Some lost works of Cotton Mather / by George Lyman Kittredge.
- George Lyman Kittredge
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Some lost works of Cotton Mather / by George Lyman Kittredge. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![Sloane mss. in the British Museum, and from this we can re- cover the exact dates of eight out of the eleven Curiosa, — Nos. 1-5 and 9-11.1 The tenth number interests us particu- 1 The transcript is in Sloane MS. 3340 (fols. 277-297). It is headed Curiosa Americana continued in Letters to y Learned & Famous John Woodward M.D. F.R.S. M. Profess, from Cotton Mather. In y* year 1716. Being made from the fair copies which Mather sent to Dr. Woodward, it of course preserves the dates of the several letters. The first of the series is labelled N° 1 and is dated Boston N. England July 2. 1716. The others are not numbered, but they are arranged in chronological order. Thus on fols. 277-2aoa we have the first four, dated respectively (at the end of each) July 2, 3, 4 and 5, 1716. The fifth letter is curtailed by a lacuna between fols. 292 and 293 of the manuscript. What re- mains of it stands on fols. 29ob-2p2, but the conclusion is lost, and with it the date, which, however, must have been July 6. After the lacuna comes the letter of July n, 1716 (on fol. 293a); the latter part alone is preserved, but this carries the date. Then come (on fols. 293D-297) two letters dated respectively July 12 and 13, 1716. That of July 13th is shown, by a passage which it contains, to have been the eleventh and last (Unto y* Decad of Letters wherewith I have now address'd you, I shall add this as a sort of a Postscript). We are able, therefore, to infer with certainty that the letters of July n and 12 stood ninth and tenth in the series, and that those lost in the lacuna were Nos. 6, 7 and 8 (July 7, 9 and 10). July 8 was Sunday, and a dies non. It appears that Mather followed the same procedure in composing this series of Curiosa that we know he adopted in composing the Series of 1712. In that year his Curiosa (preserved in the originals, all dated, in the Letter-Book of the Royal Society, M. 2. 21-33, and accessible to me in the Gay ms., fols. 1-150) were begun on Monday, November 17, and were continued, at the rate of one a day, until the series was completed on the last day of the fortnight (Saturday, the 29th). On the 23d (Sunday) no letter was written, but Mather made up for the omission by writing two on Monday, the 24th. Thus the series of 1712 consisted of thirteen numbers. That of July, 1716, as we have seen, contained but eleven. The reasons are, (1) that, in 1716, Mather did not make up for Sunday by doubling his Monday's task, and (2) that he wrote no letter on the last day of the fortnight, since Saturday, July 14, 1716, was (as we learn from his Diary, u. 360) sett apart for Supplications. If it were not for the Sloane transcript, we should not be able to decide upon the precise dates and the order of the Curiosa of July, 1716, since the M. H. S. draughts are not only undated, but are disarranged. For the convenience of future editors of Mather papers, I append a list of these Curiosa, giving the title of each as it stands (in Mather's hand) in the draught, and the date of each as it stands in the Sloane transcript (which does not give the titles): (1) Monstrous I mpr agnations, July 2; (2) A Monstrous Calf, July 3; (3) The Nidification of Pigeons, July 4; (4) A Triton, July 5; (5) /I Serpent securely handled, [July 6], conclusion with date lost in Sloane lacuna; (6) lost in lacuna [July 7]; (7) lost in lacuna [July 9]; (8) lost in lacuna [July 10]; (9) Surprizing Influences of the Moon, July 11; (10) Curiosities of the Small Pox, July 12; (11) The Fagiana, July 13- The letters missing in the Sloane transcript (Nos. 6, 7 and 8) are doubtless A Strange Mischief to the Eyes, Strength of Imagination, and The Stone Mistaken, but we cannot be sure of their order. All the titles of the 1714 and 1716 sets are included in the Catalogue of 1723, but that list does not enable us to date them or to sort them out with security.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21017633_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
