Son of Increase Mather. A famous Congregational clergyman of Boston, pastor of the North Church, 1683–1728, and his father’s colleague for the greater part of that period. He was a prolific author, publishing nearly four hundred works, large and small, but it is upon the “Magnalia Christi Americana” that his reputation rests. Among other works are “Wonders of the Invisible World;” “Christian Philosopher;” “Psalterium Americanum;” “Manductio ad Ministerium;” “Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft;” “Essays to Do Good;” “The Armour of Christianity;” “Batteries upon the Kingdom of the Devil;” “Death made Basic and Happy.” His style is disfigured by pedantry and strained analogies, and is at all times far removed from simplicity, but the author is nevertheless easily seen to be intensely earnest in his endeavours to be of service to his generation.

Personal

  Dr. Cotton Mather is intombed. Bearers, the Rev’d Mr. Colman, Mr. Thacher; Mr. Sewall, Mr. Prince; Mr. Webb, Mr. Cooper. The Church went before the Corpse; first, Rev. Mr. Gee in mourning, alone; then three deacons; then Capt. Hutchinson, Adam Winthrop, Esq., Col. Hutchinson. Went up Hull street. I went in a coach. All the council had gloves. I had a pair…. Mr. Walter prayed excellently.

  By his learned works and correspondence, those who lived at the greatest distance might discern much of his superior light and influence; but they could discern these only by a more mediate and faint reflection. These could neither see nor well imagine that extraordinary lustre of pious and useful literature, wherewith we were, every day, entertained, surprised, and satisfied, who dwelt in the directer rays, in the more immediate vision.

  When I was a boy, I met with a book, entitled “Essays to do Good,” which I think was written by your father. It had been so little regarded by a former possessor, that several leaves of it were torn out; but the remainder gave me such a turn of thinking, as to have an influence on my conduct through life…. It is now more than sixty years since I left Boston: but I remember well both your father and grandfather, having heard them both in the pulpit, and seen them in their houses. The last time I saw your father was in the beginning of 1724, when I visited him after my first trip to Pennsylvania. He received me in his library, and on my taking leave, showed me a shorter way out of the house through a narrow passage, which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning partly towards him, when he said hastily, “Stoop, stoop!” I did not understand him, till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man that never missed any occasion of giving instruction, and upon this he said to me, “You are young, and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps.” This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me; and I often think of it, when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people by their carrying their heads too high.

  His early reputation, and the prominent part he took in the ecclesiastical affairs of New England; the great and long-continued consideration which he enjoyed with the people at large; his literary attainments and unquestionable ability of a certain kind; the contributions he made to the materials of our early history, ample at least, if not so exact as might be desired; and last, though not least, his grievous errors of conduct, on several important occasions, give him an undoubted eminence above most of his contemporaries, and make him one of the most remarkable characters that belong to the early period of New England.

  In summing up the character of Cotton Mather, we should say, that he was a man of superior general ability, without the advantage of any leading intellectual tendencies, and that his warm and benevolent feelings were not sufficiently guarded by reserve, or qualified by worldly shrewdness. By nature and education he was unfortunately subject to conceit and self-complacency, which he had not tact enough to conceal. This infirmity was evidently the real cause of his misfortunes during life, and its influence has followed his reputation, and obscured his merits with posterity.

  To cover his confusion, Cotton Mather got up a case of witchcraft in his own parish…. Was Cotton Mather honestly credulous?… He is an example how far selfishness, under the form of vanity and ambition, can blind the higher faculties, stupefy the judgment, and dupe consciousness itself.

  He incurred the responsibility of being its chief cause and promoter. In the progress of the superstitious fear, which amounted to frenzy, and could only be satisfied with blood, he neither blenched nor halted; but attended the courts, watched the progress of invisible agency in the prisons, and joined the multitude in witnessing the executions.

  The suggestion, that Cotton Mather, for purposes of his own, deliberately got up this witchcraft delusion, and forced it upon a doubtful and hesitating people, is utterly absurd…. Mather’s position, convictions, and temperament alike called him to serve on this occasion as the organ, exponent, and stimulator of the popular faith.

