IN THE YEAH 1613. 
7 
to the age in which they wrote, were by no means 
favorable to perspicuity. 
It is not surprising that the logical tastes and severe 
mental habits of John Locke should have caused him 
to be greatly disturbed by these qualities of matter and 
manner. 4 The “ Magnalia ” of our Cotton Mather is a 
fair example of this kind of literary production, with 
its parade of complimentary prefaces in prose and 
verse, and its clumsy attempts to maintain an air of 
sprightliness in the treatment of serious subjects. The 
effort to carry a cumbrous burden of learning with a 
light and lively step is of itself sufficiently unnatural 
and absurd. In Mathers case, it had unhappily the 
additional awkwardness of being out of season, like 
a discarded fashion, which will sometimes linger in 
secluded districts long after it has been supplanted 
in its original seat. 
There were, however, sufficient causes of obscurity 
inherent in the means of information on which Hakluyt 
and Purchas often relied, without reference to their 
mode of using them. The ancient records were vague 
and imperfect, and contemporary reports were apt to be 
both inexact and exaggerated ; longitudes were seldom 
noted or known; errors of latitude often arose from 
ignorance of the effect on the sun’s apparent position, 
produced by refraction in the Northern atmosphere ; 
even courses and distances were not stated with much 
4 “ Purchas, like Hakluyt, has thrown in all that came to hand to fill up so many 
volumes, and is excessively full of his own notions, and of mean quibbling and playing 
upon words; yet, for such as can make choice of the best, the collection is very 
valuable.” — Introductory Discourse , to Churchill's Collection of Voyages , by John Locke. 
