cyclopaedia Americana_, Eliot's _Biographical Dictionary_, and one of
the last numbers of the _Historic Genealogical Register_, all give that
title to Increase Mather, referring to a period anterior to its having
been conferred upon him. The title was given by the learned editor of
the _Massachusetts Historical Collections_, to Cotton Mather, in the
caption of his letter to Governor Dudley. In the _Mather Papers_,
letters written a score of years before that degree had been conferred
on him, are endorsed "Doctor Cotton Mather." If the high authority of
the _North American Review_ is to establish it, as a literary canon,
that titles are never to be given, except in relation to a period
subsequent to their conferment, writers must, hereafter, be very
careful, when cursorily alluding to anything in the earlier lives of the
Duke of Marlborough, Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington, Doctor
Franklin, Doctor Channing, or Doctor Priestley, to say, Mr. Churchill,
Mr. Stewart, Mr. Wellesley, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Channing, or Mr.
Priestley.

What renders this making of a great matter out of so trivial a point, by
our Reviewer, amusing, as well as ridiculous, is that he is the first to
break his own rule.

"'Tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard."

The critic is caught by his own captions criticism. In the passage,
pointing out the error in the name of Brattle, he calls him, "at the
time" he wrote the account of Salem witchcraft, "the Treasurer of
Harvard College." Brattle held not then, and never had held, that
honorable trust and title, though subsequently appointed to the office.

It is not probable that Cotton Mather will ever find a biographer more
kind and just than the late W. B. O. Peabody, whose mild and pleasant
humor was always kept under the sway of a sweet spirit of candor and
benevolence, and who has presented faithfully all the good points and
services of his subject--_Sparks's American Biography, Vol. VI._ But the
knight errant who has just centered the lists, brandishing his spear
against all who have uttered a lisp against Cotton Mather, goes out of
his way to strike at Doctor Peabody. He inserts, at the foot of one of
his pages, this sneering Note: "Mr. Peabody says; 'Little did the
venerable Doctor think,' etc. The venerable Doctor was twenty-nine years
of age! and was no Doctor at all."

Let us see how the ridicule of the Reviewer can be parried by his own
weapons. Indulg