted moral value. A
great deal can be said in eighty lines, and we may
admit at once that the conversation between two
patriarchs in Lower Asia might be offensive to
a person of very moderate susceptibilities. Old
persons and primitive people are habitually free
in their speech. But it is the universal opinion
that there are matters which are not fit subject
for poetry, or even for discussion between decent
and civilized men. The enquiries of children
are sometimes embarrassing to perfectly sensible
people; but if a child gloried in such public
exhibitions, we should say he was branded with
the mark of the beast.

In the " Song of Myself," and in much else-
where, Whitman has committed this offence, and
we cannot acquit him even on the grounds of
naivete. An anatomical catalogue, even when
enlivened by occasional reference to the physio-
logical functions for which the various organs are
designed, is without essential beauty. No amount
of genius can clothe it with the grace of poetry.
No excess of " naturalness " can justify a writer
in holding up such things to public view. The
attempt to do so will always end in failure, for
people will turn away their eyes. The thing is
an offence to the human mind, and has been an

WALT WHITMAN 271

offence ever since humanity differentiated itself
from the rest of the animal creation. Therefore,
we can understand why Whitman's generation
turned its eyes away from the spectacle of human-
ity which he held up, even if it missed thereby
much that was valuable and beautiful. We, with
our wider experience and more distant point of
view, have learned to neglect the objects which
should offend, and happily do offend us. For us
remains the beauty alone.

Nor can we consider it a ground of praise that
Whitman devised a new form of expression, un-
less we are convinced that the forms established
by long usage were worn out. There have been
great poets, who have gone deep and far, perhaps
as deep and far as Whitman went, and yet gave
no signs of being hedged about. Whitman knew
little about established forms of expression in art,
and cared nothing. But he knew and cared for
the things out of which art is created. More than
any other, he fulfilled the saying of Hazlitt that
poetry is the stuff out of which the life of the
people is made.

He had a perception and knowledge of the
beauty of the human form and of the meaning
and beauty of every created thing. The leaf of
grass was as wonderful as the stars ; the tree-toad

272 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

was a master work of the highest, and the run-
ning blackberry would adorn the fabric of the
heavens ; the hinge of the hand put to scorn all
other machinery, and the cow in the pasture sur-
passed any statue.

All interest in Whitman's vagaries of speech
and conduct and doctrine, and in the conditions
against which he was in revolt, has passed away,
save for the interest which we all feel in the
phenomena of literature. As this interest disap-
pears, we behold the just measure of his poetical
genius, and assent to the truth contained in those
lines which appeared at the time of his death, in
an English periodical, where Americans do not
look for such things. They are remarkably just

— though they do not at all indicate a sense of
his philosophic importance, or of the gift which he
conferred upon his fellow men of this latter day

— namely, in opening our eyes to the beauty and
dignity of human beings and human things, and
breaking down one, at least, of the false conven-
tions of Puritanism ; somewhat as Wordsworth
opened the eyes of the generations which came
after him to the beauty and grace of inanimate
objects ; as Burns revealed the poetry of lowly
life ; as Rousseau " introduced something green
into literature.'*

WALT WHITMAN 273

" The good gray poet," gone ! Brave, hopeful Walt !

He might not be a singer without fault.

And his large, rough-hewn rhythm did not chime

With dulcent daintiness of time and rhyme.

He was no neater than wild Nature's wild,

More metrical than sea winds. Culture's child,

Lapped in luxurious laws of line and lilt,

Shrank from him shuddering, who was roughly built,

As cyclopean temples. Yet there rang

True music through his rhapsodies, as he sang

Of brotherhood, and freedom, love, and hope,

With strong, wide sympathy which dared to cope

With all life's phases, and call nought unclean.

Whilst hearts are generous, and whilst woods are green,

He shall find hearers, who, in a slack time

Of puny bards and pessimistic rhyme,

Dared to bid men adventure and rejoice.

His " yawp barbaric " was a human voice ;

The singer was a man. America

Is poorer by a stalwart soul to-day,

And may feel pride that she hath given birth

To this stout laureate of old Mother Earth.

JOHN WESLEY

JOHN WESLEY

A British subject from an outland region of the
Empire, who had suffered in heart, person, and
estate through the turmoil in South Africa, went
to London in search of restoration and comfort.
He found neither the one nor the other. It was
during the events preceding the Coronation, and
he lay in his lodgings too weak to resist the
temptation of reading the morning papers, and
yet, unfortunately, with strength sufficient to
perform that labour. From them he gained the
impression that the great things which had been
done were effected by men who arranged the
routes of processions, who gathered on the Dover
pier to welcome important personages, who turned
neat diplomatic phrases, and skilfully resisted
the importunities of claimants for places in the
Abbey, or other social distinctions. To test the
correctness of such an impression, this bewildered
subject left his bed and began a tour through
the Fen country, following in the steps of a man
who in his own way had performed great deeds
from Saint Ives to Ely and back to Sidney

278 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Sussex College, to Edgehill, Marston Moor, and
Dunbar. The impression proved to be wrong;
he learned that the great deeds have always been
wrought by men who did not take much thought
about the appearance of things ; that history is
not made by actors ; that it is made by people
who are fulfilling their life functions, with a fine
unconcern as to the impression which they are
creating.

We can never get beyond the merest guess as
to why any given series of events occurs. We do
not even know how it is that we digest our food,
and how its elements are transformed into force.
We can mark certain stages separated from one
another by a mystery of change ; we observe the
results which are pleasurable or painful, or, as we
call them, good or bad. The first business of an
historian is to ascertain about any given period
whether the main drift was in the direction of
good or evil ; and events are only to be inter-
preted in their relation to this main current. One
portion of the people will do evil continually;
another portion will do evil for a while ; but all
the people will not do evil together for any great
length of time. It is not the nature of the human
mind to do only evil continually ; and this view
is put forward with confidence, in spite of some

JOHN WESLEY 279

considerable authority to the contrary. The move-
ment of the race is away from the beast. It will
probably excite the laughter of fools to hear once
more that the only greatness is that which assists
in this movement. All other excursions after
greatness end in blind alleys. Napoleon, for
example, who, above all men, desired to attain
to greatness, got himself into a pretty bad hole
by following his own estimate of things. " When
a king is said to be a good man," he declared,
" his reign is unsuccessful ; " and again, " A prince
who passes for good in the first year of his reign
is a prince who will be ridiculed in his second."
If Napoleon is now a subject of ridicule, it is
certainly not due to any excess of goodness on
his part.

Our impressions of a period are based upon the
characterization of persons whose conduct lends
itself readily to literary treatment; and if it is
amenable to the dramatic form we fall into the
error of believing that they had all to do with
the shaping of events. The eighteenth century is
fixed in our minds as a period of frank brutality,
because Johnson was brutally frank; of ill-
natured jesting, because Pope was an ill-natured
jester ; of intricacy and finesse, because Horace
Walpole was a shrewish tale-bearer, and Selwyn

980 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

a snickering gossip : as an age of rhetoric, because
Burke persuaded himself that what he was saying
was true, and, in some degree, still imposes his
belief upon us.

As we get further away from the eighteenth
century, we shall see that it was one of those
periods in which the human race had reached one
of its low levels of degradation. We shall also
see that the portion of the race which occupied
the British Islands began an upward movement
toward better things. It is one of the fascina-
tions of history to note the predominance of good
or evil in any given epoch, and to follow the
course by which those conditions came to prevail.
We cannot trace all the steps of the gradual
descent by which the English people arrived in
the slough of the early part of the eighteenth
century ; nor can we follow the upward movement
by which they emerged into the light toward the
close of that period, any more than we can follow
the slow upheaval of a continent, by which por-
tions here and there lift up their heads. But we
can note the points at which this movement in
either direction is most perceptible.

This downward career began at the Restoration
of Charles, and it is the fashion to explain the
evils which followed that event by the formula :

reaction against Puritanism. The truth is that
-word in its Land under
tion, and all but perished by the
sword. H rid was to have ha

own way for a space. The spirit which animated the
Puritans had forsake .red for

cantem: .? a hundred

years, till th vlism ca. rth.

Puritanism was not a r.

I the bat rv>r the satis-

I a high A view and

a wide outk ,se who take refuge

in Puritanism a^ e ribb'd, cabined, and con-

fined/' Rather, it in to them a ** convent's narrow
room, a pen prison to which

they doom themselves is in truth no prison to
them. There are qualities which find their best
development where there is not too much liberty.
It is given unto nations as unto individuals
"to walk in the woods." There is a refuge from
sorrow in the spirit as well as in the senses. It
has been on: of the spirit that all die

prophets have called men, when they perceived
that their misery was sore upon them ; and in that
lies the secret of the attraction of Puritanism. It
was unto tins spirit that Jeremiah appealed, when
he declared that no nation can be righteous when

282 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

the life of the individual is impure ; Isaiah, that
national power lies alone in righteousness ; Micah,
that there is a God of the poor and an avenger
of them ; the prophets of the Restoration, that re-
ligion with form or without form may be equally
acceptable ; and the great Unknown Prophet, that
unrighteousness is only to be overcome by suffer-
ing. But the finest type of Puritanism is Saint
Francis, who attained to such a mastery over the
things of the world that he was enabled to cry,
" Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of
the body."

