Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/163

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Early German Printing 575 Hemisphere that the Scriptures had been printed in a European language; the Bible of John Eliot (Cambridge, 1661-1663), had been a translation and adaptation in the language of one of the North American Indian tribes. Saur's Bible, containing 1272 pages, was printed in quarto form, on paper manufactured in Germantown and with German types imported from Frank- fort-on-the-Main. The second edition appeared in 1763, and a third in 1776. Saur also printed the New Testament and Psalter in separate editions, a large number of hymn-books for various sects, and some hundred and fifty books and pam- phlets on a variety of subjects. His most influential serial publication was his newspaper, Der Hoch-Deutsch Pennsylvan- ische Geschicht-Schreiber, oder Sammlung wichtiger Nachrichten aus dem Natur- und Kirchen-Reich, at first a monthly, finally a weekly. The changes in the title to Berichte, and to Sammlung "wahrscheinlicher" Nachrichten, bear witness to Saur's sense of responsibility and his love of truth. In 1 753 the paper had four thousand readers, spread over aU the areas of German settle- ments, from Pennsylvania to Georgia. The only worthy rival of Saur's Germantown newspaper was that published by Heniy MiUer in Philadelphia, Der Wochent- liche Philadelphische Staatsbote, founded in 1762 and continu- ing to 1779. Miller had had an exceptionally wide experience in Europe, having plied his trade in Hamburg, Basel, Paris, and London, and sojourned and laboured in numerous other European centres. Naturally his horizon was larger, and his attitude more objective and progressive than could be expected of the younger Saur, whose views were narrowed by provincial and sectarian conditions, in which he had spent aU his life. Nevertheless the personality of Saur, as it appears in his paper, was more impressive, his manner more intensely serious, his attitude toward the daily life and customs of the Pennsylvania German farmers more deeply sympathetic. Being the conserv- ative guardiaxi of their language and religion, he opposed the free pubHc schools as too powerful an assimilating agent; being a member of the non-resistant Dunker sect and the spokesman for the sectarian doctrines in general, he was, when the revo- lutionary agitation arose, a pacifist, though not a Tory. Henry Miller, on the other hand, was from the beginning an aggres- sive agitator for the cause of independence and armed resist-