* few feet of the way, and has a southerly aspect. It has two full stories in front, but slopes to a single one in the rear. The rooms on both sides of the front door are high-studded, the floor having been sunk not long since. The doors are small, and very low. The walls of some of the rooms are wainscotted, while others are papered in the modern style. The frame of the house is very heavy, with massive old timbers; and an immense chimney, strongly buttressed on its four sides, runs up in the centre. On the lawn in front of the house are some beautiful elms, one of which is noted for its unusual size. The ground, falling abruptly from the easterly side of the house into a deep hollow where there is a little brook, rises again into a hill on the slope of which once stood the meeting-house, not a vestige of which is now left. Opposite its site is the old buryingground, an irregular lot, sparsely covered with ancient moss-grown stones, in all positions straggling, broken, and neglected, and overrun with tall grass and weeds. Some few, including several tombs with horizontal slabs, are more modern and better preserved. The Merrimac is but a mile and a quarter distant, and the Cochichewick is quite near. The views from the hill-tops in the vicinity are charming, though it is difficult to imagine the appearance the town presented when it was first settled, and there was an unbroken circle of woods in every direction. Now the visitor has to gaze on the smooth sides of the green hills, the country sparsely covered with houses, and the long line of the *This tree, more than twenty-five years ago, measured sixteen and a half feet in circumference, at one foot above the ground. Abbot's Andover, p. 195. A view of the house is given in the frontispiece. great mills of Lawrence in the distance, which last, more than any thing else, tell of the wonderful change wrought by two centuries of progress. Dr. Timothy Dwight, who had an opportunity (in 1810) to see this town before it lost so much of its native beauty, gives the following description of it: "North Andover is a very beautiful piece of ground. Its surface is elegantly undulating, and its soil in an eminent degree fertile. The meadows are numerous, large, and of the first quality. The groves, charmingly interspersed, are tall and thrifty. The landscape, every where varied, neat, and cheerful, is also, everywhere rich. "The Parish is a mere collection of plantations, without any thing like a village. 66 "Upon the whole, Andover is one of the best farming Towns in Eastern Massachusetts." * Mr. John Woodbridge was ordained pastor of the church at Andover in October, 1645. He was the husband of Mrs. Bradstreet's sister Mercy. He was born at Stanton, near Highworth, in Wiltshire, about 1613, of which parish his father was minister. He had been some time at Oxford, but was unable to complete the course there, owing to his own and his father's unwillingness that he should take the oath of conformity required of him. About the year 1634, he came to New England, with his uncle, Mr. Thomas Parker, and settled at Newbury. From that place, as we have seen, he moved to Andover. In 1647 he sailed for the old country, probably taking with him Travels. New Haven: 1821. Vol. i. p. 401. † Winthrop's New England, Vol. ii. pp. 252–3. the manuscript poems of our author. These he caused to be published in London in 1650, under the title of "The Tenth Mufe Lately fprung up in America. Or Severall Poems, compiled with great variety of VVit and Learning, full of delight. By a Gentlewoman in those parts." They were introduced to the reader in a short preface in which the author is described as "a VVoman, honoured, and esteemed where the lives, for her gracious demeanour, her eminent parts, her pious converfation, her courteous difpofition, her exact diligence in her place, and discreet mannaging of her family occafions." The poems were said to be "the fruit but of fome few houres, curtailed from her fleep, and other refreshments." He also adds: "I feare the displeasure of no perfon in the publishing of these Poems but the Authors, without whofe knowledge, and contrary to her expectation, I have prefumed to bring to publick view what the refolved fhould never in such a manner fee the Sun; but I found that divers had gotten some scattered papers, affected them wel, were likely to have fent forth broken pieces to the Authors prejudice, which I thought to prevent, as well as to pleasure those that earnestly defired the view of the whole.”† That Woodbridge was principally concerned in their publication appears yet more fully from a poetical epistle signed "I. W." and addressed "To my deare Sifter the Author of thefe Poems" which follows soon after.‡ Besides this, there are other commendatory verses, in which her poems are praised most extravagantly, by the Rev. N. *See page 79. First edition, pp. iii-iv. See pages 83-4. Ward, who had been one of her neighbors and her minister at Ipswich; by the Rev. Benjamin Woodbridge, and other friends and admirers of hers. There are some anagrams on her name, a poetical dedication by her of the whole to her father,* and a prologue. The first four pieces in the book, "The Foure Elements," "The Foure Humours in Man's Conftitution," "The Four Ages of Man," and "The Four Seafons of the Year," are really four parts of one entire poem. In this the sixteen personified characters - Fire, Earth, Water, Aire, Choler, Blood, Melancholy, Flegme, Childhood, Youth, Middle Age, Old Age, Spring, Summer, Autumne, and Winter-like the embodied abstractions of the old English moral plays, appear upon the stage, where each sets forth successively his various qualities, and boasts of the great power which he exerts for good or evil in the world. † Next comes the poem on "The Four Monarchies of the World," the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman, which takes up more than half of the whole volume. To these are added, "A Dialogue between Old *The date, March 20, 1642, attached to this Dedication in the second edition, may have led to a mistake as to the time when the first edition was published. Mr. Allibone, in his "Dictionary of Authors," and Mr. Griswold, in his "Female Poets of America," state it to have been in 1640; and in Appleton's "Cyclopædia of Biography" it is given as 1642. Both dates are wrong, the first edition being published in 1650. The Percy Society have reprinted, in the twenty-second volume of their "Publications," "one of the earliest moral plays in the English language known to exist," called "The Interlude of the Four Elements." Some of the "dyvers matters whiche be in this Interlude conteynyd," are "Of the sytuacyon of the iiij. elementes, that is to say, the Yerth, the Water, the Ayre, and Fyre, and of their qualytese and propertese, and of the generacyon and corrupcyon of thynges made of the commyxton of them." But none of the Elements themselves are players, and there is nothing contained in the play similar to what we find in Mrs. Bradstreet's verses. England and New, Concerning their present troubles. Anno 1642;" elegies upon Sir Philip Sidney and Queen Elizabeth; a poem "In honour of Du Bartas, 1641;” "David's Lamentation for Saul, and Jonathan,” versified from the second book of Samuel; and another, and the last, "Of the vanity of all worldly creatures.” Of the merit of these productions, I will say but little, leaving the reader to judge for himself on this point. I can hardly expect, however, that, after 'twice drinking the nectar of her lines,' he will "welter in delight,” like the enthusiastic President Rogers.* Yet I am confident, that, if it is denied that they evince much poetic genius, it must, at least, be acknowledged that they are remarkable, when the time, place, and circumstances under which they were composed, are taken into consideration. They are quaint and curious; they contain many beautiful and original ideas, not badly expressed; and they constitute a singular and valuable relic of the earliest literature of the country. It is important that the reader should bear in mind the peculiarly unpropitious circumstances under which they were written. No genial coterie of gifted minds was near to cheer and inspire her, no circle of wits to sharpen and brighten her faculties; she had no elegant surroundings of rich works of art to encourage and direct her tastes: but the country was a wilderness, and the people among whom she dwelt were the last in the world to stimulate or appreciate a poet. Notwithstanding her assurance to her father that "My goods are true (though poor) I love no stealth,” † Mrs. Bradstreet's longer poems appear to be, in many places, * See pages 93-96. + See page 98, last line. |