" Such justice, such self-repression, such fairness
make me almost forgive him for riding around the scaffold on which his
fellow-clergyman was being executed for witchcraft, and urging the crowd
not to listen to the poor martyr's dying words. I can even almost overlook
the mysterious fables, the outrageous yarns which he imposed upon us under
the guise of history.
The three reverend versifiers who turned out such questionable poetry are
known to have been writers of clear, scholarly, and vigorous prose. They
were all graduated at Emanuel College, Cambridge, the nursery of Puritans.
Mr. Welde soon returned to England and published there two intelligent
tracts vindicating the purity of the New England worship. Richard Mather
was the general prose-scribe for the community; he drafted the "Cambridge
Platform" and other important papers, and was clear and scholarly enough
in all his work _except_ the "Bay Psalm-Book." From his pen came the
tedious, prolix preface to the work; and the first draft of it in his own
handwriting is preserved in the Prince Library. The other co-worker was
John Eliot, that glory of New England Puritanism, the apostle to the
Indians. His name heads my list of the saints of the Puritan calendar; but
I confess that when I consider his work in "The Bay Psalm-Book," I have
sad misgivings lest the hymns which he wrote and published in the Indian
language may not have proved to the poor Massachusetts Indians all that our
loving and venerating fancy has painted them.
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