With the coming of the present century we might suppose the last personal resentment of those who knew Cotton Mather had gone, and as an historical character it might well be claimed that a dispassionate judgment was due to him. When James Savage edited Winthrop’s journal, the public were told how Cotton Mather should be contemned; and the tale was not untruthful, but it was one-sided. Quincy in his _History of Harvard University_ could give no very laudatory estimate of the chronic and envious grumbler against the college.[330] When Dr. Chandler Robbins wrote the _History of the Second Church_ of Boston, he said all he could, and in a kindly spirit, to qualify the derogatory estimate then prevalent respecting his predecessor; and W. B. O. Peabody in his _Life of Cotton Mather_[331] tempered his judgment by saying, “There is danger lest in our disgust at his fanaticism and occasional folly we should deny him the credit which he actually deserves.” His professed defenders, too, lighten their approval with pointing out his defects. Thus does Samuel G. Drake in a rather feeble memoir in the _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._ (vol. vi.), and in the 1855 edition of the _Magnalia_. Dr. A. H. Quint in the _Congregational Quarterly_, 1859, and Dr. Henry M. Dexter in the _Memorial Hist. of Boston_, vol. ii., incline to the eulogistic side, but with some reservations. Mr. Samuel F. Haven in the _Report of the Amer. Antiq. Soc._, April, 1874, turned away the current of defamation which every revival of the Salem witchcraft question seems to guide against the young minister of that day. The estimates of Moses Coit Tyler in his _Hist. of Amer. Literature_ (vol. ii.), and John Langdon Sibley in his _Harvard Graduates_ (vol. iii.), show that the disgust, so sweeping fifty years ago, is still recognized amid all efforts to judge Mather lightly.[332] Mankind is tender in its judgment of the average man, when a difference of times exists. The historical sense, however, is rigid in its scrutiny of those who posture as index-fingers to their contemporaries; and it holds such men accountable to the judgments of all time. Great men separate the perennial and sweet in the traits of their epoch from the temporary and base,—a function Cotton Mather had no conception of. * * * * * The next general account of the New England colonies after the _Magnalia_, and covering the first thirty years of the present period, was Daniel Neal’s _History of New-England containing an account of the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the country to 1700_. _With a map, and an appendix containing their present charter, their ecclesiastical discipline, and their municipal-laws_. In 2 vols. (London. 1720.)[333]