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.

13

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.

6

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. Johnsonwhose 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

1907.]

Notes on Witchcraft.

159

ative part of his argument, because, as he himself says, Glanvill "hath strongly proved the being of Witches. "'30

Dr. Meric Casaubon, Prebend of Canterbury, was not a Puritan; yet the second part of his Credulity and Incredulity (1668) contains a vigorous assertion of demonology and witch-lore, and was republished in 1672 under the alluring title, A Treatise Proving Spirits, Witches and Supernatural Operations by Pregnant Instances and Evidences.31

Ralph Cudworth, the antagonist of Hobbes, was not a Puritan. Yet in his great Intellectual System he declares for the existence of sorcery, and even admits a distinction between its higher operations—as in the coupyía of Apollonius of Tyana32—and the vulgar performances of everyday wizards.33 There is some reason, too, for supposing that Cudworth took part with Henry More in examining certain witches at Cambridge, and heard one of them try to recite the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, as she had offered to do "as an argument she was no witch.

30 P. 12.

1134

31 Meric Casaubon was born in 1599 and died in 1671. His learned, lively, and vastly entertaining work, A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme, as it is an Effect of Nature: but is mistaken by many for either Divine Inspiration, or Diabolicall Possession, appeared in 1655, and in a "Second edition: revised, and enlarged" in 1656. It shows an open mind and a temper rather skeptical than credulous. Passages of interest in our present discussion may be found on pp. 37-41, 44, 49, 94-95, 100, 118, 174 (Quakers), 286, of the second edition. Of particular significance is the Doctor's account of his visit to a man who was thought to be possessed but whom he believed to be suffering from some bodily distemper (pp. 97 ff.). Casaubon's treatise (in two parts) Of Credulity and Incredulity, in Things Natural, Civil, and Divine, came out in 1668, and was reissued, with a new title-page (as above), in 1672. A third part, Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Divine and Spiritual, appeared in 1670. Webster's assault upon Casaubon in his Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft was made in apparent ignorance of the fact that the venerable scholar had been dead for some years (see p. 169, below).

32

g Compare Reginald Scot's chapter "Of Theurgie, with a Confutation thereof" giscoverie of Witchcraft, book xv, chap. 42, 1584, p. 466, ed. 1665, p. 280). See also Henry Hallywell, Melampronoea: or A Discourse of the Polity and Kingdom of Darkness. Together with a Solution of the Chiefest Objections brought against the Being of Witches, 1681, pp. 50-51.

33 Cap. iv, §15, ed. Mosheim, 1773, I, 395-396.

34 Sadducismus Triumphatus, ed. 1726, p. 336; see James Crossley's Introduction to Potts, Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster, reprinted from the Edition of 1613 (Chetham Society, 1845), p. vi, note 2. This experiment was twice tried as late as 1712, in the case of Jane Wenham, by the Rev. Mr. Strutt, once in the presence of Sir Henry Chauncy, and again in the presence of the Rev. Mr. GardiIts ill success is recorded by a third Anglican clergyman,-Mr. Francis Bragge (A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft, Practis'd by Jane Wenham, London, 1712, pp. 11, 15).

ner.