dicated him, without reserve,
from the charge of pedantry. This I cannot do now. Observation and
reflection have modified my views. He made a display, over all his
pages, of references and quotations from authors then, as now, rarely
read, and of anecdotes, biographical incidents, and critical comments
relating to scholars and eminent persons, of whom others have but little
information, and of many of whom but few have ever heard. This filled
his contemporaries with wonder; led to most extravagant statements, in
funeral discourses, by Benjamin Colman, Joshua Gee, and others; and made
the general impression that has come down to our day. Without detracting
from his learning, which was truly great, it cannot be denied that this
superfluous display of it subjects him, justly to the imputation of
pedantry. It may be affected where, unlike the case of Cotton Mather,
there is, in reality, no very extraordinary amount of learning. It is a
trick of authorship easily practised.

Any one reading Latin with facility, having a good memory, and keeping a
well-arranged scrap-book, needs less than half a dozen such books as the
following, to make a show of learning and to astonish the world by his
references and citations--the six folio volumes of Petavius, on Dogmatic
Theology, and his smaller work, _Rationarium Temporum_, a sort of
compendium or schedule of universal history; and a volume printed, in
the latter half of the seventeenth century, at Amsterdam, compiled by
Limborch, consisting of an extensive collection of letters to and from
the most eminent men of that and the preceding century, such as
Arminius, Vossius, Episcopius, Grotius, and many others, embracing a
vast variety of literary history, criticism, biography, theology,
philosophy, and ecclesiastical matters--I have before me the copy of
this work, owned by that prodigy of learning, Dr. Samuel Parr, who
pronounced it "a precious book;" and it may have contributed much to
give to his productions, that air of rare learning that astonished his
contemporaries. To complete the compendious apparatus, and give the
means of exhibiting any quantity of learning, in fields frequented by
few, the only other book needed is Melchior Adams's _Lives of Literati_,
including all most prominently connected with Divinity, Philosophy, and
the progress of learning and culture, during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, and down to its date, 1615. I have before me, the copy of
this last w