This upward movement toward righteousness
is usually slow and imperceptible. At times it is
accelerated, and the upheaval is accompanied by
much dislocation and many faults. The latter half
of the eighteenth century witnessed such a violent
disturbance, and it is associated with the name
of John Wesley. It was he who drew the spark ;
therefore he is the great figure of the eighteenth
century, as Cromwell is the great figure of the
seventeenth, Calvin and Luther of the sixteenth,
Savonarola of the fifteenth, Jesus of Nazareth and
Saul of Tarsus of the first.

Of all these great men, John Wesley — his
names were John Benjamin — is the best known
to us. We know him through contemporary writ-

JOHN WESLEY 283

ers : at least we know what they said that they
thought of him ; we have full and elaborate ac-
counts at the hands of his enemies ; and above all,
we have his own journals in twenty-six volumes
of manuscript, copious extracts from which have
been published. But these extracts have not been
made public with entire frankness. They are
meant to show every side of Wesley save that
which interests us most. They are profitable for
instruction unto godliness; they are hortative
and mandatory to Methodists ; but to the reader
at large these excerpts afford little information
of the wealth of human material in the manuscript
volumes.

If there be any persons in these days who en-
gage in the laborious occupation of keeping a jour-
nal, it is certain that a hundred years hence they
will be derided for neglecting to record events
which will then appear to have been of real im-
portance. Wesley's life covered practically the
whole of the eighteenth century ; he lived in the
midst of affairs which we are accustomed to look
upon as the subject-matter of history, and he had
a knowledge of men whose names are associated
inseparably in our minds with that period. Yet
in his journal we find no mention of, or only
the scantiest references to, the two desperate

284 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

attempts of the Pretender to regain the throne, to
the events by which India and Canada were won,
and the American Colonies lost to England. The
truth is, the people were not profoundly interested
in those operations, any more than the readers of
the newspapers the other day were permanently
interested in the eruption from a mountain which
destroyed the lives of fifty thousand persons.
Wesley was close to the heart of England, while
Walpole and his associates stood entirely aloof
from its passion and enthusiasm. They believed
in the efficacy of a lie ; and persons like Wesley,
who believed in the truth, were looked upon as
merely eccentric or ignorant or ill-bred, and in
any event not worthy of consideration.

The character of the literature which that age
produced would alone reveal the stagnation out
of which it arose ; Johnson's ponderous diction-
aries, the raillery of Swift, the distillation of
Pope's ill nature, the indolence of Thomson, the
servile dedications and the tedious vulgarity of
the novelists, and the outpourings of the doctrin-
aires. Literature had become entirely dissociated
from morality as well as from life. Gray was
writing elegies in churchyards. Wesley took his
stand upon his father's tomb in Epworth and
preached : " The Kingdom of Heaven is not meat

JOHN WESLEY 285

and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and

joy-"

It would at first sight appear superfluous to add
anything to what has been said upon the subject
of Wesley, this century past, in the numerous
lives of him which have been written, more par-
ticularly during the recent celebration of the
bi-centenary of his birth, from 89,087 pulpits, by
48,344 ministers, and 104,786 local preachers, to
nearly twenty-five million adherents. Yet in the
feeble hope that this cloud of witnesses may have
left something unrevealed, and in a well-grounded
belief that outside these twenty-five millions of
sealed ones there are some who have an interest
in serious things, it is worth taking the event as
a pretext for making one or two observations,
which, if they have no new bearing upon Wesley,
may have something to do with the spirit of the
time in which he lived, and with the people who
are called by his name.

To one who has tasted and found the richness
of Calvinism, it is no use appealing with the doc-
trine of Wesley. He was merely an Arminian,
and any Calvinist knows what that means. He
believed that men could be led, and that they
could not be driven ; that the God of Calvin was
" a tyrant and executioner ;" that the decrees of

286 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

God were conditional upon human action ; that
the sovereignty of God is compatible with the
freedom of man ; that man is free and able to will
and perform the right ; that every believer may
be assured of his salvation ; and very much other
blasphemy besides. The fact is, Wesley was no
theologian. He was not qualified by nature for
that high office ; he " never had a quarter of an
hour's lowness of spirit since he was born."

It was Wesley's capacity for seeing the correct
proportion of things which prevented him from
becoming a mere theologian. With his strong
common sense, he perceived that there are "many
truths it is not worth while to know, curious
trifles upon which it is unpardonable to spend our
small pittance of life." He had a great heart, if
not a mind of the proper texture for theological
invention. The fact which was of supreme import-
ance in his eyes was that the individual should
have a correct attitude of mind toward the things
which are right, and toward the things which are
wrong, and the attainment of this correct attitude
he signified by the term Conversion. But there
was something more. He was not satisfied with
a mere intellectual assent, a passive toleration of
goodness and a theoretical dissent from evil ; he
demanded that the intellectual process should be

JOHN WESLEY 287

quickened by emotion into an intense conviction
of the heinousness of sin, accompanied by an
ardent desire to turn away from it with hatred
and horror.

But theologians who place this doctrine of con-
version in the forefront of their argument are
prone to the discouraging inference that sinners
alone can attain to any great degree of saint-
liness. To Wesley, therefore, is attributed all
manner of evil. He is spoken of by his friends as
a profligate, who entered school as a saint and left
it a sinner. The period during which this degra-
dation occurred was that between his twelfth and
sixteenth year. As he went immediately to Christ
Church as a scholar, his transgressions could not
have been very revolting. Wesley himself rather
lends colour to the belief in his sinfulness by his
desperate confession that he was wont to console
himself with the delusion that he was not so bad
as other people, that he had merely a kindliness
for religion, and read his Bible and prayers in a
perfunctory way. Even to-day, in Oxford, such
a state of mind would not be accepted as proof of
any great debauchery.

The only specific crime that can be laid to
Wesley's charge was his going in debt, and that,
according to Benjamin Franklin, is the first of all

288 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

vices, lying being the second. But the sin is less
heinous when committed by a man with fifty
pounds a year, than it is when his income
amounts to fifty thousand pounds. He did borrow
money, and his mother once wrote to him express-
ing the great concern which she felt for the man
who had lent him ten pounds. The Wesley fam-
ily always lived on the edge of poverty, which is
a much worse situation than penury, and there
is something heroic in the struggle of the father
against the pressure of limited means. In his
early days he had been imprisoned for debt, and
all his life it was a struggle with the grim spectre.
There is nothing more tragic in life than an
honest man in the toils of pecuniary necessity.
To his son he writes : " I will assist you in the
charge for ordination, though I am myself just
now struggling for life ; the last ten pounds
pinched me hard, and I am forced to beg time of

to pay him the ten pounds you say he

lent you. What will be my fate God only knows,
yet my Jack is fellow of Lincoln." There is the
heroism of a noble father.

It may be said at once that Wesley's youthful
career was beyond reproach, that all the domestic
relations within his father's family were entirely
admirable and marked by the strongest common

JOHN WESLEY 289

sense, if we omit the unfortunate affair of his
sister Hetty, of which Mr. Quiller-Couch has re-
cently informed us so fully. The father was cap-
able of the highest sacrifice, the mother appears
to us as a woman of soundest judgement ; and
we need not make too much of the complaint in
a letter to her son : " It is an unhappiness almost
peculiar to our family that your father and I sel-
dom think alike." Even his sister Emilia revealed
the family trait of good sense in a manner that
was marvellous in one so young, when she wrote
to her brother: "Never engage your affections
before your worldly affairs are in such a posture
that you can marry." If all young persons were
but to apprehend the soundness of that advice,
they would save themselves and others from much
misery.

Sanity of conduct and reasonableness of be-
haviour are the great characteristics of Wesley's
career; that is to say, his actions were always
those of a gentleman; and those who are now
called by his name will probably take an undue
interest in the fact that he was a gentleman in
other senses as well. His family was bound up
with the De Wellesleys, and they had a seat at
Welsme in Somerset from time immemorial, cer-
tainly since the time of Athelstan, and that is

290 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

long enough. This quality of urbanity comes out
in every page of his journal, giving offence or
disrespect to none, and insisting upon the respect
that was due to himself.

Wesley illustrates this quality well in his
famous interview with Beau Nash. The position
accorded to that notorious man reveals to us the
qualities which were considered admirable in
those days. This son of a glass-maker, as poor in
means as in birth, by sheer effrontery raised him-
self to the eminence of a king. To-day he would
not be tolerated in London by the police, and even
in New York he would figure, in the daily press for
one week, in the district magistrate's court for
one day, and thereafter would be heard of no more
for at least five years, unless his sentence were
reduced by conduct which is officially called good.

