ds like a bit of oriental fairy lore, and the great
Indian chief, seated upon his couch of skins, with his savage guard
around him, is brought as vividly before our eyes as the hero of
a romance. And so Smith's books stand for good literature, though
written only with the idea of familiarizing the people at home with
the condition of the new colony, and they make no mean showing as the
beginning of American letters.

In New England literature from the first partook inevitably of the
Puritan character. There were long journals of the pilgrim fathers,
books on books of sermons, and volume after volume of argument on the
burning religious questions that had been heard in England since
the first Puritan defied the king and openly declared for freedom of
conscience. Among the most celebrated of these old books is the _Bay
Psalm Book_ of 1640, in which the psalms of David were done into metre
for the use of congregations. This book, in which the beautiful Hebrew
poetry is tortured into the most abominable English, is a fair example
of the religious verse-making of the day.

A curious book was the first almanac, published at Cambridge in
1689, and which contained prognostications of the weather, dates of
historical events, general news of the world, and bits of poetry,
having also blank spaces for the use of the owner, who could either
utilize them for preserving his own verses, as Cotton Mather did, or
keep therein his accounts with his wig maker and hair-dresser, as did
that worthy Puritan Thomas Prince.

Perhaps the greatest poet of those early times was Anne Bradstreet,
who wrote her famous poems on the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and
Roman monarchies, and who was called the tenth muse by an admiring
public. These works are long and learned, but they show less the
poetic spirit of the age than do the short but pointed ballads that
sprang up from time to time and which indicated the popular feeling
over the events that were making the history of New England. These
ballads were on every conceivable subject, from the Day of Judgment
to the sale of a cow. The war between England and France for the
possession of Canada gave rise to many ditties the tunes of which
remained popular long afterward. The Indian wars also furnished
material for many. They were printed in almanacs, or loose sheets, and
sometimes not printed at all. They served as news-venders long before
the first newspaper was published (in 1690) and they expresse