Not that the New Canaan is in itself an obscene or even a coarse book. On the contrary, judged by the standard of its time, it is singularly the reverse. Indeed it is almost wholly free from either word or allusion which would offend the taste of the present day. Yet the writer of the New Canaan was none the less a scoffer, a man of undevout mind. As to the allegation that his devotion to the Church of England and its ritual was the cause of his arrest by the Plymouth authorities, the answer is obvious and decisive. Blackstone was an Episcopalian, and a devout one, retaining even in his wilderness home the canonical coat which told of his calling.[182] Maverick and Walford were Episcopalians; they lived and died such. The settlers at Wessagusset were Episcopalians. In the dwellings of all these the religious services of the times, customary among Episcopalians, were doubtless observed, for they were all religious men. Yet not one of them was ever in any way molested by the Plymouth people; but, on the contrary, they one and all received aid and encouragement from Plymouth. Episcopalians as they were, they all joined in dealing with Morton as a common enemy and a public danger; and such he unquestionably was. It was not, then, because he made use of the Common Prayer that he was first driven from the Massachusetts Bay; it was because he was a nuisance and a source of danger. That subsequently, and by the Massachusetts authorities, he was dealt with in a way at once high-handed and oppressive, has been sufficiently shown in these pages. Yet it is by no means clear that, under similar circumstances, he would not have been far more severely and summarily dealt with at a later period, when the dangers of a frontier life had brought into use an unwritten code, which evinced even a less regard for life than, in Morton’s case, the Puritans evinced for property.[183]
As a literary performance the New Canaan, it is unnecessary to say, has survived through no merits of its own. While it is, on the whole, a better written book than the Wonder-Working Providence, it is not so well written as Wood’s Prospect; and it cannot compare with what we have from the pens of Smith or Gorges,—much less from those of Winslow, Winthrop and, above all, Bradford. Indeed, it is amazing how a man who knew as much as Morton knew of events and places now full of interest, could have sat down to write about them at all, and then, after writing so much, have told so little. Rarely stating anything quite correctly,—the most careless and slipshod of authors,—he took a positive pleasure in concealing what he meant to say under a cloud of metaphor. Accordingly, when printed, the New Canaan fell still-born from the press, the only contemporaneous trace of it which can be found in English literature being Butler’s often quoted passage in Hudibras, in which the Wessagusset hanging is alluded to.[184] It is even open to question whether this reference was due to Butler’s having read the book. The passage referred to is in the second part of Hudibras, which was not published until 1664, twenty-seven years after the publication of the New Canaan. It is perfectly possible that Butler may have known Morton; for in 1637 the future author of Hudibras was already twenty-five years old, and Morton lingered about London for six or seven years after that. There are indications that he knew Ben Jonson;[185] and, indeed, it is scarcely possible that with his sense of humor and convivial tastes Morton should not often have met the poets and playwrights of the day at the Mermaid. If he and the author of Hudibras ever did chance to meet, they must have proved congenial spirits, for there is much that is Hudibrastic in the New Canaan. Not impossibly, therefore, the idea of a vicarious New England hanging dwelt for years in the brain of Butler, not as the reminiscence of a passage he had read in some forgotten book, but as a vague recollection of an amusing story which he had once heard Morton tell.
It is, indeed, the author’s sense of humor, just alluded to, which gives to the New Canaan its only real distinction among the early works relating to New England. In this respect it stands by itself. In all the rest of those works, one often meets with passages of simplicity, of pathos and of great descriptive power,—never with anything which was both meant to raise a smile, and does it. The writers seemed to have no sense of humor, no perception of the ludicrous. Bradford, for instance, as a passage “rather of mirth than of weight,” describes how he put a stop to the Christmas games at Plymouth in 1621. There is a grim solemnity in his very chuckle. Winthrop gives a long account of the penance of Captain John Underhill, as he stood upon a stool in the church, “without a band, in a foul linen cap pulled close to his eyes,” and “blubbering,” confessed his adultery with the cooper’s wife.[186] Yet he evidently recorded it with unbroken gravity. Then, in 1644, he mentions that “two of our ministers’ sons, being students in the college, robbed two dwelling-houses, in the night, of some 15 pounds. Being found out, they were ordered by the governors of the college to be there whipped, which was performed by the president himself—yet they were about twenty years of age.”[187] If Morton had recorded this incident, he could not have helped seeing a ludicrous side to it, and he would have expressed it in some humorous, or at least in some grotesque way. Winthrop saw the serious side of everything, and the serious side only. In this he was like all the rest. Such solemnity, such everlasting consciousness of responsibility to God and man, is grand and perhaps impressive; but it grows wearisome. It is pleasant to have it broken at last, even though that which breaks it is in some respects not to be commended. A touch of ribaldry becomes bearable. Among what are called Americana, therefore, the New Canaan is and will always remain a refreshing book. It is a connecting link. Poor as it may be, it is yet all we have to remind us that in literature, also, Bradford and Winthrop and Cotton were Englishmen of the time of Shakespeare and Jonson and Butler.