Wesley was entreated not to preach in the pre-
sence of that ruffian, " because no one knew what
might happen." However, he did preach, and
pretty plainly too. He told his hearers, M they
were all under sin, high and low, rich and poor,
and many seemed to be a little surprised.,, Beau
Nash, however, overcame his surprise at this in-
civility, and coming close to the preacher, en-
quired by what authority he said those things.

" By the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to

JOHN WESLEY 291

me by the now Archbishop of Canterbury, when
he laid hands upon ine and said: 'Take thou
authority to preach the gospel.' "

" This is contrary to Act of Parliament ; this
is a conventicle."

" Sir, the conventicles mentioned in that Act
are seditious meetings, but this is not such ; here
is no shadow of sedition."

" I say it is, and besides, your preaching
frightens people out of their wits."

" Sir, did you ever hear me preach ? "

"No."

" How, then, can you judge of what you never
heard?"

" Sir, by common report."

" Common report is not enough. Give me
leave, sir, to ask, is not your name Nash ? "

" My name is Nash."

" Sir, I dare not judge you by common report."

" I desire to know what this people comes here
for?"

"You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body; we
take care of our souls, and for the good of our
souls we come here," a listener broke in ; where-
upon Mr. Nash replied not a word, and walked
away.

Some Methodists may also be interested to

292 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

know that the founder of their church always en-
joyed a certain social distinction. He was enter-
tained by admirals ; his portrait was painted by
Reynolds and Romney ; toward the end of his
life he had more invitations to preach in churches
than he could accept ; he became " an honourable
man, and scarce any but Antinomians durst
open their mouths " against him. Of eighty let-
ters written by him in one year, nearly half are
addressed to titled ladies ; which shows that titled
ladies in those days were pretty much the same
as they are now.

It would be long to trace all the influences that
made for Wesley's opportunity, influences affect-
ing himself and the community at large. The
world is never left without witnesses to the truth,
though their voice may be small and its crying
only in the wilderness. The voice of Bunyan was
unheeded for a generation, and two small books
lay unnoticed till suddenly their spirit blazed up
in Wesley's time. These were the " Serious Call,"
and "Christian Perfection." In them Law pro-
claimed the necessity for a change of nature, self-
denial, and a life of devotion for all who would
serve God truly. This spirit was working quietly
in Oxford even in the time of Samuel Johnson,
who freely acknowledged its influence upon him-

JOHN WESLEY 293

self, though it must be confessed that the out-
ward manifestations in his case were not great.

William Law, the author of these books, having
declined to take the oath prescribed at the acces-
sion of George the First, lost his fellowship in
Emmanuel College ; and he also left the Church
to become tutor to Edward Gibbon, the father of
the historian ; but he had created an atmosphere
congenial to the serious men who came after him.

The movement was the exact counterpart of
that which took place in Oxford a hundred years
later. There was the same tendency to asceticism,
to a patristic interpretation of the Scripture, and
a slavish following of the rubric. Those who were
under its influence fasted and prayed; they
strove against fanciful sins and practised self-
denial for the sake of practising it. The Tracta-
rian manifestation, as in the case of Methodism,
was dominated by a single mind ; both began in
a small way, and remained so whilst they were
confined to their purely local environment. But
to the more modern men religion always appeared
as an aesthetic exercise ; to Wesley it was a power
for the amendment of the individual life, without
which that life could not be amended.

So long as Wesley remained in the Church,
bound by her traditions and her rigid rubric, he

294 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

was powerless to do very much ; but the Church
saw to it that he did not remain there long. H Our
minister," so runs one of the many communica-
tions which he received, " having been informed
you are beside yourself, does not care you should
preach in any of his churches."

When Wesley began his career at Oxford, he
had no idea where it would end. He had been
curate in his father's parish, and returning to his
college, he joined with his brother and a few
companions who were in the habit of partaking
weekly of the communion — certainly not a re-
markable manifestation of evangelicism. From
this exercise they passed on to the study of the
Greek Testament and to private devotion, and
from that to the visitation of the poor, the sick,
and prisoners. It is a curious commentary upon
the times that such ordinary avocations should
have excited any notice whatever.

This little band had no cohesion ; they had no
plan of campaign, and each individual was to
proceed upon his own lines. The Wesleys alone
arrived at a lasting distinction. Whitefield con-
sumed his life in the fervour of popular preach-
ing, voyaging here and there — to Georgia, to
New England, to Scotland and Wales — raising
a wave of emotion everywhere, but doing nothing

JOHN WESLEY 295

toward its advancement. Impulsive, but lacking
logical skill and self-restraint; gifted with ora-
torical power, dramatic force, and pathos, he was
able to move the people, so that " the tears made
white gutters down their black cheeks;" but
Wesley was at hand to direct the forces which
"Whitefield had evoked. John Clayton, another
of the coterie, settled in Manchester and remained
a Jacobite and high-churchman to the end of his
days. Benjamin Ingham became an out-and-out
dissenter, which Wesley never did. Gambold
became a Moravian Bishop, and James Hervey
was seized with the tenets of Calvinism.

About this time, the rising conscience of the
people took notice of the condition of those who
were imprisoned for debt and bearing the penalty
due to felons alone. It was proposed as a rem-
edy to send them to the New World, where they
might better their own condition and improve
the country which they were made to adopt. The
promoters laboured under the curious fallacy that
intellectual belief has something to do with con-
duct, and they had as an arriere pensee that the
Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Cherokees, and
the Creeks, who inhabited the borders of Georgia,
might be improved by a commerce with those
apostles from the English prisons.

296 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

It would appear that Wesley himself had an
exaggerated notion of the ripeness of the Indians
for instruction on account of their freedom from
preconceptions. He argued that they were fit to
receive the gospel in its simplicity, because they
were " as little children, humble, willing to learn,
and eager to do the will of God." To him the
Indian mind was virgin soil ; " they have no
comments to construe away the text, no vain
philosophy to corrupt it ; no luxurious, sensual,
covetous, ambitious expounders, to soften its un-
pleasing truths." But these erroneous views arose
out of the sentimentality of the times. Coloniza-
tion was looked upon as the sovereign remedy for
disposing of the heathen at home, and for correct-
ing the errors of the heathen in the places to which
these missionaries were to be sent. It is difficult
to see what good was to accrue to the savages, for
they were commonly held to be already the pos-
sessors of all manly qualities and all domestic
virtues.

It was in this frame of mind that Wesley went
to Georgia, to convert the Indians, as if there
were not work enough in his native land ; but it
did not take any considerable enquiry to convince
him that he " could not find or hear of any In-
dians on the continent of America, who had the

JOHN WESLEY 297

least desire of being instructed." He at once
consulted with his friends as to whether God did
not call him back to England ; and upon the way-
home he arrived at the valuable conclusion " that
he who would convert others must first be con-
verted himself."

The immediate circumstances which led to
Wesley's return from America are singular, when
considered in relation with the after events of
his life. His mission of course was bound to be
a failure ; all missions are which are conducted in
the spirit of a priest, and the spirit of Wesley
was, as yet, as priestly as any which ever eman-
ated from Oxford. The colony also was a fail-
ure, as all bodily transportations always have
been. Men do not change their natures by chang-
ing their sky, and those who were fit for a prison
in England were probably more competent still
after their long comfortless journey across the
sea.

Wesley was in trouble from the beginning ; his
spirit was intolerant, his parishioners were corrupt
and headstrong, and before long the breach came.
He thought he observed " something reprovable
in the behaviour " of one Mrs. Williamson, and he
told her so ; " whereupon she appeared extremely
angry, and at the turn of the street through

298 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

which they were walking home, went abruptly
away." The young curate repelled her from the
communion table, and the following morning her
husband had him arrested for defamation, and
claimed a thousand pounds damage. Wesley,
like a true cleric, took his stand that the young
woman had not some time the day before signi-
fied her intention of communing ; and he weak-
ened his position by quoting the authority given
to all curates "to advertise any who had done
wrong." He does not specify his objections in
this particular case ; but we have the other side
of the story at any rate, for on the next day Mrs.
Williamson swore to and signed an affidavit that
Mr. Wesley had many times proposed marriage to
her, and that she had rejected his advances in
favour of Mr. Williamson's.

Another law-suit arose out of this, and certainly
Wesley was reprimanded in the court for calling
the lady's uncle a liar and a villain, although,
according to all accounts, his statements were well
within the truth. He was required to give bail
to answer to the suits, and upon refusing he was
put "on the limits." It was at this propitious
moment that he consulted with his friends, in
a purely impersonal way, " as to whether God did
not call him to return to England." They agreed.

