e story of the publication of the Bay Psalm-Book
and of other psalm-books printed and used in New England, in "The
Sabbath in Puritan New England" and I need not dwell upon it here.

The first book or tract printed in Boston was in 1675--an execution
sermon, by Increase Mather, "The Wicked Man's Portion." The first book
printed in Connecticut was the "Saybrook Confession and Platform," in
1710. The first book of any considerable size printed in Rhode Island
was "An Apology for the True Christian Divinity," issued in 1729.

There were a number of books for the Indians in the Indian tongue which
no one but Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull could now read an he would; also a
few histories of the Indian wars; and Thomas Prince published by
subscription an exceedingly dull chronological History of New England.
As he began his history with year 1, first month and sixth day--and
Adam, he had tired out even pious Bostonians by the time he reached New
England; and subscriptions and subscribers languished till the book died
unmourned just when the year 1633 had been caught up with. The "Simple
Cobler of Agawam" made a vast sensation with his scurrilous bombs. There
were a few volumes of poems printed; one by "the Tenth Muse," Anne
Bradstreet, of whose songs pious and cautious John Norton said (and
evidently believed what he said too) that if Virgil could have read them
he would have condemned his own work to the flames. Michael
Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom," that epic of hell-fire and damnation which
fairly chokes us with its sulphurous fumes, was widely read and deeply
venerated; in fact it was a great popular success. Fifteen hundred
copies were sold in the first year, one copy to each thirty-five
inhabitants of New England--a proportion showing a commercial success
unsurpassed in modern times. It was printed also on broadsides, in a
cheap form, and hawked over the country by chapmen in order to further
spread its lurid and baleful shadow. The dull but sympathetic "Meat out
of the Eater" by the same author quickly went through five editions.
"New England's Crisis," "A Posie from Old Mr. Dods Garden," "A Looking
Glasse for New England," and "The Origin of the Whalebone Petticoat--a
Satyr," end the monotonous list of poetry. Fully three-quarters of the
entire number of publications proceeded from the prolific Mather stock,
and of course bore the pompous, verbose, Mather traits of authorship.
Cotton Mather had the felicity of having publish