Cotton Mather (1663–1728) straddled the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Descended from illustrious ministers, he too became a prominent Puritan pastor in Massachusetts. An inveterate writer, he penned more than four hundred books, as well as tracts and pamphlets on various subjects. Fascinated by medicine and botany, he championed smallpox inoculation, performed plant hybridization experiments, and wrote disquisitions on vegetables. He was steeped in theology and the ancients but also familiar with essayists such as Erasmus, Michel de Montaigne, and Blaise Pascal. It’s hard to reconcile that the same man, so open to new scientific ideas, who corresponded with learned Europeans, could promote the Salem witchcraft trials and claim that the Devil was about to invade New England. On his essaying, he declared in The Christian Philosopher: “The works of the Glorious GOD in the Creation of the World, are what I now propose to exhibit; in brief Essays to enumerate some of them, that He may be glorified in them.” Here, he is at pains to square his love of poetry with his Puritanical disapproval of its potential for what he sees as immorality.
(1726)
Poetry, whereof we have now even an antediluvian piece in our hands, has from the beginning been in such request, that I must needs recommend unto you some acquaintance with it. Though some have had a soul so unmusical, that they have decried all verse, as being but a mere playing and fiddling upon words; all versifying, as if it were more unnatural than if we should choose dancing instead of walking; and rhyme, as if it were but a sort of Morisco dancing with bells: yet I cannot wish you a soul that shall be wholly unpoetical. And old Horace has left us an Art of Poetry, which you may do well to bestow a perusal on. And besides your lyric hours, I wish you may so far understand an epic poem, that the beauties of an Homer and a Virgil may be discerned with you. As to the moral part of Homer, ’tis true, and let me not be counted a Zoilus for saying so, that by first exhibiting their gods as no better than rogues, he set open the floodgates for a prodigious inundation of wickedness to break in upon the nations, and was one of the greatest apostles the Devil ever had in the world. Among the rest that felt the ill impressions of this universal corrupter (as men of the best sentiments have called him), one was that overgrown robber, of execrable memory, whom we celebrate under the name of Alexander the Great; who by his continual admiring and studying of his Iliad, and by following that false model of heroic virtue set before him in his Achilles, became one of the worst of men, and at length inflated with the ridiculous pride of being himself a deity, exposed himself to all the scorn that could belong unto a lunatic. And hence, notwithstanding the veneration which this idol has had, yet Plato banishes him out of a commonwealth, the welfare whereof he was concerned for. Nevertheless, custom or conscience obliges him to bear testimonies unto many points of morality. And it is especially observable, that he commonly propounds prayer to heaven as a most necessary preface unto all important enterprises; and when the action comes on too suddenly for a more extended supplication, he yet will not let it come on without an ejaculation; and he never speaks of any supplication but he brings in a gracious answer to it. I have seen a travesteering highflyer, not much to our dishonor, scoff at Homer for this; as making his actors to be like those whom the English call Dissenters. But then, we are so much led into the knowledge of antiquities, by reading of this poet, and into so many parts of the recondite learning, that notwithstanding some little nods in him, not a few acute pens beside the old Bishop of Thessalonica’s, have got a reputation by regaling us with annotations upon him. Yea, though one can’t but smile at the fancy of Croese, who tries with much ostentation of erudition, to show, that Homer has all along tendered us in a disguise and fable, the history of the Old Testament, yet many illustrations of the sacred scriptures, I find are to be fetched from him; who indeed had probably read what was extant of them in his days: particularly, our eighteenth Psalm is what he has evidently imitated. Virgil too, who so much lived upon him, as well as after him, is unaccountably mad upon his fate, which he makes to be he knows not what himself, but superior to gods as well as to men, and through his whole composures he so asserts the doctrine of this nonsensical power, as is plainly inconsistent with all virtue. And what fatal mischief did Fascinator do to the Roman Empire, when by deifying one great emperor, he taught the successors to claim the adoration of gods, while they were perpetrating the crimes of devils? I will not be a Carbilius upon him; nor