JOHN WESLEY 299

and Wesley himself " saw clearly the hour was
come for leaving that place ; " so, bail or no bail,
about eight o'clock at night he shook the dust
of Georgia off his feet and disappeared along
with three companions, whose identity does not
interest us.

Like many other levanters, they did not find
the way an easy one. They were lost in the
woods; they waded streams and struggled in
swamps; they suffered from hunger and thirst,
and the sharpness of the cold, lying abroad in
the wet and frost ; yet they commended them-
selves to God, and He renewed their strength.
Finally they arrived in Charleston, and after
"a thorough storm" and a "proper hurricane,"
followed by a " small fair wind," Wesley arrived
safely in England once more.

Shortly after his return to England, Wesley
fell in with Peter Bohler on " a day much to be
remembered." This evangelist from the Moravian
Brethren afterwards became instrumental in his
conversion. That is Wesley's own account,
though other claimants arose, amongst them the
friends of Jonathan Edwards, who held that
the austere New England divine was responsible
for the change. His journal contains an exact
account of the event. " In the evening," it reads,

300 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

" I went very unwillingly to a society in Alders-
gate Street, where one was reading Luther's
preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About
a quarter before nine, while he was describing the
change which God works in the heart through
faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.
I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for sal-
vation ; and an assurance was given me that He
had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved
me from the law of sin and death."

This was in 1738, and Wesley's work had
begun. He further qualified himself by a pil-
grimage and residence of three months in Ger-
many amongst the Moravian Brethren, who had
much in common with Methodism as we know it
to-day. This sect still constitutes a society de-
voted to good works within the German Protest-
ant Church, and so far as one can judge, it is the
possessor of a most Christian form of doctrine,
as one would expect from the lineal descendants
of John Huss. The body of doctrine which now
bears the name of Wesley was in reality trans-
ported from the Moravians, and a new force
given to their tenets : that Scripture is the only
rule of faith and practice : that human natur
totally depraved ; that the law of God the Father
is supreme; that the Godhead of Christ is

JOHN WESLEY 301

real as His humanity; that reconciliation and
justification come through His sacrifice by the
operation of the Holy Spirit. The insistence
upon good works, the fellowship of believers with
each other and in Christ, the belief in the second
coming, and the resurrection of the dead unto
life or unto condemnation, complete the identity
of the two systems.

Wesley was resolute not to go outside the
Church. His aim was to found a society of seri-
ous people within the Church, as an ecclesiola
in ecclesia, after the Moravian pattern. As late
as 1756 a conference was closed with a solemn
declaration never to separate from the Church,
and " all the brethren concurred therein." He was
continually warning people against the " madness
of leaving the Church." On one occasion he went
so far as to threaten a society, that if they left
the Church they would see his face no more. The
question came up formally again at a conference
in 1788, when Wesley was 85 years old, and the
sum of the deliberation was, that in fifty years
they had not varied from the Church in one arti-
cle of doctrine or discipline. If the Church of
England had enlarged itself to allow free play for
this new spirit, it would be to-day, not the Church
of England alone, but the church of all who

302 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

dissent from the doctrine or practice of Rome.
Wesley was a churchman to the last, and always
adopted the churchman's view, as in his descrip-
tion of the people of the Isle of Man, wherein he
says : " A more loving, simple-hearted people than
the Manxmen I never saw, and no wonder, for
they have but six Papists and no Dissenters or
Calvinists in the island." But he was driven out
of the Church — at least out of the churches
— he had loved so well, the Church his father and
grandfather had served faithfully, as well as many
other ancestors, during at least two centuries.

Wesley did not take to field preaching as a
matter of choice ; " he sympathized with the Devil
in his dislike of it ; for he loved a commodious
room, a soft cushion, and a handsome pulpit."
To the end of his life it was a cross to him ; but
he knew his commission and saw no other way of
preaching the gospel to every creature. But as he
had no intention of holding his peace, and as the
churches were closed against him, he followed
the sensible procedure, for a preacher, of going
where the people were ready to be preached to, in
the streets and fields. It was a hard matter, but it
was not of his choosing. " I could scarce reconcile
myself at first to this strange way of preaching
in the fields, having been all my life so tenacious

JOHN WESLEY 303

of decency and order that I should have thought
the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been
done in a church."

Three successive entries in the Journal read :
" I preached at St. Lawrence in the morning, and
afterwards at St. Katherine Cree's Church. I was
enabled to speak strong words at both, and was,
therefore, the less surprised at being informed
I was not to preach any more in these churches."
" I preached in the morning at St. Ann's Alders-
gate, and in the afternoon at the Savoy Chapel :
upon free salvation. I was quickly apprised that
at St. Ann's likewise I am to preach no more."
" I preached at St. John's Wapping, at three, and
at St. Bennet's, Paul's Wharf, in the evening.
At these churches likewise I am to preach no more."

However, he came to it, and began near Bris-
tol by expounding the Sermon on the Mount,
which, he observes in his Journal, "was one
pretty remarkable precedent for field preaching,
though I suppose there were churches at that
time also." The next day he " submitted to being
more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the
glad tidings of salvation to about three thousand
people." The following Sunday, he preached to
a thousand persons in Bristol at seven o'clock in
the morning, afterwards to fifteen hundred on the

304 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

top of Hannam Mount in Kingswood, and still
again to five thousand in the afternoon. He went
to Bath, and was not even " suffered to be in the
meadow where he was before, though this occa-
sioned the offer of a more convenient place, where
he preached Christ to about a thousand souls."
It was upon this occasion that Wesley had his
famous interview with Beau Nash.

The world was now his parish, and he com-
menced a systematic ministration, preaching free
salvation to the condemned felons in Newgate : to
a society in Bear Yard, remission of sins : to a
meeting in Aldersgate Street, the truth in love :
and the efficacy of prayer in the city prison of
Oxford. At Blackheath he preached to twelve
thousand people, in Upper Moorflelds to seven
thousand, and upon the same day to fifteen thou-
sand more at Kennington Common. Next day he
was off to Bristol, and " as I was riding to Rose
Green," we read, "in a smooth, plain part of the
road, my horse suddenly pitched upon his head
and rolled over and over. I received no other
hurt than a bruise on one side, which for the pre-
sent I felt not, but preached without pain to six
or seven thousand people, on that important di-
rection : 4 Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever
you do, do all to the glory of God.' '

JOHN WESLEY 305

The bodily manifestations of mental disturb-
ance, which appeared in the course of the preach-
ing, have been a feature of all revivals in every
country. Jonathan Edwards witnessed them in
America ; the Disciples observed them in Judaea.
The explanation of the phenomenon is as simple
as the explanation of hysteria. The will, which
ordinarily controls the body, becomes dominated
by emotion, and the body is left to be swayed by
the new force. Self-control, or control by the will,
is an admirable thing, but it is not the greatest
thing in the world. Evil emotions or good emo-
tions may at times gain control of the body, and
the idea has long ago been abandoned that it was
an evil spirit that gained control of men's wills
during revivals. If the body be deliberately
handed over to the emotions, an abnormal situa-
tion is created, and that is ever the danger in the
surrender of the will.

Wesley believed that Whitefield's objections to
these manifestations " were chiefly grounded on
gross misrepresentations of matter of fact," but
presently he had occasion to inform himself ; " for
no sooner had he begun to invite all sinners to
believe in Christ than four persons sank down
close to him, almost in the same moment ; one
lay without sense or motion, a second trembled

30G ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

exceedingly, the third had strong convulsions all
over his body, but made no noise unless by groans,
and the fourth, who was equally convulsed, called
upon God with strong cries and tears." As his
ministry progressed, these violent manifestations
disappeared ; " none were now in trances, none
cried out, none fell down or were convulsed ; only
some trembled, a low murmur was heard, and
many were refreshed with the abundance of
peace." Wesley saw as clearly as we do that there
were two dangers : to regard these things as if
they were essential to the inward work ; and to
condemn them altogether.

About this time Wesley was in some trepidation
because the powers of evil were so complacent,
but very soon he was freed from any anxiety on
that score. It was at Bristol that he had the
first of his long, varied experience at the hands
of the mob ; " all the street was filled with people,
shouting, cursing and swearing, and ready to
swallow the ground with fierceness and rage."
Some of the ringleaders were arrested, but they
began to excuse themselves before the mayor
by laying charges against the preacher. The
magistrate made the sensible answer: "What
Mr. Wesley is, is nothing to you : I will beep
the peace ; I will have no rioting in this city." In

JOHN WESLEY 307

the same place, a young man rushed into the
meeting, " cursing and swearing vehemently ; "
but before he left, " he was observed to have the
Lord for his God."

