The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes. Thomas Morton

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.