ment, is certainly on the Protestant side. It is hard to imagine a Romanist, acquiring and retaining such an array of Protestant theology as is here, including some distinctly anti-Catholic works, as Thomas Sparke's "Answer to a Discourse against Heresies," and Calvin's "Institutes."

Last of all we come to the very remarkable private library of Elder William Brewster,10 who died in 1664, leaving an estate of only £150, of which nearly one-third, about £43, was in books, comprising over 400 volumes, one in every six of which was in the Latin tongue.

When we come to analyze this extraordinary collection, certainly appraised much below its value, we find that fourfifths come under the head of distinctively religious literature; while the next largest division, perhaps two dozen volumes, is that of history. Perhaps a dozen volumes-an altogether unprecedented experience in these summaries, may be credited to English literature; and the rest are scattered over the entire field of knowledge,-including, for instance, five or six books pertaining to the science of government, two on the art of Surveying, two in Medicine, and one (Dodoens' "Herbal") a masterpiece in Botany. There are Latin and Hebrew Grammars and lexicons; but very few texts or translations of classical authors, Lodge's Seneca being the chief example.

Among the more striking single items may be specified, Hakluyt's "Voyages," John Smith's "Description of New England," Rich's "Newes from Virginia," Camden's "Britain" (both in Latin and English), Brooke's "Catalogue of the English Nobility," and Machiavelli's "Prince" (in the Latin version).

Among the works to be included under English literature, there is none of the first rank, except Lord Bacon's "Advancement of Learning;" for poetry, two volumes of George Wither's must stand at the head; and I fear that there are specimens of no other author whose name is even faintly remembered at the present day, save Richard Brathwait's Description (in verse) of a Good Wife, and Thomas Dekker's

10 Mass. Hist. Society's Proceedings, 2d series, V, 38-81.

account of a magnificent entertainment given to James I. on his reception in London.

In studying these lists one thing perhaps worth notice is the frequent recurrence of certain volumes, which are not now remembered as anywise remarkable, but which seem to have enjoyed a reputation now outgrown. Such a book, for instance, is "The French Academy," a collection of essays translated in 1586 from Pierre de la Primaudaye, a copy of which is found in one after another of the libraries here chronicled. The title is borrowed from Plato's "Academy," and the book is concerned with the study, by way of dialogue, of manners or ethics. It is now hard to see whence this popular work, of which large editions must have been printed, so often does it still appear in second-hand catalogues, derived its charm.

Still more worth notice is the deduction already anticipated, of the absolute dearth in these lists of all that we have learned to regard as the glories of Elizabethan literature. A master in these studies has told us11 that "before 1700 there was not in Massachusetts, so far as is known, a copy of Shakspeare's or of Milton's poems;" it does not need so sweeping a statement to convince us of the narrow horizon and the limited interests of our forefathers of that generation. We should recognize, however, in partial explanation of this dearth, the inherited prejudice against the drama which made Shakespeare an impossible element in most of the collections we have noted; and the same Puritan temper counted much else in contemporary letters frivolous which later generations have agreed to honor.

Another fact to be remarked is the strange lack of books in some houses where better things might be expected. One such surprise is in the estate of Governor John Haynes, of Hartford, an early Connecticut leader in character and lineage as well as wealth, who left property amounting to upwards of £1400, but whose only literary baggage is included in the entry, "1 greate bible and 1 gilded looking glass, 16 shillings."

11 Mellen Chamberlain, Address at Dedication of Brooks Library, Brattleborough, 1887, 26.

It would be only fair to compare with these lists such libraries of the Southern Colonies as come within our knowledge. Such an one is the library left by Colonel Ralph Wormeley, of Middlesex County, at the mouth of the Rappahannock, in Virginia, once a student of Oriel College, Oxford, who died in 1701. About 400 volumes are mentioned in his inventory,12 and of these, as in our previous instances, theology is still the largest factor; but works in civil history and law form a very considerable part of the whole, and there is what would be a most unusual proportion for New England of books which may be classed as literature.

The English drama is represented, among other authors, by the Works of Sir William Davenant, by Beaumont and Fletcher's "Fifty Comedies and Tragedies," and by Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour;" English Poetry by Hudibras and the poems of Herbert, Quarles, and Waller; while among the many exponents of the best English prose are such masterpieces as Lord Bacon's "Essays," Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Fuller's "Worthies" and "Holy and Profane State," the "Golden Remains" of John Hales, Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," Howell's "Familiar Letters" and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying." The most striking items in foreign tongues are Montaigne's "Essays" and Don Quixote.

Another library of which we have particulars is one of over 200 volumes brought in 1635 by the Rev. John Goodborne,18 bound to Virginia, who died upon the voyage. In this case there is nothing to distinguish the Southern minister from his Northern brother. Roughly speaking, two-thirds of the whole are theological, and the rest is mainly given up to editions of classical writers or helps to classical study; but nothing can be detected of a literary flavor, except so far as that is represented in Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity,' and in versions of Plutarch's Lives or Virgil's Aeneid. Of smaller collections a typical one is that of Captain Arthur Spicer1 of Richmond county, Virginia, who died in 1699,

leaving about 125 books, valued at £10. Of these towards one-half are to be accredited to law,-theology following as a faint second. The only really noticeable items are Lord Bacon's "Advancement of Learning," Sir Thomas Browne's "Religio Medici," and the "Eikon Basilike" attributed to Charles the First.

The materials are too scanty for safe generalization, but so far as any can be suggested they imply, as we might expect, a freer commerce in the Southern Colonies with London bookshops than in our less fertile and less opulent New England, and a more catholic taste, unhampered by austere prejudices.

For New England the fact remains, and can hardly be stated too baldly, that the early settlers and their children lived without the inspiration of literature. It was "plain living and high thinking," and that their lives and their work were worthy of reverence is all the more to their credit.

NOTES ON WITCHCRAFT.

BY GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE.

We are all specialists now-a-days, I suppose. The good old times of the polymath and the Doctor Universalis are gone forever. Yet signs are not wanting that some of us are alive to the danger of building our party-walls too high. In one respect, at all events, there can be no doubt that the investigators of New England antiquities are aware of their peril, though they occasionally shut their eyes to it, I mean, the tendency to consider the Colonists as a peculiar people, separated from the Mother Country not only geographically, but also with regard to those currents of thought and feeling which are the most significant facts of history. True, there is more or less justification for that kind of study which looks at the annals of America as endsin-themselves; but such study is ticklish business, and it now and then distorts the perspective in a rather fantastic way. This is a rank truism. Still, commonplaces are occasionally steadying to the intellect, and Dr. Johnson— whose own truths have been characterized by a brilliant critic as "too true"-knew what he was about when he said that men usually need not so much to be informed as to be reminded.

The darkest page of New England history is, by common consent, that which is inscribed with the words Salem Witchcraft. The hand of the apologist trembles as it turns the leaf. The reactionary writer who prefers iconoclasm to hero-worship sharpens his pen and pours fresh gall into his inkpot when he comes to this sinister subject. Let us try to consider the matter, for a few minutes, unemotionally, and to that end let us pass in review a number of facts which may help us to look at the Witchcraft Delusion of