The Journal is full of the rough humour of
a semi-civilized people. In London, the rabble
drove an ox into the assemblage, which was listen-
ing to a discourse upon doing justly, loving mercy,
and walking humbly. At Pensford they had
baited a bull with dogs, and by main strength
partly dragged and partly thrust him against the
table ; but Wesley was unmoved, and, as the Jour-
nal says, " once or twice put aside his head with
my hand, that the blood might not drop upon my
clothes, intending to go on as soon as the hurry
should be a little over." One of the converts
" became exceedingly angry because those base
people would fain have interrupted, but she was
quickly rebuked by a stone which lit upon her
forehead ; in that moment her anger was at an
end and love only filled her heart." Wesley gives
but an ill account of Newcastle. "I was sur-
prised," he says ; " so much drunkenness, cursing
and swearing, even from the mouths of little
children, do I never remember to have heard
before in so small a compass of time."

The savagery to which Wesley was exposed

308 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

is almost incredible. He was stoned ; he was seized
by a press-gang ; he was caught by the hair and
struck in the face; the buildings in which he
preached were torn to pieces and set on fire. On
one occasion he was attacked on a bridge, and it
came into his mind, " if they throw me in the
river, it will spoil the papers which are in my
pocket ; " but he did not doubt that he could
swim, as he had on a thin coat and a light pair
of boots. No wonder he was brought to exclaim,
" O, who will convert these English into honest
heathens ! "

This man now began to be talked about, and
well he might, for he was turning the English
world upside down. He was interesting hundreds
of thousands of people in the serious matter of
their own sinfulness, and, if he did not insist as
strongly as he might upon the necessary punish-
ment of it, he certainly made it very clear how
they might amend their ways.

Amongst the numerous crimes laid to Wesley's
account was a conviction for selling gin ; that lie
was receiving large remittances from Spain in
order to make a party amongst the poor : that as
soon as the Spaniards landed he would join with
twenty thousand followers : and that he kept two
kk Papist priests" in his house. One, who claimed

JOHN WESLEY 309

that he was an eye-witness, testified that Wesley
had hanged himself, and that only the breaking of
the rope prevented the fatal issue ; another, in con-
versation with a Jesuit, asserted that Wesley was
one of them ; upon which the Jesuit, with all the
perspicacity of his race, uttered the devout wish :
" I would to God he were." From one pulpit it
was preached that John Wesley had been expelled
from his college, and even the character of his
mother was attacked ; the nastiest calumnies were
uttered against those who attended the meetings
by night ; but within a year, " one minister, who
was very forward, grew thoughtful, and shortly
afterwards went into his own necessary house,
and there hanged himself."

This mother of Wesley is the last person in the
world, one would think, whose conduct was open
to censure, judging from the manner in which she
conducted herself toward her husband and her
children. We are at no loss for exact informa-
tion as to the conditions under which they were
brought up, for she has set down at some length
her method of procedure in educating her
numerous family. She first lays down her prac-
tice for their securing a regular course of sleeping,
and when they were turned a year old, "they
were taught to fear the Lord and to cry softly, by

310 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

which they escaped the abundance of correction
they might otherwise have had ; and that most
odious noise, the crying of children, was rarely
heard in the house. " At dinner they were suffered
to eat, and drink small beer, as much as they
would, but not to call for anything ; drinking or
eating between meals was never allowed, nor was
it suffered to go into the kitchen to ask for any-
thing of the servants. After family prayers they
had their supper. At seven the maid washed
them, and beginning at the youngest she undressed
them, and got all to bed by eight ; " there was no
such thing allowed in the house as sitting by
a child till it fell asleep."

In order to form the minds of children, Mrs.
Wesley writes in a general way, the first thing to
be done is to conquer their will, and bring them
to an obedient temper ; for the subjecting of the
will is a thing that must be done at once, and
the sooner the better ; for, by neglecting a timely
correction, they will contract stubbornness and
obstinacy, which is hardly ever after conquered.
Whenever a child is corrected, we are assured, it
must be conquered ; and when the will of a child
is totally subdued, and it is brought to revere and
stand in awe of its parents, then a great many
childish follies may be passed by. Self-will, she

JOHN WESLEY 311

protests, is the root of all sin and misery; so,
whoever cherishes this in children ensures their
after-wretchedness. The children were quickly-
made to understand that they might have nothing
they cried for, and they were instructed to speak
handsomely for what they wanted. So, we may
well believe, " that taking God's name in vain,
cursing and swearing, profaneness, rude, ill-bred
names were never heard among them."

Her way of teaching was this : One day she
allowed to a child wherein to learn his letters ;
then he began at the first chapter of Genesis, and
was taught to spell the first verse ; then he read
it over and over, till he took ten verses, which he
quickly did. It is almost incredible, she says,
what a child may be taught in a quarter of a
year if he have good health. In addition to this
general system, the mother had certain specific
rules, which probably were carried out to the
letter. " Whoever was charged with a fault of
which they were guilty, if they would ingenu-
ously confess it and promise to amend, should
not be beaten ; " — this rule she was sure pre-
vented a great deal of lying; — that no sinful
action, as lying, pilfering, playing on the Lord's
Day, or disobedience, should ever pass unpun-
ished ; that no child should ever be chid or beat

312 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

twice for the same fault ; that every single act of
obedience should be always commended and fre-
quently rewarded, according to the merits of the
cause ; that the properties should be inviolably
preserved, and none suffered to invade the pro-
perty of another in the smallest matter ; that
promises be strictly observed ; that no girl be
taught to work till she can read very well. This
is the very reason, she discovered, why so few
women can read fit to be heard, and never to be
well understood.

Wesley himself had some very definite ideas
upon the education of girls, and he was firmly of
the opinion that if parents had the desire to send
their daughters "headlong to hell," they could
not do better 'than send them to a fashionable
boarding-school. He had seen girls acquire
pride, vanity, and affectation in these institutions
of learning ; and others since his time have in ado
the same observation.

Wesley's own marriage was not a success, at
least in so far as success in that relation is com-
monly estimated. An emotional man is usually
unhappy in his domestic life ; his wife always is.
The popular evangelist had been in many perils
from women, and his own ardent temperament
was continually forcing him into needless dan-

JOHN WESLEY 313

gers. Love for the race is apt to condense into
love for the individual, but it quickly vaporizes
again.

We have documentary evidence that he made
proposals to Mrs. Williamson in Georgia, when
she was Miss Hopkey ; at least that lady made
affidavit that he had ; but he was a curate at the
time, and his avowal must be interpreted in that
light. This affair with Miss Hopkey was serious,
and he was in such sore distress about it that he
had recourse to the elders of the Moravian Church
for advice. They exacted a pledge from him that
he would abide by their decision, and when they
decided against the union, he did so abide, con-
soling himself with the text — " Son of man, be-
hold I take from thee the desire of thine eyes."
Yet, fifty years afterwards, when he recalled the
experience, he confessed that he had been pierced
through as with a sword. The thoughts of youth
are long-lasting.

The love affairs of Wesley, harmless and
slight as they were, are as difficult to follow as
the amours of Horace. He was plotted against
and he was planned for. He had the usual affair
with a sister of a college friend ; he carried on
a long correspondence with a young widow, the
niece of Lord Lansdowne; and with a singular

314 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

catholicity of taste he had another series of let-
ters running to her mother, under a fanciful
name. But his most notorious entanglement was
with Grace Murray, the widow of a sailor, who
had sought relief from her bereavement in do-
mestic service. Wesley appears to have behaved
with great good nature, and complacently allowed
her to transfer her affections to another quarter.
Under the ministrations of yet another woman
he came to have serious doubts upon the sound-
ness of his views as set forth in his " Thoughts
on Marriage." A conference of the brethren was
ordered, and in a full and friendly debate they
convinced him " that a believer might marry
without suffering the loss of his soul.,, The per-
son who effected this change of mind was Mrs.
Vazeille, " a woman of sorrowful spirit," and he
married her after an acquaintance of fifteen days.
If his marriage was a mistake, certainly he had
had the benefit of advice from his friends ; his
brother, when he heard of it, " groaned all day
and could eat no pleasant food ; " another parti-
san leaves it on record that " he felt as though
he could have knocked the soul out of the
woman ; " and Southey, who was a writer with
a taste for classification, brackets Mrs. Wesley
in a triad with the wives of Socrates and Job.

JOHN WESLEY 315

Yet Wesley did his duty by the lady, at least
in the way of offering advice. On one occasion
he wrote in a spirit of remonstrance : " Attempt
no more to abridge me of my liberty. God has
used many means to curb your stubborn will and
break your temper. He has given you a sickly
daughter. He has taken away one of your sons ;
another has been a grievous cross, as the third
probably will be ; he has suffered you to be
defrauded of money, and has chastened you with
strong pain. Are you more humble, more gentle,
more placable than you were? I fear the re-
verse." These are scarcely the words in which to
inculcate the virtues of humility, gentleness, and
placability upon a woman of high spirit.

