Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[15] poem, published about 1660, had, it has been claimed, “a popularity far exceeding that of any other work, in prose or verse, produced in America before the Revolution.” It had, indeed, far greater temporary fame than “Paradise lost,” which was written at about the same time by the veritable poet of Puritanism, John Milton.

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Puritan prose.

The literary instinct of New England Puritanism by no means exhausted itself in verse. In prose as well as in poetry the most effective work of the period was the product of Puritan zeal and Puritan narrowness. Two names stand out prominently as representative of this school of prose writing, mighty names in their day which have not yet ceased to echo in our memories: those of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards.

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Cotton Mather.

Cotton Mather was born in 1663, the third and greatest of the four Mathers who morally and intellectually dominated America for more than a century. From his cradle he was petted and flattered into what his best critic calls “a vast literary and religious coxcomb.” He was a Harvard freshman at eleven, a Master of Arts at eighteen.