me mpulse. His uncomproen arm in his public career." Steiety in 1884. S. U.

Davera, was born in the City of i. and died there October 24th, resident.

eve of San Juan de Letran in ank.

vrea (Soi), was professor of AdministraCommerce in 1868, and principal 42. Treetor of the Viscainas College speeter of the National Museum, wa and Mexico Bank, "Magistrate weasurer of the Mexican National

ers and books of a legal, literary, begraphical character by him ng articles in the "Illustrious re ext of "Mexican Antiquities," and Mocco" are worthy of mention. Seks American and foreign honored p. among them being this Society,

EARLY PRIVATE LIBRARIES IN NEW

ENGLAND.

BY FRANKLIN B. DEXTER.

Our notions of early New England and its intellectual and social condition are perhaps unduly affected by a conviction of the hardships and discords of frontier life; and it may be worth while to aim at some discovery of the countervailing elements; and, confining myself for the present to one particular, to ask what sort of literary baggage the original settlers brought with them, and what printed books their children and grand-children fed on. The inquiry might be variously undertaken; but I have preferred, as the most sure, if not the most picturesque way, a scrutiny of some of the more detailed inventories filed in the Probate Courts in connection with the settlement of estates.

In such a day of small things the majority of estates were so slender that it was natural in these to register somewhat minutely the several items; and thus we may be prepared to find in many instances a separate entry of every book included in an estate, with the value at which it was appraised, side by side with the like enumeration of household goods and farm utensils.

In most cases of course the inventory betrays an utter absence of books and book-learning. And equally, of course, where one book only is named, that is invariably in such language as "a Bible," "an old Bible," "a great Bible," or "a - small Bible." Occasionally the appraisers are more emphatically descriptive, as in the case of John Smith, a respectable miller of Providence, dying in 1682, where out of an estate of upwards of £90, the only literature made note of is "An old Bible, some lost and some of it torne," which is assessed at 9d.

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It should also be said that it is not uncommon to find two, three, four, five, six, or in one case (John Kirby, of Middletown, Connecticut, 1677) nine Bibles, enumerated as the property of an otherwise bookless testator.

Next in frequency to the Bible, in such unlettered estates, is "A Psalm book," by which I suppose is generally meant in the earliest time Ainsworth's metrical version, first printed at Amsterdam in 1612, which the Pilgrims brought with them, or after 1640 the "Bay Psalm Book," only a shade less barbarous in poetry and rhythm. But the ordinary run of single volumes, owned by a Puritan householder, apart from his Bible or Psalm-book, was almost inevitably some doctrinal or practical treatise in religion, by a popular author, such as Ainsworth, or Goodwin, or Perkins, or Preston, or Sibbes; but occasionally a Catechism, or more rarely a Concordance.

In our annals the seventeenth-century instances are very infrequent, in which a short list of books contains any sample of a different sort from these. Of such exceptional cases a fair instance is the inventory of Deacon George Clark, of Milford, Connecticut, in 1690, where "Record's Arithmaticke" appears; or that of Deacon George Bartlett, Lieutenant of the train-band of Guilford, who left in 1669 two books of "Marshall Discipline;" or, less remarkably perhaps, that of Dame Anna Palsgrave, of Roxbury, in the same year, a physician's widow, in which besides ordinary medical books is found Pliny's "Natural History," undoubtedly in Philemon Holland's noble translation; or, most outstanding of any case in my knowledge, that of William Harris, one of the strong men of early Rhode Island, compeer and rival of Roger Williams, whose scanty library of about 30 volumes in 1680 contained such unusual treasures as no less than eleven law-books, headed by Coke upon Littleton; "The London Despencettory," besides two other more commonplace medical works; a "Dixonarey;" Richard Norwood's Trigonometry; Gervase Markham's "Gentleman Jocky;" Lambarde's "Perambulation of Kent," the prototype and model of English county histories; Morton's "New England's Memorial," that foundation-stone of Pilgrim

history; a treatise on "The Effect of Warr;" with only a faint sprinkling of theology, and that enlivened by such a standard piece of literature as Sir Matthew Hale's "Contemplations, Moral and Divine."

But, most generally, in the ordinary lists of estates, the entry is apt to read, "Some old bookes;" or, with still more inglorious uncertainty, as in the case of Mr. John Wakeman, of New Haven, a layman of distinction, who died in 1661, leaving an estate of £300 (equivalent to perhaps six or seven thousand dollars with us), of which one item is "three shirts and some old Bookes, fifteen shillings;" or in that of Nathaniel Bowman, of Wethersfield, who possessed "Books, bottles and odd things," grouped in value at 12 shillings; or in that of Robert Day, of Hartford, progenitor of a notable line, who died in 1648, leaving in an estate of £143, "one pound in bookes, and sackes, and ladders;" or in that of Joseph Clark, of Windsor, 1655, who died possessed of goods valued at £44, in which one item ran, "For bacon, 1 muskett, and some bookes, £2. 12s."

When we come to details, we must remember at the outset that many of the largest libraries are not itemized, but simply entered in bulk; and passing on to some of the larger collections of which we have fuller particulars, I select for analysis ten inventories, of such as are most conveniently at hand. Of these it happens that a bare majority belong to the old Plymouth Colony,-which is not to be taken as a proof that that short-lived, unprosperous Pilgrim community was especially well supplied with cultivated men, for the exact opposite was the fact; but rather, as already suggested, that poverty of resources led to a more minute enumeration of such goods as they had, and has thus preserved more details than comparative abundance elsewhere deigned to furnish.

Of our ten specimen cases the first from the New Haven Colony is that of one Edward Tench, who died in 1640, a substantial layman, of whose history and occupation nothing distinctive is transmitted. Here, out of an estate of £400, one thirty-second part, £12, is accredited to books, 53 volumes of which are enumerated; and the contents of the

collection are sufficiently typical. There are six Bibles, namely, "1 Geneva Bible, with notes," "1 Bible, Roman letter," and 4 small ones; a Concordance; some 40 volumes of commentaries and practical religion-the writer chiefly represented being Dr. Richard Sibbes, an intimate friend of John Davenport, the testator's pastor; two or three medical books; one law-book, Dalton's "Country Justice;" one book of cookery and household economy; and two standard works in agriculture-Markham's "Husbandry" and Mascall's "Government of Cattle;" but of general literature, ancient or modern, and of the whole domain of science as then understood, absolutely nothing.

The only other collection of books in the New Haven Colony of any importance to be noted in this connection is the library of over 100 volumes belonging to the Rev. Samuel Eaton, colleague pastor of the New Haven Church from 1638 to 1640. This collection, left behind as a gift to New Haven when the owner returned to England, and catalogued while in the town's possession,1 is a representative working library of an educated theologian, to whom Latin was as familiar as English; but outside of theology and scholastic philosophy, it contains barely a dozen titles. Of these the more notable are a few classical authors, such as Plutarch, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Virgil, Ovid, and Justin, and two modern Latin classics, More's "Utopia" and the "Proverbs" of Erasmus; in history and geography, Raleigh's "History of the World," Foxe's "Book of Martyrs,' and Peter Heylyn's "Cosmography;" a couple of secondrate medical hand-books; Keckermann's Manuals of Mathematics and of Logic; and a book of Military Discipline. The nearest approach to literature is the Ovid, which was George Sandys's poetical version of the Metamorphoses; and the entire list of inventories entered in the New Haven Probate Court down to 1700 affords nothing to rival this one poetical attempt in the line of belles-lettres.

In the neighbor Colony of Connecticut I have found few detailed inventories, and so far as I can gather, the records

1New Haven Colony Hist. Society's Papers, VI, 301-13.