The unhappiness of the pair was a matter of
public comment, and the solution arrived at by
one pious follower was that his sufferings were
the chastisements of a loving father ; hers, the
immediate effects of an angry and bitter spirit.
Wesley bore the chastisement with great resolu-
tion, and wrote to his housekeeper, Mrs. Ryan,
who was not exactly the most suitable confidante,
as she had at least two husbands living, the
plaintf ul words : " I cannot say, ' take thy plague
away from me,' but only, ' let me be purified and
not consumed.' "

316 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

With perfect truth it may be affirmed that the
great Evangelist bore the marks of his wife's
violence upon his body ; yet he endured his trial
with patience, and consoled himself by reverting
to his original views upon marriage, and finding
further evidence in the Scripture that a person in
his situation should have remained single ; but he
afterwards praised God for the slight mercy that
he had been enabled to remain unmarried so long
as he actually did. After twenty years of married
life his wife left him, purposing " never to return ;
for what cause I know not to this day." Her
husband made an entry in his diary, employing
the Latin tongue to give full force to his thought,
" Non earn reliqui ; non dimisi ; non revocabo."

Into the merits of the case it is unnecessary to
enter further, but one cannot prevent the suspi-
cion that Wesley's zeal in going to and fro in the
Kingdom, from Aberdeen to Land's End, cross-
ing and re-crossing the Irish Channel continually,
may have arisen partly out of his domestic rela-
tions. He recalls " an odd circumstance," which
gives a deep insight into his mental make-up, and
suggests a psychological reason for his marital
unhappiness : " I never relish a tune at first hear-
ing, not till I have almost learned to sing it : but
as I learn it more perfectly, I gradually lose my

JOHN WESLEY 317

relish for it. It is the same in poetry, yea, in all
the objects of imagination. I seldom relish verses
at first hearing ; till I have heard them over and
over they give me no pleasure, and then give me
next to none when I have heard them a few
times more, so as to be quite familiar. Just as a
face or a picture, which does not strike me at first,
becomes more pleasing as I grow more acquainted
with it, but only to a certain point ; for when I
am too much acquainted it is no longer pleasing."
It is easy to appreciate the situation of a woman
in the face of such a disposition as that.

If Wesley failed to rule his domestic household
well, it cannot be laid to his charge that he
neglected the discipline of his ecclesiastical charge.
He wrote to his preachers, lay and clerical, on all
possible subjects ; he admonished, reproved, and
remonstrated ; and when these gentle measures
did not avail, he had free recourse to expulsion
from the society. To Hugh Sanderson, one of
his Irish preachers, he writes with great plain-
ness: "Avoid all familiarity with women; you
cannot be too wary in this respect ; use all dili-
gence to be clean ; free yourself from lice, they
are a proof of laziness ; do not cut off your hair,
but clean it and keep it clean ; cure yourself and
your family of the itch — a spoonful of brimstone

318 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

will do it ; let not the North be any longer a pro-
verb of reproach to all the nations." Wesley-
went to the facts ; that was his motto as well as
Voltaire's.

He assembled his preachers together and gave
them lessons in elocution. Success in public
speaking, he told them, consists in nothing but " a
natural, easy, and graceful variation of the voice,
suitable to the nature and importance of the sen-
timents we have to deliver ; and the first business
of a speaker is to speak that he may be under-
stood without babbling with his hands." He
divided his disciples into classes, and read lectures
to them from Pearson on the Creed, from Aid-
rich's " Logic," and " Rules for Action and Utter-
ance."

But Wesley's activity was not wholly consumed
in spiritual exercises : he assumed a large know-
ledge of physical ailments ; and when a person
has once got it into his head that he can cure all
manner of bodily diseases by the simple device of
the laying on of hands, or the scarcely more com-
plicated procedure of prayer, he is apt to acquire
a deep disdain for those who employ the slow and
uncertain methods of medicine and the painful
operation of the knife. It was so with "WosW.
He practised medicine on his own account, and

JOHN WESLEY 319

was particularly impressed by the value of elec-
tricity in the cure of various diseases ; indeed, he
held what one might call an outdoor clinic every
day, " wherein any that desired it might try the
virtue of that surprising medicine ; " and he testi-
fied that thousands had received unspeakable
good. He looked upon electricity as a thousand
medicines in one, and the most efficacious in
nervous disorders which has ever been discovered.
Many parts of the Journal read like an advertise-
ment in the daily press ; for example : " After the
sermon in Brechin, the Provost desired to see us,
and said, 4 Sir, my son had epileptic fits from his
infancy; Dr. Ogilvie prescribed for him many
times, and at length told me he could do no more.
I desired Mr. Blair last Monday to speak to you,
and I gave him the drops you advised. He is now
perfectly well and has not had one fit since.' "

In " reflecting upon the case of the poor woman
who had continually pain in her stomach," the
great preacher could not but remark the "in-
excusable negligence of physicians, who pre-
scribed drug upon drug, without knowing a jot of
the matter concerning the root of the disorder,
and without knowing this they cannot cure,
though they can murder the patient. Why, then,
do not all physicians consider how far bodily

320 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

disorders are cured or influenced by the mind ;
and why are these cases outside of their sphere?
Because they know not God." All this, too,
sounds strangely familiar to our ears.

He did not find the state of the profession any
better in Ireland, and all his spare time was taken
up with poor patients. " Blisters for anything or
nothing were all the fashion during his previous
visit to Ireland ; this time, the grand fashionable
medicine for twenty diseases was mercury sub-
limate. Why is it not a halter or a pistol ? They
would cure a little more speedily." He was called
to a house, " where a child was dying of the small-
pox, and rescued her from death and the doctors,
who were giving her saffron to drive out the
disease."

Nor had Wesley a very high opinion of the law.
In the early part of his life he " first saw that
foul monster, a Chancery Bill, a scroll of forty-
two pages to tell a story which needed not to have
taken up forty lines, stuffed with stupid, senseless,
improbable lies, many of them quite foreign to the
question." Twenty years later he saw "the fellow
of it, which was called a Declaration," and he was
led to enquire : " Why do lawyers lie for lying's
sake, unless it be to keep their hand in."

The Journal touches life at every point : music,

JOHN WESLEY 321

painting, travel by land and by sea, books and
decoration, farriery and farming, food and drink,
besides the deeper matters of Calvinism and Anti-
nomian pietism. After listening to the oratorio
"Judith," he records with some vehemence :
" There are two things in all modern music which
I can never reconcile to common sense — one is
singing the same words ten times over, the other
is singing different words by different persons at
one and the same time." He was particularly
struck by a picture of Rubens ; yet could not see
" either the decency or sense of painting the fig-
ure stark naked ; he thought it shockingly absurd,
and that nothing could defend or excuse the
practice, even if an Indian were to be the judge. "
From his experience of sea travel he formulated
the very sensible rules : Never pay till you set
sail ; go not on board till the captain goes, and
send not your luggage on board till you go your-
self. He passed judgement upon the " high enco-
miums which have been for many years bestowed on
a country life," in the words, " there is not a less
happy body of men in all England than the farm-
ers ; in general their life is supremely dull and
usually unhappy too." He conducted many experi-
ments in dietetics upon his own person, in the
way of abstention from meat and alcohol, and for

322 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

a year would drink nothing but water — a form
of self-denial which was apparently less common
then than now.

Wesley was a man of education, that is to say,
he had a familiarity with all the writings then
extant. The names of Shakespeare, Homer, Vir-
gil, Pascal, Luther, Dryden, are scattered every-
where in his Journal, and he has recorded very
pertinent observations upon their works. The
writings of Rousseau, and of his " brother infidel
Voltaire," he knew very well ; Swedenborg he
thought an entertaining madman ; the " Senti-
mental Journal Through France and Italy," he
thought should read " Continental, as sentimental
is not English ; " but he fully approved of John-
son's " Tour," and thought the " observations very
judicious."

We are continually struck by evidence of his
sound sense, which, as has already been remarked,
was a leading family trait. Once in seven years
he burnt all his sermons, thinking it a shame that
he could not write better ones then than seven
years ago. After reading a book to prove that
the moon was not inhabited, he made the sensible
observation : " I know that the earth is ; of the
rest I know nothing." A reformed pirate once
attempted to wean him away from the habit of

JOHN WESLEY 323

writing books, on the ground that men ought to
read no book but the Bible. But the wise evan-
gelist showed his good judgement by declining
" to enter into a dispute upon religion with a sea
captain seventy-five years old." At Edinburgh
four children were brought for baptism, and as the
visitor had previously seen the minister perform
the ceremony, he was at no loss how to proceed ;
in other places he followed the practice of im-
mersion.