will I say anything, how little the married state owes unto one who writes as if he were a woman hater: nor what his blunders are about his poor-spirited and inconsistent hero, for which many have taxed him. Nevertheless, ’tis observed, that the pagans had no rules of manners, that were more laudable and regular than what are to be found in him. And some have said, it is hardly possible seriously to read his works without being more disposed unto goodness, as well as being agreeably entertained. Be sure, had Virgil writ before Plato, his works had not been any of the books prohibited. But then, this poet also has abundance of rare antiquities for us: and such things, as others besides a Servius, have imagined that they have instructed and obliged mankind, by employing all their days upon. Wherefore if his Aeneis, which though it were once near twenty times as big as he has left it, yet he has left it unfinished, may not appear so valuable to you, that you may think twenty-seven verses of the part that is the most finished in it, worth one and twenty hundred pounds and odd money, yet his Georgics, which he put his left hand unto, will furnish you with many things far from despicable. But after all, when I said, I was willing that the beauties of these two poets, might become visible to your visive faculty in poetry, I did not mean, that you should judge nothing to be admittable into an epic poem, which is not authorized by their example; but I perfectly concur with one who is inexpressibly more capable to be a judge of such a matter than I can be: that it is a false critic who with a petulant air, will insult reason itself, if it presumes to oppose such authority.
I proceed now to say, that if (under the guidance of a Vida) you try your young wings now and then to see what flights you can make, at least for an epigram, it may a little sharpen your sense, and polish your style, for more important performances; for this purpose you are now even overstocked with patterns, and poemata passim. You may, like Nazianzen, all your days, make a little recreation of poetry in the midst of your more painful studies. Nevertheless, I cannot but advise you, withhold thy throat from thirst. Be not so set upon poetry, as to be always poring on the passionate and measured pages. Let not what should be sauce rather than food for you, engross all your application. Beware of a boundless and sickly appetite, for the reading of the poems, which now the rickety nation swarms withal: and let not the Circaean cup intoxicate you. But especially preserve the chastity of your soul from the dangers you may incur, by a conversation with Muses that are no better than harlots: among which are others besides Ovid’s epistles, which for their tendency to excite and foment impure flames, and cast coals into your bosom, deserve rather to be thrown into the fire, than to be laid before the eye which a covenant should be made withal. Indeed, not merely for the impurities which they convey, but also on some other accounts, the powers of darkness have a library among us, whereof the poets have been the most numerous as well as the most venomous authors. Most of the modern plays, as well as the romances and novels and fictions, which are a sort of poems, do belong to the catalogue of this cursed library. The plays, I say, in which there are so many passages, that have a tendency to overthrow all piety, that one whose name is Bedford, has extracted near seven thousand instances of them, from the plays chiefly of but five years preceding; and says awfully upon them, “They are national sins, and therefore call for national plagues; and if God should enter into judgment, all the blood in the nation would not be able to atone for them.” How much do I wish that such pestilences, and indeed all those worse than Egyptian toads (the spawns of a Butler, and a Brown, and a Ward, and a company whose name is legion!) might never crawl into your chamber! The unclean spirits that come like frogs out of the mouth of the dragon, and of the beast; which go forth unto the young people of the earth, and expose them to be dealt withal as the enemies of God, in the battle of the great day of the Almighty. As for those wretched scribbles of madmen, My Son, touch them not, taste them not, handle them not: thou wilt perish in the using of them. They are, the dragons whose contagious breath peoples the dark retreats of death. To much better purpose will an excellent but an envied Blackmore feast you, than those vile rhapsodies (of that vinum daemonum) which you will find always leave a taint upon your mind, and among other ill effects, will sensibly indispose you to converse with the holy oracles of God your Saviour.
But there is, what I may rather call a parenthesis, than a digression, which this may be not altogether an improper place for the introducing of.
