Any one reading Latin with facility, having a good memory, and keeping a well-arranged scrap-book, needs less than half a dozen such books as the following, to make a show of learning and to astonish the world by his references and citations—the six folio volumes of Petavius, on Dogmatic Theology, and his smaller work, Rationarium Temporum, a sort of compendium or schedule of universal history; and a volume printed, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, at Amsterdam, compiled by Limborch, consisting of an extensive collection of letters to and from the most eminent men of that and the preceding century, such as Arminius, Vossius, Episcopius, Grotius, and many others, embracing a vast variety of literary history, criticism, biography, theology, philosophy, and ecclesiastical matters—I have before me the copy of this work, owned by that prodigy of learning, Dr. Samuel Parr, who pronounced it "a precious book;" and it may have contributed much to give to his productions, that air of rare learning that astonished his contemporaries. To complete the compendious apparatus, and give the means of exhibiting any quantity of learning, in fields frequented by few, the only other book needed is Melchior Adams's Lives of Literati, including all most prominently connected with Divinity, Philosophy, and the progress of learning and culture, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and down to its date, 1615. I have before me, the copy of this last work, owned by Richard Mather, and probably brought over with him, in his perilous voyage, in 1635. It was, successively, in the libraries of his son, Increase, and his grandson, Cotton Mather. At a corner of one of the blank leaves, it is noted, apparently in the hand of Increase Mather: "began Mar. 1, finished April 30, 1676." According to the popular tradition, Cotton would have read it, in a day or two. It contains interesting items of all sorts—personal anecdotes, critical comments, and striking passages of the lives and writings of more than one hundred and fifty distinguished men, such as Erasmus, Fabricius, Faustus, Cranmer, Tremellius, Peter Martyr, Beza, and John Knox. Whether Mather had access to either of the above-named works, except the last, is uncertain; but, as his library was very extensive, he sparing no pains nor expense in furnishing it, and these books were severally then in print and precisely of the kind to attract him and suit his fancy, it is not unlikely that he had them all. They would have placed in easy reach, much of the mass of amazing erudition with which he "entertained" his readers and hearers.
Cotton Mather died on the thirteenth of February, 1728, at the close of his sixty-fifth year.
Thirty-six years had elapsed since the fatal imbroglio of Salem witchcraft. He had probably long been convinced that it was vain to attempt to shake the general conviction, expressed by Calef, that he had been "the most active and forward of any Minister in the country in those matters," and acquiesced in the general disposition to let that matter rest. It must be pleasing to all, to think that his very last years were freed from the influences that had destroyed the peace of his life and left such a shade over his name. Having met with nothing but disaster from attempting to manage the visible as well as the invisible world, he probably left them both in the hands of Providence; and experienced, as he had never done, a brief period of tranquillity, before finally leaving the scene. His aspiration to control the Province had ceased. The object of his life-long pursuit, the Presidency of the College, was forever baffled. Nothing but mischief and misery to himself and others had followed his attempt to lead the great combat against the Devil and his hosts. It had fired his early zeal and ambition; but that fire was extinguished. The two ties, which more than all others, had bound him, by his good affections and his unhappy passions, to what was going on around him, were severed, nearly at the same time, by the death of his father, in 1723, and of his great and successful rival, Leverett, in 1724. Severe domestic trials and bereavements completed the work of weaning him from the world; and it is stated that, in his very last years, the resentments of his life were buried and the ties of broken friendships restored. The pleasantest intercourse took place between him and Benjamin Colman; men of all parties sought his company and listened to the conversation, which was always one of his shining gifts; he had written kindly about Dudley; and his end was as peaceful as his whole life would have been, but for the malign influences I have endeavored to describe, leading him to the errors and wrongs which, while faithful history records them, men must regard with considerate candor, as God will with infinite mercy.
It is a curious circumstance, that the two great public funerals, in those early times, of which we have any particular accounts left, were of the men who, in life, had been so bitterly opposed to each other. When Leverett was buried, the cavalcade, official bodies, students, and people, "were fain to proceed near as far as Hastings' before they returned," so great was the length of the procession: the funeral of Mather was attended by the greatest concourse that had ever been witnessed in Boston.
XIX.
ROBERT CALEF'S WRITINGS AND CHARACTER.
I approach the close of this protracted discussion with what has been purposely reserved. The article in the North American Review rests, throughout, upon a repudiation of the authority of Robert Calef. Its writer says, "his faculties appear to us to have been of an inferior order." "He had a very feeble conception of what credible testimony is." "If he had not intentionally lied, he had a very imperfect appreciation of truth." He speaks of "Calef's disqualifications as a witness." He seeks to discredit him, by suggesting the idea that, in his original movements against Mather, he was instigated by pre-existing enmity—"Robert Calef, between whom and Mr. Mather a personal quarrel existed." "His personal enemy, Calef."
There is no evidence of any difficulty, nor of any thing that can be called "enmity," between these two persons, prior to their dealings with each other, in the Margaret Rule case, commencing on the thirteenth of September, 1693. Mather himself states, in his Diary, that the enmity between them arose out of Calef's opposition to his, Mather's, views relating to the "existence and influences of the invisible world." So far as we have any knowledge, their acquaintance began at the date just mentioned. The suggestion of pre-existing enmity, therefore, gives an unfair and unjust impression.
Robert Calef was a native of England, a young man, residing, first in Roxbury, and afterwards at Boston. He was reputed a person of good sense; and, from the manner in which Mather alludes to him, in one instance, of considerable means: he had, probably, been prosperous in his business, which was that of a merchant. Not a syllable is on record against his character, outside of his controversy with the Mathers; all that is known of him, on the contrary, indicates that he was an honorable and excellent person. He enjoyed the confidence of the people; and was called to municipal trusts, for which only reliable, discreet, vigilant, and honest citizens were selected, receiving the thanks of the Town for his services, as Overseer of the Poor. As he encountered the madness and violence of the people, when they were led by Cotton Mather, in the witchcraft delusion, it is a singular circumstance, constituting an honorable distinction, in which they shared, that, in a later period of their lives, they stood, shoulder to shoulder, breasting bravely together, another storm of popular fanaticism, by publicly favoring inoculation for the small-pox. He offered several of his children to be treated, at the hands of Dr. Boylston, in 1721. His family continued to bear up the respectability of the name, and is honorably mentioned in the municipal records. A vessel, named London, was a regular Packet-ship, between that port and Boston, and probably one of the largest class then built in America. She was commanded by "Robert Calef;" and, in the Boston Evening Post, of the second of May, 1774, "Dr. Calef of Ipswich" is mentioned among the passengers just arrived in her. Under his own, and other names, the descendants of the family of Calef are probably as numerous and respectable as those of the Mathers; and on that, as all other higher accounts, there is an equal demand for justice to their respective ancestors.