It must be confessed, on the other side, that
Wesley wrote two letters to the newspapers, and
after being desired for nearly forty years to pub-
lish a magazine, he yielded at length, and began
to collect materials for it. Amongst the temporal
business he had to settle in his eighty-fourth year
was the dismissal of his editor for " causes that
were insufferable." He had borne with him for
twelve years, and finally, when he had inserted
in the magazine " several pieces of verse," with-
out the proprietor's knowledge, that gentle pub-
lisher could endure it no longer, so he made
an effort to amend the editorial management
"for the short residue of his life." Looking
at the " Arminian," which was the name of the
magazine, one is inclined to adopt Wesley's view
of the case, and applaud his radical measure.

324 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

Wesley had a pretty gift for description. The
town of Clonmel he described as " the pleasantest
beyond all comparison, which I have found in
Ireland. It has four broad, straight streets of red
brick houses which cross each other in the centre
of the town. Close to the walls on the south side
runs a broad, clear river. Beyond this rises a
green and fruitful mountain, which hangs over
the town. The vale runs many miles east and
west and is well cultivated." The observations
which he made upon the state of Ireland are
remarkably just, unless the Irish have been sadly
belied. " There is no country on earth where it
is so necessary to be steadily serious," he writes,
"for you are generally encompassed with those
who, with a little encouragement, would laugh
and trifle from morning to night." At Birr he
was preaching in the street to " a rude, senseless
multitude," when a Carmelite friar cried out,
"You lie." "Knock the friar down," the audi-
ence shouted ; " and it was no sooner said than
done."

Edinburgh he thought the dirtiest city he had
ever seen, "not excepting Colen in Germany.
The situation of the city on a hill shelving down
on both sides, with the stately castle upon a
craggy rock, is inexpressibly fine. The main

JOHN WESLEY 325

street, so broad and finely paved, is far beyond
any in Great Britain ; but how can it be suffered
that all manner of filth should be thrown into it
continually ? Where is the magistracy, the gentry,
and the nobility of the land, that they allow the
capital city of Scotland, yea, and the chief street
in it, to stink worse than a common sewer? I
spoke to them as plain as ever I did in my life,
but I never knew any in Scotland offended at
plain speaking." Dumfries he found to be a
clean, well-built town, having two elegant churches,
the mountains high but extremely pleasant.

The itinerant evangelist was greatly surprised
at the entertainment which he received in Scot-
land. The food proved to be good, cheap, in great
abundance, clean as any one could desire, and well
dressed. Above all, he was amazed that " not any
person did move any dispute of any kind, nor ask
him any questions concerning his opinions, so that
the prejudice which the Devil had been several
years planting was torn up by the roots in one
hour." Every Scotchman knows where that pre-
judice comes from, but it is not often that an
Englishman makes so clear an avowal.

The Scotch character was ever a source of won-
der to Wesley, as to many a foreigner before and
since. Upon one occasion he spent some hours in

326 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

the General Assembly, and was surprised to find
that any one was admitted, even lads twelve or
fourteen years old ; that the chief speakers were
lawyers ; that a single question took up the whole
time, " which, when I went away, seemed to be as
far removed from a conclusion as ever, namely,
' Shall Mr. Lindsay be removed to Kilmarnock
Parish or not ? ' Indeed," he observed, " there is
seldom fear of wanting a congregation in Scot-
land ; but the misfortune is they know everything,
so they learn nothing. Every one here loves at
least to hear the word of God. Certain this is
a nation swift to hear and slow to speak, though
not slow to wrath." The implication is very
subtle, that in the Scotch mind the whole duty
of man ends with the hearing of the Word. He
went to church in Aberdeen, and though he lis-
tened with all his attention he only understood
two words, " Balak " in the first lesson, and " be-
gat " in the second.

In Edinburgh he went so far as to sing a
Scotch psalm, "and fifteen or twenty people
came within hearing, but with great circumspec-
tion, keeping at their distance as though they
knew not what might follow." At Inverness he
was struck by the remarkable seriousness of the
people — an observation that has been made by

JOHN WESLEY 327

less acute persons — though he thought this less
surprising, when he considered that at least for a
hundred years they had had a succession of pious
ministers. Finally he adds : " Amongst all the
sins they have imported from England, the Scots
have not yet learned to scoff at sacred things."
It has always been a fixed belief in Scotland that
any evil which manifested itself north of the
Tweed was received from some extraneous source
— from England, or France, or from the Devil.

Wesley witnessed the celebration of the com-
munion in the West Kirk, Edinburgh, and from
his description it would appear to this day that
the Church of Scotland is faithful to its tradi-
tions. " After the usual morning service the min-
ister enumerated several sorts of sinners, whom
he forbade to approach to the table, and I was
informed that the communion usually lasted till
five in the evening." Wesley should be the last
person to complain of the length of a service, for
he habitually preached for three hours at a time,
and sometimes far into the night. However, after
visiting Scotland with a fair degree of regularity
up to his seventy-seventh year, he made the hu-
miliating discovery, " that he was not a preacher
for the people of Edinburgh." Upon this last
visit he writes : " I did not shun to declare the

328 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

whole counsel of God, and yet the people hear and
hear, and are just what they were before."

Wesley had the same peculiar genius as George
Borrow for chance encounter with rare characters,
and as that genius is usually associated with the
literary gift, it is hard to know just how much
reliance is to be placed upon the accounts of what
is alleged to have taken place. Certainly the
accounts as we have them are amusing. In Bris-
tol he lit upon a " poor, pretty, fluttering thing,
lately come from Ireland, and going to be a singer
in a playhouse. She went in the evening to the
chapel, and thence to watch-night, and was almost
persuaded to be a Christian."

At Hull the coach in which he was crowded was
attacked by a mob, who threw in at the windows
whatever came next to hand ; but a large gentle-
woman who sat in his lap screened him so that
nothing came near him. Going up a steep narrow
passage from the sea, he encountered a man at
the top, and looking him in the face said : " I wish
you a good-night." The man " spoke not, nor
moved hand or foot," but replied to the civil
salutation, "I wish you was in hell."

Upon a certain visit to London he was " nobly
attended : " behind him on the coach were ten
convicted felons, loudly blaspheming and rattling

JOHN WESLEY 329

their chains. By his side sat a man with a loaded
blunderbuss, and another upon the box.

At Newark one big man, " exceeding drunk, was
very noisy and turbulent till his wife seized him
by the collar, gave him two or three hearty boxes
on the ear, and dragged him away like a calf."

At Tullamore he met a man who had been under
water full twenty minutes, " which made him more
serious for two or three months." In the midst of
a sermon, the preacher saw a large cat leap down
upon a woman's head, and run over the heads and
shoulders of many more, " but none of them cried
out any more than if it had been a butterfly." At
Eotherham, an ass walked gravely in at the gate,
came up to the door of the house, and stood stock
still in a posture of deep attention. " It is well,"
Wesley adds, "only serious persons were present."
Near Bradford, " the beasts of the people lifted
up their voice, especially one called a gentleman,
who had filled his pockets with rotten eggs ; but
a young man coming unawares clapped his hand
on each side and mashed them all at once, and he
was perfume all over." At Brough in Westmore-
land, he preached " at a farmer's house under some
shady trees, when a little bird perched on a branch
and sang without intermission, from the beginning
of the service to the end."

330 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

The following bit of narrative is inimitable
even by the author of " Lavengro : " A poor man,
special drunk, came marching down the street
with a club in one hand and a large cleaver in the
other, grievously cursing and blaspheming, and
swearing he would cut the preacher's head off.
When he came nearer, the Mayor stepped out of
the congregation, and strove by good words to
make him quiet, but could not prevail ; on which
he went into his house and returned with his
white wand. At the same time he sent for the con-
stables, who presently came with their staves. He
charged them not to strike the man unless he
struck first ; but this he did, as soon as they came
within reach, and wounded one of them in the
wrist. On this the other knocked him down, which
he did three times before he would submit. The
Mayor then walked before the constables on
either hand, and so conducted the man to gaol.

Wesley toiled at his desk as well as upon the
road. He wrote books, dedicating to them the
hours from five in the morning till eight at night,
which was M all the time he could spare." He
would write a sermon or a tract as he sat upon a
stone waiting for a ferryman, and if they were as
hard to write as they are to read it was a marvel-
lous feat of endurance. The bulk of printed

JOHN WESLEY 331

material which, he left behind him is incredible,
and the task of mastering it can only be likened
to reading the contents of a theological library or
a Methodist "book concern" — concern is the
proper term to employ. His writings are not
books, they are in reality concerns. Even during
the period of his courtship — a short period it is
true — whilst he was confined to the house with
a sprained sinew, he employed his time in writing
a Hebrew Grammar and lessons for children ; he
had previously constructed a grammar of the
Greek and French languages.