(There has been a deal of ado about a style; so much, that I must offer you my sentiments upon it. There is a way of writing, wherein the author endeavors, that the reader may have something to the purpose in every paragraph. There is not only a vigor sensible in every sentence, but the paragraph is embellished with profitable references, even to something beyond what is directly spoken. Formal and painful quotations are not studied; yet all that could be learnt from them is insinuated. The writer pretends not unto reading, yet he could not have writ as he does if he had not read very much in his time; and his composures are not only a cloth of gold, but also struck with as many jewels, as the gown of a Russian ambassador. This way of writing has been decried by many, and is at this day more than ever so, for the same reason, that in the old story, the grapes were decried: that they were not ripe. A lazy, ignorant, conceited set of authors, would persuade the whole tribe, to lay aside that way of writing, for the same reason that one would have persuaded his brethren to part with the encumbrance of their bushy tails. But however fashion and humour may prevail, they must not think that the club at their coffee-house is all the world, but there will always be those, who will in this case be governed by indisputable reason: and who will think, that the real excellency of a book will never lie in saying of little; that the less one has for his money in a book, ’tis really the more valuable for it; and that the less one is instructed in a book, and the more of superfluous margin, and superficial harangue, and the less of substantial matter one has in it, the more ’tis to be accounted of? And if a more massy way of writing be never so much disgusted at this day, a better gust will come on, as will some other thing, quae jam cecidere. In the meantime, nothing appears to me more impertinent and ridiculous than the modern way (I cannot say rule: for they have none!) of criticizing. The blades that set up for critics, I know not who constituted or commissioned ’em!—they appear to me, for the most part as contemptible, as they are a supercilious generation. For indeed no two of them have the same style; and they are as intolerably cross-grained and severe in their censures one upon another, as they are upon the rest of mankind. But while each of them, conceitedly enough, sets up for the standard of perfection, we are entirely at a loss which fire to follow. Nor can you easily find any one thing wherein they agree for their style, except perhaps a perpetual care to give us jejune and empty pages, without such touches of erudition (so to speak in the style of an ingenious traveler) as may make the discourses less tedious, and more enriching, to the mind of him that peruses them. There is much talk of a florid style, obtaining among the pens, that are most in vogue; but how often would it puzzle one, even with the best glasses to find the flowers! And if they were to be chastised for it, it would be with as much of justice, as Jerome was, for being a Ciceronian. After all, every man will have his own style, which will distinguish him as much as his gait: and if you can attain to that which I have newly described, but always writing so as to give an easy conveyance unto your ideas, I would not have you by any scourging be driven out of your gait; but if you must confess a fault in it, make a confession like that of the lad unto his father while he was beating him for his versifying.
However, since every man will have his own style, I would pray, that we may learn to treat one another with mutual civilities, and condescensions, and handsomely indulge one another in this, as gentlemen do in other matters.
I wonder what ails people that they can’t let Cicero write in the style of Cicero, and Seneca write in the (much other!) style of Seneca; and own that both may please in their several ways. But I will freely tell you; what has made me consider the humourists that set up for critics upon style, as the most unregardable set of mortals in the world, is this! Far more illustrious critics than any of those to whom I am now bidding defiance, and no less men than your Erasmus’s, and your Crotius’s, have taxed the Greek style of the New Testament, with I know not what solecisms and barbarisms; and, how many learned folks have obsequiously run away with the notion! Whereas ’tis an ignorant and an insolent whimsy; which they have been guilty of. It may be (and particularly by an ingenious Blackwall, it has been) demonstrated, that the gentlemen are mistaken in every one of their pretended instances; all the unquestionable classics, may be brought in, to convince them of their mistakes. Those glorious oracles are as pure Greek as ever was written in the world; and so correct, so noble, so sublime in their style, that never anything under the cope of heaven, but the Old Testament, has equaled it.