  As Cotton Mather was a very distinguished man, Grandfather took some pains to give the children a lively conception of his character. Over the door of his library were painted these words, BE SHORT,—as a warning to visitors that they must not do the world so much harm as needlessly to interrupt this great man’s wonderful labors. On entering the room you would probably behold it crowded, and piled, and heaped with books. They were huge, ponderous folios, and quartos, and little duodecimos, in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and all other languages that either originated at the confusion of Babel or have since come into use. All these books, no doubt, were tossed about in confusion, thus forming a visible emblem of the manner in which their contents were crowded into Cotton Mather’s brain. And in the middle of the room stood a table, on which, besides printed volumes, were strewn manuscript sermons, historical tracts, and political pamphlets, all written in such a queer, blind, crabbed, fantastical hand, that a writing-master would have gone raving mad at the sight of them. By this table stood Grandfather’s chair, which seemed to have contracted an air of deep erudition, as if its cushion were stuffed with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and other hard matters. In this chair, from one year’s end to another, sat that prodigious bookworm, Cotton Mather, sometimes devouring a great book, and sometimes scribbling one as big. In Grandfather’s younger days there used to be a wax figure of him in one of the Boston museums, representing a solemn, dark-visaged person, in a minister’s black gown, and with a black-letter volume before him.

  Mather was always exercising his ingenuity to contribute something useful to the world. He was one of the first to employ the press extensively in the dissemination of tracts; he early lifted his voice in favor of temperance; he preached and wrote for sailors; he instructed negroes; he substituted moral and sagacious intellectual restraints with his children for flogging; conversation he studied and practised as an art; and he was a devoted historiographer of his country for posterity—besides his paramount employment, according to the full measure of his day and generation, of discharging the sacred duties of his profession. Pity that any personal defects of temperament or “follies of the wise” should counterbalance these noble achievements—that so well freighted a bark should at times experience the want of a rudder. Good sense was the one stick occasionally missing from the enormous faggot of Mather’s studies and opinions…. One thing he never could attain, though he nearly inherited it, though his learning almost irresistibly challenged it, though he spiritually anticipated it—the prize of the Presidency of Harvard College. One and another was chosen in preference to him. The ghostly authority of the old priestly influence was passing away. Cotton Mather was, in age a disheartened and disappointed man. The possession, in turn, of three wives had proved but a partial consolation. One of his sons he felt compelled to disown; his wife was subject to fits of temper bordering on insanity; the glooms of his own disposition grew darker in age as death approached, a friend whom he was glad to meet, when he expired, at the completion of his sixty-fifth year, the 13th February, 1728. His last emphatic charge to his son Samuel was, “Remember only that one word, ‘Fructuosus.’”

  He is the greatest of American scholars. It is doubtful if any one in the New World has ever equalled his acquaintance with theological and classic literature, his readiness in using his knowledge, his wonderful industry, his intense literary ardor. No moment of his life was wasted, and all his life was given to study.

  He became the greatest pulpit power in his day, and unsurpassed since, unless, perhaps, by a very few in later generations. During the week he made the most faithful preparation by reading, meditation, prayer, and writing. Study of the Bible in the original languages kept his mind fresh and unhackneyed. Praying as he wrote, he went into the house of God surcharged with God’s truth and spirit. Nothing was left till Saturday night or Sunday morning to tax his strength by way of mental toil and worry over a sermon. Saturday evening and Sunday morning were sacred to devotions. He went to the sanctuary as to the “gate of heaven.” Full of matter and fervent in prayer, he was like a charged battery, and he represented Christ as he stood before his auditory. They were instructed, they were aroused, their consciences were quickened, their affections were kindled, their reason was satisfied by the words spoken, and all was sent home by the intense spiritual energy with which he spoke and prayed.

  It was, perhaps, fear that the belief in the supernatural, and notably in the supernatural agency of the Evil One, was dying out which led Cotton Mather, a minister of prodigious though ill-digested learning and at the same time full of spiritual self-conceit, to countenance the horrible delusion of Salem Witchcraft which has left a dark stain on New England history, as readers of Hawthorne’s “House of the Seven Gables” know…. Cotton Mather afterwards partly redeemed himself by countenancing, at a great sacrifice of his popularity and at some risk of his life, the introduction of inoculation, which excited the ignorant fury of the mob. Even in him learning begot something of liberality.

  On February 15, 1728, the Reverend Benjamin Colman, first minister of the Brattle Street church, preached the Boston lecture in memory of Cotton Mather, who had died two days before. Cotton Mather had lived all his life in Boston; there is no record, they say, of his ever having travelled farther from home than Ipswich or Andover or Plymouth. Of sensitive temperament, and both by constitution and by conviction devoted to the traditions in which he was trained, he certainly presented, to a degree nowhere common, a conveniently exaggerated type of the characteristics that marked the society of which he formed a part.

