The first book of original poems was by a woman, Mrs. Anne Bradstreet. The third edition came out in Boston in 1758. Besides this intellectual progeny, she had eight children; and to these latter she thus alludes in the printed issue:—
“I had eight birds hatch’t in the nest;
Four cocks there were and hens the rest;
I nurst them up with pains and care,
Nor cost nor labor did I spare,
Till at last they felt their wing,
Mounted the trees and learned to sing.”
During the first half of the century, ecclesiastical and religious writings in all departments naturally took the lead, as in these American mind was left free. In this field roamed the two Mathers, father and son,—Increase, the first, but unfortunately not the last, who was created a D. D.; and Cotton, who committed nearly three hundred and eighty-three sins in as many books, with which he loaded down the world, the greatest like its title, Magnalia. He made a partial atonement in a few good treatises. In the same department wrought largely, and with a “Freedom of the Will,” Jonathan Edwards, of whom Dugald Stewart said, “that in logical acuteness and subtilty he did not yield to any disputant bred in the universities of Europe”; Samuel Johnson, the first president of Columbia College, and the father of that highly respectable family, the American Protestant Episcopal Church; Ezra Stiles, who delivered orations in good Latin, and found audiences to listen to them; Timothy Dwight, his successor as president of Yale College, whose “System of Theology” still claims attention, even among the acute researches of the bibliologists of our time, and whose four volumes of “Travels in New England and New York” give rare reading on express trains; Samuel Hopkins, Joseph Bellamy, William White, the first American bishop of the Episcopal Church, and whose sweet spirit perfumed even his controversial writings; Edward Payson, Joseph S. Buckminster, and many others;—of but few of whom it could be said, “that their works do follow them”—to silence; for the churches still hold them in living honor.
Political writings divided with the theological the public mind as soon as government became domesticated. In books like “The Federalist,” “Notes on Virginia,” “Discourses on Davila”; in speeches embedding constitutional argument; in treatises, tracts, and in all forms and ways known to type, many of the wise men of the Revolution, with James Otis, Josiah Quincy, Jeremy Belknap, David Ramsey, and others, spake out in varied logic, historical research, wit, satire, and in captivating dialogue, discussing principles of government, political ethics, and social economy.
In the natural sciences, Benjamin Franklin, David Rittenhouse, Benjamin Rush, Samuel L. Mitchell, and Count Rumford; in natural history, Cadwallader Golden, Paul Dudley, John Bartram, and Alexander Wilson; in history, William Stith, Abiel Holmes; among the singing birds, in the same tree with Anne Bradstreet but on higher branches, Philip Freneau, John Trumbull, the author of “McFingal,” Joel Barlow, who got up “Hasty Pudding,” and survived “The Columbiad,” and Joseph Hopkinson, who salutes us evermore in “Hail Columbia”; and finally, in fiction, standing by himself, Charles Brockden Brown, whose nine novels in paper covers delighted our great-grandmothers;—all these were quite equal to the instruction of their various audiences, and might, had they lived long enough, written something—perhaps several novels each—for the “New York Ledger.”