"Make poetry your diversion, not your busi-
ness," was the advice given to Wesley by his wise
old mother, and it would have been well if he had
submitted cheerfully to the injunction. He wrote
rhymes upon all occasions; he made hymns
which, at first, look well and sound well, but they
never rise into the clear atmosphere of poetry,
much less of spiritual attainment. During half
a century he and his brother issued nearly forty
hymnologies, which were of much greater value
in those days than they are now. This humane
man had a passion for falling in love and for
writing verses ; he was thoroughly cured of the
one, but he never was able to eradicate the other
quality from his nature.

332 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

The fact that stands out most clearly in Wes-
ley's teaching is that conversion must be followed
by amendment of conduct in every relation of
life, a fact which many of those who are called
by his name have lost sight of. He spoke with
those who had votes in an ensuing election ; he
would not allow them to eat or drink at the
expense of him for whom they voted ; five guineas
had been given to one member of the society, but
the virtuous elector returned them immediately,
and when he learned that his mother had received
money privately, he could not rest till she had
sent it back. Wesley expelled dishonest debtors,
and the defrauding of the revenue was not toler-
ated by him. He told the society at Sunderland,
specifically, that none could stay in it unless they
parted from all sin, particularly " robbing the
King, selling or buying smuggled goods, which
he would no more suffer than robbing in the
highway." In Norwich he told the society in
plain terms that they were the most ignorant,
self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, intractable, dis-
orderly persons he knew in the three kingdoms,
and " God applied it to their hearts."

Another discovery of Wesley's was, " that
the preaching like an apostle, without joining
together those that are awakened, and training

JOHN WESLEY 333

them up in the ways of God, was only begetting
children for the executioner; without discipline
nine in ten of the once awakened were soon faster
asleep than ever." To this end he established
societies, classes, and bands, with leaders, helpers,
and stewards. They were entirely non-sectarian
in character, but pressure from without, espe-
cially the denial of the sacraments to them, drove
them into the form of a sect or church, though
Wesley strove against the development continu-
ally, and warned the people against the madness
of leaving the Church. Toward the end of his
life, however, he saw that the movement was
irresistible ; and he took the high ground that he
had as much right as any primitive missionary
bishop to ordain officials to administer the rites
of an organization, which had now grown into
a church ; as the connection grew, the possession
of property was forced upon it, and to conserve
it he was obliged to throw the societies into legal
form.

At the very beginning of his work, Wesley
displayed that capacity for organization which
finally brought his followers together as a distinct
sect, and after his death enabled them to rise to
the dignity of a church. He built and acquired
meeting-houses — a name he abhorred ; he estab-

334 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

lished labour colonies, to keep the needy amongst
his followers from want and idleness. He was
continually propagating schemes for the payment
of debts, a form of activity from which the leaders
of the Methodist Church are not yet wholly free.
He raised money for the clothing of the French
soldiers, who were living in misery in English
prisons, appealing to the people in the strong
words : " Thou shalt not oppress the stranger,
for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye
were strangers in the land of Egypt." His pri-
vate charity was unbounded and it was given
with open eyes as well as with open hand. After
relieving the necessity of a certain Dutchman,
he makes the wise observation, "I never saw
him since, and reason good, for he could now live
without me."

Wesley's bodily vigour, his unfailing health, his
capacity for enduring hardships and toil, have
been a source of wonder from his time to our
own. He preached three and four times a day.
He rarely rode less than five thousand miles in
a year, and some days from seventy to ninety ;
he was beaten and stoned ; he lay in the open air
till his clothes were covered with frost ; and he
was drenched with the seas of the Irish Channel.
His constitution does not appear to have been

JOHN WESLEY 335

unusually robust. From ten to thirteen, that is
when he was a scholar at the Charterhouse, and
the bigger boys used to seize the little fellows'
meat, he tells us that he had little but bread to
eat, and not plenty of that ; all his life he ate
sparingly, and drank only water ; at seven and
twenty he began spitting blood, and that con-
tinued for several years. He was brought to the
brink of death by a fever, and afterwards fell
into the third stage of consumption ; though, for
all his medical knowledge, we may well question
his diagnosis of his own case. Yet upon his
seventy-second birthday, he was led to consider
how it was that he found just the same strength
as he did thirty years before ; that his sight was
better and his nerves firmer ; that he had none
of the infirmities of old age, and had lost several
which he possessed in his youth.

Toward the end, as is ever the habit with old
men, Wesley occupies the pages of his Journal
with considerations of his youthfulness and his
phenomenal health. After much discussion he
concludes that his good physical condition was
due to his rising at four o'clock for about fifty
years, to his practice of preaching at five o'clock
in the morning, which, he assures us, was one of
the most healthful exercises in the world, and to

336 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

never travelling less, by sea or land, than 4500
miles in the year. This view of preaching as
a healthy exercise is a new one, and a hygienic
precaution, which, it is hoped, will not be too
generally followed. One reads with envious long-
ing of his gift for sleeping, and would willingly
accept the most ultimate tenets of Methodism, if
only they were accompanied by Wesley's " ability,
if ever I want, to sleep immediately." Probably
that is a vain hope, unless it also brought his
evenness of temper : " I feel and grieve, yet I fret
at nothing."

The accounts of his growing age are pathetic.
He found that with increasing years he walked
slower, that his memory was not so quick, that
he could not read so well by candle-light. At
eighty-five he was not so agile, and could not run
so fast as formerly ; he found his left e}^e grow
dim, some pain in the temple from an old blow
of a stone, yet he felt no such thing as weariness
in travelling and preaching, and was not conscious
of any decay in writing his sermons. In the last
year of his life — he died at 87 — he confesses
that his eyes are dim, his hand trembling, his
motions weak and slow, jTet he felt no pain from
head to foot ; only, it seemed as if " nature was
exhausted." And so it was.

JOHN WESLEY 337

Prophecy is not an exact science. The issue of
it is ever uncertain ; but if the prophets were to
agree, the thing would come to pass. The He-
brew prophets prophesied for a thousand years,
and the Messiah came. They were a little astray
in their geographical predictions and in some
other details ; but in the main they were right,
because they relied upon the profound knowledge
that religious aspiration is a primal instinct, like
the desire for food or the passion for propagat-
ing the species. The bloodiest savages possess
it; the great Apostle testified to its immanence
amongst the Athenians, and we are not yet grown
so mighty that we have put it underfoot. The
voice has been still and small these forty years,
whilst we have been wandering in the scientific
wilderness. But the spirit of religion "revives,
reflourishes, then vigorous most when most inact-
ive deemed." Of science we may now say :

His giantship is gone somewhat crest-fallen,
Stalking with less unconscionable strides.

The strife is over ; and silence has fallen upon
the clatter of Huxley's shrewd knocks, upon the
wild outcries of Bishop Wilberforce, and the
tumult of the crowds which stood afar off to wit-
ness the conflict, and either lamented or blas-
phemed. We have settled all that. We have

338 ESSAYS IN PURITANISM

relegated the theologians to their own place,
along with the logicians and the schoolmen.
They had been fighting a corporeal presence writh
a fine dialectical point. The scientists were
thrusting at a spirit with their clumsy weapons.
We have sent Science back to its laboratories,
and every time it performs something useful to
humanity we shall hear it gladly.

Dull thing-, I say so, that Caliban
Whom now I keep in silence. . . . But, as 't is,
We cannot miss him : he does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood, and serve in offices
That profit us.

If one were engaged in the laborious exercise
of writing a tract, he might enlarge upon this ;
but for the present I shall content myself with
one remark. The Spirit of Eeligion, which is the
larger part of Puritanism, is reviving ; it is
amongst the men of science — the men who
habitually deal with truth — that its operation
is most clearly manifest, though probably some
of them will be swift to deny the amiable charge.
It is also manifest amongst the toilers for their
daily bread, who deal with truth of another kind.
They are saying at this moment,

Be of good courage ; I begin to feel

Some rousing motions in me, which dispose

To something extraordinary my thoughts.

JOHN WESLEY 339

" The law is a schoolmaster to bring us unto
Christ," said Saint Paul. There is a law of fear
and a law of love. It is a strange phenomenon
of the human mind that the thing which we fear
greatly and justly, we afterwards grow to love.
All men fear Death; in the end they come to
love it. The voice of the Old Testament is, fear
God. The Puritans, according to the saying of
Joubert, were children of the Old Testament.
In New England they were led into a new and
better way by the spirit of the time, which was
revealed chiefly in the Unitarian movement. In
England the voice which bade fear give place to
love was the voice of Methodism. It was through
John Wesley that voice was given to the world.

But even that is not enough for us. We have
done with fear. We have need for love. And
lest it be forgotten that I am speaking to a com-
pany of artists, I shall say that we have the need
also for beauty. In the future what is good in
Puritanism we shall have ; that is, the beauty of
holiness. What is good in Science we shall have
— the beauty of Truth. What is good in Art we
shall have — the beauty of Nature.

(Cbe fiitoerjribe pce^

Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton &• Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.

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