  In the old burying-ground on Copp’s Hill is a table-like monument bearing the names of Increase Mather and Cotton Mather. The names on the moss-covered stones are almost illegible, and the memory of them has also grown dim in men’s minds; but no two men ever had greater influence in Boston than the two who lie in this forgotten grave.

Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702

  As for my self, having been, by the mercy of God, now above sixty-eight years in New-England, and served the Lord and his people in my weak measure sixty years in the ministry of the gospel, I may now say, in my old age, I have seen all that the Lord hath done for his people in New England, and have known the beginning and progress of these churches unto this day; and, having read over much of this history, I cannot but in the love and fear of God bear witness to the truth of it; viz.: that this present church-history of New-England, compiled by Mr. Cotton Mather, for the substance, end, and scope of it, is, as far as I have been acquainted therewithall, according to truth.

  One of the most singular books in this or in any other language. Its puns and its poems, its sermons and its anagrams, render it unique in its kind. The author not unfrequently reminds us of our own church-historian Fuller; but circumstances counteracted the resemblance of their natural disposition.

  As Chateaubriand boasts in his “Itinerary” that he was the last Frenchman who would ever make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so it may hereafter be said that the writer of this was the last (and possibly the first) individual who, bona fide, perused in regular course the whole of Mather’s “Magnalia;” and, if any doubts had existed that great toil was necessary to the acquisition of fame, they would have been dispelled by this exertion…. This book is worth consulting by those who wish to become acquainted with the character of our forefathers. Many of the author’s faults were those of his age; and, if he has not left us the best, he has at least furnished the largest, work appertaining to our early history…. To those who are interested in the early history of our country, it may be well to remark that, for accuracy in historical occurrences, they will do well to rely upon other authorities; but, if they wish to obtain a general view of the state of society and manners, they will probably nowhere find so many materials for this purpose as in the work of this credulous, pedantick, and garrulous writer.

  No man since Dr. Mather’s time has had so good an opportunity as he enjoyed to consult the most authentic documents. The greater part of his facts could be attested by living witnesses and the shortest tradition, or taken from written testimonies, many of which have since perished. The situation and character of the author afforded him the most favourable opportunities to obtain the documents necessary for his undertaking; and no historian would pursue a similar design with greater industry and zeal…. The work is both a civil and an ecclesiastical history. The large portion of it devoted to Biography affords the reader a more distinct view of the leading characters of the times, than could have been given in any other form.

  His works are of a kind, which were attractive and interesting in their day, but now sleep in repose, where even the antiquary seldom disturbs them. He will be remembered, however, as the author of the “Magnalia,” a work, which, with all its faults, will always find interested readers; as a man, too, of unexampled industry, and unrivalled attainments in curious rather than useful learning.

  A most interesting and edifying work, with some peculiarities.

  A monstrous mass of information and speculation, of error and gossip, of biography and history, of italics and capitals, of classical quotations, Latin and Greek, and of original epitaphs, Latin and English, in prose and in verse, which, as old Polonius said of Hamlet’s actors, “either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-comical, scene individable or poem unlimited,” has hardly a parallel in the world! Let me not seem to disparage or undervalue Cotton Mather,—a perfect Dr. Pangloss, as he was in many particulars,—for with all his foibles and all his faults, all his credulity and all his vanity, it cannot be denied that he did a really great work for New England history. The lives of our Worthies could not have been written without him; while his “Essay to do Good” is known to have given the earliest incentive to the wonderful career of New England’s most wonderful son,—Benjamin Franklin.

  Cotton Mather’s “Ecclesiastical History of New England,” better known as his “Magnalia,” from the head-line of the title page, “Magnalia Christi Americana,” was published in London in 1702, in folio. Although relating generally to New England, it principally concerns Massachusetts. While the book is filled with the author’s conceits and puns, and gives abundant evidence of his credulity, it contains a vast amount of valuable historical material, and is indispensable in any New England library. It is badly arranged for consultation, for it is largely a compilation from the author’s previous publications, and it lacks an index.

  The “Magnalia,” despite its inclusiveness and augustness, its awe-inspiring quotations and allusions, is an untidy piece of literature,—inexcusably so when we consider its author’s ability, training, and opportunities.

  The name is much more attractive than the interior.

  Mather wrote in the full and pregnant style of Taylor, Milton, Brown, Fuller, and Burton, a style ponderous with learning and stiff with allusions, digressions, conceits, anecdotes, and quotations from the Greek and the Latin. A page of the “Magnalia” is almost as richly mottled with italics as one from the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” and the quaintness which Mather caught from his favorite Fuller disports itself in textual pun and marginal anagram and the fantastic sub-titles of his books and chapters.

