Mather Byles, the chief published poet of early eighteenth-century America, flourished during the high tide of provincial spirit in New England. He was a poet whose verse was influenced by English Augustan poetry and a moderate clergyman whose published sermons are notable more for polished prose than for theological thought. During the American Revolution, he was an unrepentant--but passive--Tory, and throughout his life, he maintained a well-deserved reputation as Boston's eccentric wit.

His father, Josias Byles, a Boston saddler, died when Mather Byles was little more than a year old. Since his mother, Elizabeth Mather Byles, the sister of Cotton Mather and daughter of Increase Mather, did not remarry, young Mather came strongly under the influence of those two great Boston ministers. He entered Harvard College in 1721 and managed to overcome serious illness in time to graduate in 1725.

Rather than going immediately into the ministry, as was expected...