It remains only to speak of the bibliography of the New Canaan, which at one time excited some discussion, and of the present edition. Written before the close of 1635, the New Canaan was printed at Amsterdam in 1637. It has been reprinted but once,—by Force, in the second volume of his American Tracts. The present is, therefore, the second reprint, and the first annotated edition. For a number of years it was supposed that copies of the book were in existence with an alternative titlepage, bearing the imprint of Charles Greene, and the date of 1632.[188] This supposition was, however, very carefully examined into by Mr. Winsor in the Harvard University Literary Bulletins (Nos. 9 and 10, 1878-9, pp. 196, 244), and found to be partially, at least, groundless. It was due to the fact that Force made his reprint from a copy of the book in his collection, now in the Library of Congress. That copy lacked a portion or the whole of the titlepage; and the missing parts seem to have been supplied, without mention of the fact being made, from the entry of the book under 1632 in White Kennet’s Bibliothecæ Americanæ Primordia. Apparently the error originated in the following way. The New Canaan was entered for copyright in the Stationers’ Registers in London, November 18, 1633, in behalf of Charles Greene, the printer. There is no reason to suppose that it was then completed, as it may have been entered by its title alone. If it was, however, completed in part in 1633, the internal evidence is conclusive that it was both revised[189] and added to[190] as late as 1634; and, indeed, the Board of Lords Commissioners for regulating Plantations, to which it is formally dedicated, was not created until April 10th of that year. Greene did not print the book; though, as will presently be seen, a certain number of copies may possibly have been struck off for him with titlepages of their own. The entry in the Stationers’ Registers was, however, afterwards discovered, and seems then to have supplied by inference the date of publication, which could not be learned from certain copies, the titlepages to which were defective or wanting. The dates given in Lowndes’s Manual would seem to be simply incorrect.[191] Meanwhile, for reasons probably of economy, though notice of publication had been given in London, the book was actually printed in Holland, and the regular titlepage reads: “Printed at Amsterdam by Jacob Frederick Stam, in the year 1637.” There are copies, however, the titlepages of which read: “Printed for Charles Greene, and are sold in Pauls Churchyard,” no date being given.[192] It is not known that these copies differ in any other respect from those bearing the usual imprint. The conclusion, therefore, would seem to be that, as already stated, a number of copies may have been struck off for Greene with a distinct titlepage. Properly speaking, however, there seems to have been but one edition of the book. With the exception of the Force titlepage, which has been shown to be erroneous, there is no evidence of any copy being in existence bearing an earlier date than the usual one of Amsterdam, 1637.
Copies of the New Canaan are extremely rare. Savage, in his notes to Winthrop (vol. i. p. *34), said that he had then, before 1825, never heard of but one copy, “which was owned by his Excellency John Q. Adams.” It is from that copy that the present edition is printed. Mr. Adams purchased it while in Europe prior to the year 1801. It was that copy also which was temporarily deposited in the Boston Athenæum in 1810, as mentioned in the Monthly Anthology of that date (vol. viii. p. 420), referred to in the Harvard University Library Bulletin, (No. 9, p. 196). The Rev. George Whitney, in his History of Quincy written in 1826, says (p. 11) that another “copy was lately presented to the Adams Library of the town of Quincy by the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris.”[193] In addition to these, some dozen or twenty other copies in all are known to exist in various public and private collections in America and Europe, several of which are enumerated in the Literary Bulletin just referred to.
Very many of the errors both in typography and punctuation, with which the New Canaan abounds, are obviously due to the fact that it was printed in Amsterdam. The original manuscript it would seem was no more legible than the manuscript of that period, as it has come down to us, is usually found to be. At best it was not easy to decipher. The copy of the New Canaan was then put in the hands of a compositor imperfectly, if at all, acquainted with English; and, if the proof-sheets were ever corrected by any one, they certainly were not corrected by the author or by a proof-reader really familiar with his writing, or even with the tongue in which he wrote. Accordingly pen flourishes were mistaken for punctuation marks, and these were inserted without any regard to the context; familiar words appeared in unintelligible shapes;[194] small letters were mistaken for capitals, and capitals for small letters, and one letter was confounded with another. In addition to these numerous mistakes in deciphering and following the manuscript, ordinary typographical errors are not uncommon; though in this respect the New Canaan is less marked by blemishes than under the circumstances would naturally be supposed.
Neither is this explanation of the curiously bad press-work of the New Canaan a mere conjecture. One other composition of Morton’s has come down to us in the letter to Jeffreys, preserved by Winthrop.[195] Let any one compare this letter with a chapter from the New Canaan, and he will see at once that, while both are manifestly productions from the same pen, they have been preserved under wholly different circumstances. Take, for instance, the following identical passages,—the one from the New Canaan and the other from the letter to Jeffreys, and they will sufficiently illustrate this point.