  The prose epic of New England Puritanism it has been called, setting forth in heroic mood the principles, the history, and the personal characters of the fathers. The principles, theologic and disciplinary alike, are stated with clearness, dignity, and fervour. The history, though its less welcome phases are often lightly emphasised, and its details are hampered by deep regard for minor accuracy, is set forth with a sincere ardour which makes its temper more instructive than that of many more trustworthy records. And the life-like portraits of the Lord’s chosen, though full of quaintly fantastic phrases and artless pedantries, are often drawn with touches of enthusiastic beauty.

General

  If, as Mather would say, our little scrap of literary history need a moral, it shall be addressed to men of his own profession. Here is one man whom the world ranks as an ass, and another whom the world ranks as its most useful practical genius. The first was a preacher; and the second says, that, for any use he has been to the world, it may thank that preacher. Why is the man called an ass to whom the world owes its most useful practical genius? Because he could not omit his own prefaces. Because he overlaid everything with such a farrago of introduction. He could not begin at the beginning, and end at the end.

  The true place of Cotton Mather in our literary history is indicated when we say, that he was in prose writing, exactly what Nicholas Noyes was in poetry,—the last, the most vigorous, and, therefore, the most disagreeable representative of the Fantastic school in literature; and that, like Nicholas Noyes, he prolonged in New England the methods of that school even after his most cultivated contemporaries there had outgrown them, and had come to dislike them. The expulsion of the beautiful from thought, from sentiment, from language; a lawless and a merciless fury for the odd, the disorderly, the grotesque, the violent; strained analogies, unexpected images, pedantries, indelicacies, freaks of allusion, monstrosities of phrase;—these are the traits of Cotton Mather’s writing, even as they are the traits common to that perverse and detestable literary mood that held sway in different countries of Christendom during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its birthplace was Italy; New England was its grave; Cotton Mather was its last great apostle. His writings, in fact, are an immense reservoir of examples in Fantastic prose. Their most salient characteristic is pedantry,—a pedantry that is gigantic, stark, untempered, rejoicing in itself, unconscious of shame, filling all space in his books like an atmosphere. The mind of Cotton Mather was so possessed by the books he had read, that his most common thought had to force its way into utterance through dense hedges and jungles of quotation.

  Aptly styled by the historian of American literature “the literary behemoth” of New England…. Cotton Mather was a man of undoubted ability and vast erudition, and much of his work may still be read with curiosity and interest; but as a historian he was untrustworthy, and his style, overcharged and involved, was the worst, as it was the last, in the fantastic fashion of the seventeenth century.

  A very night-mare of pedantry.

  His work can be reckoned up, but the worker eludes comprehension. It is easier to misjudge than to judge him. His mind was pendulous, as one of his most discriminating biographers has observed, and though attached at its highest point to eternal justice, it was ever swaying over a wide range of notions and impulses. Oftentimes a riddle to himself, it is no wonder that the measuring of him must still be so largely conjectural with us.

  His “Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft,” written apparently with perfect honesty and published in 1789, served as a fan for the fire smouldering in Salem. Four years later, when men like Justice Sewall were bitterly repenting of their part in the terrible tragedy, Mather published his “Wonders of the Invisible World,” a cold-blooded account of the trials and executions at Salem, every word pregnant with the belief that devils and not human beings had been dealt with. That he was intensely honest in all this need not be said. His terrible convictions triumphing over his naturally kind heart would not have allowed him to hesitate even had the evidence involved his son Samuel.

  Though not a man of great original genius, his mind was massive and strong. He had the quality which some have held to be the essential thing in genius,—the power of indomitable and systematic industry.

  More precocious than his father, more prolific in books and pamphlets, he illustrates nevertheless the decline of the clergy both in outward power and in actual sanity and breadth of thought.

  The book [“Magnalia”] has some historical value, because the writer was so near to the events narrated; but it is careless, fantastic, and full of pedantry, the pages being crammed with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, learned digressions, and abominable puns. Yet the narrative portions sometimes have considerable interest, anecdotes frequently enliven an otherwise dull passage, and the whole book is impressive by its bulky strength. Cotton Mather’s contemporary reputation in America was very great, and it even extended to the Old World. He lives still, after a fashion, as the most conspicuous American writer of the seventeenth century. Yet on the whole his life was a failure, and has the pathos of failure, for he fought on the side of a doomed cause. Puritanism was passing away, never to return, and even Cotton Mather battled for it in vain.