[321] It was through his suggestion that Harvard College published in 1761 a collection of Greek, Latin, and English verses, commemorating George II. and congratulating George III., called Pietas et Gratulatio. Cf. Mem. Hist. Boston, ii. 431, and references.
[322] Vol. III. p. 345. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, iii. 79. Typographical errors in the book are very numerous, as Mather did not have a chance to correct the type. A page of “errata” was printed, but is found in few copies. Some copies have been completed by a fac-simile of the page, which Mr. Charles Deane has caused to be made. Some copies of the book exist on large paper. (Hist. Mag., ii. 123; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., ii. 37.) The Hartford ed. of 1820 was printed from a copy without this list of errata, and so preserves the original crop of errors. So did the edition of 1853; but the sheets of this, with a memoir by S. G. Drake added, were furnished with a new title in 1855, in which it is professed that the errors have been corrected; but the profession is said not to be true. (Hist. Mag., i. 29.) An exceptionally fine copy of the original edition, well bound, will bring $40 to $50. Holmes (Amer. Annals, 2d ed., i. 544) says of the Magnalia that its “author believed more and discriminated less than becomes a writer of history.”
[323] Mass. Hist. Coll., v. 200.
[324] Preface to Neal’s History, p. vii.
[325] Cf. Sibley, Harvard Graduates, for editions (iii. 151).
[326] See Vol. III. p. 345.
[327] Harvard Graduates, iii. 32.
[328] Sermon on Mather’s Death.
[329] Out of this book was published in London, in 1744, An abridgment of the life of the late Reverend and learned Dr. Cotton Mather, taken from the account of him published by his son, by David Jennings. Recommended by I. Watts, D. D.
[330] Grahame (i. 425), taking his cue from Quincy, says of Cotton Mather that “a strong and acute understanding, though united with real piety, was sometimes corrupted by a deep vein of passionate vanity and absurdity.”