This was last progress of this mighty Queen,
Who in her Country never more was feen.
The Poets feign'd her turn'd into a Dove,
Leaving the world to Venus foar'd above:
Which made the Affyrians many a day,
A Dove within their Enfigns to display:

Now, Raleigh says:

"But of what multitude soever the army of Semiramis consisted, the same being broken and overthrown by Staurobates upon the banks of Indus, canticum cantavit extremum, she sang her last song; and as antiquity hath feigned) was changed by the gods into a dove; (the bird of Venus ;) whence it came that the Babylonians gave a dove in their ensigns.Ӡ

She says of Xerxes :

"He with his Crown receives a double war,
The Egyptians to reduce, and Greece to marr,
The first begun, and finish'd in such haste,
None write by whom, nor how, 'twas over past.
But for the laft, he made fuch preparation,
As if to duft, he meant, to grinde that nation;
Yet all his men, and Inftruments of flaughter,
Produced but derifion and laughter."

Raleigh has the same in these words:

"Xerxes received from his father, as hereditary, a double war, one to be made against the Egyptians, which he finished so speedily that there is nothing remaining in writing how the same was performed; the other against the Grecians, of which it is hard to judge whether the preparations were more terrible, or the success, ridiculous." S

*See page 186.

"History of the World," Bk. i. ch. 12, sec. 4.

See page 223.

§ "History of the World," Bk. iii. ch. 6, sec. 1.

Speaking of the state of things after the death of Alexander the Great, she uses the following very apt illustration, which, however, she found in Raleigh :

"Great Alexander dead, his Armyes left,

Like to that Giant of his Eye bereft;
When of his monftrous bulk it was the guide,
His matchlefs force no creature could abide.
But by Uliffes having loft his fight,

All men began ftreight to contemn his might;

For aiming ftill amifs, his dreadful blows

Did harm himself, but never reacht his Foes."*

Now, Raleigh:

"The death of Alexander left his army (as Demades the Athenian then compared it) in such case, as was that monstrous giant Polyphemus, having lost his only eye. For that which is reported in fables of that great Cyclops might well be verified of the Macedonians: their force was intolerable, but for want of good guidance uneffectual, and harmful chiefly to themselves." +

After the publication of the first edition of her "Poems," Mrs. Bradstreet appears to have read Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, and to have incorporated some of the facts which she thus obtained into the second edition. She does not mention Plutarch in the first edition; while, in the second, she refers to him twice by name. I will give a single instance of the way in which she made these additions. In place of the lines in the first edition, already quoted,

"Alexander now no longer could containe,

But inftantly commands him to be flaine;".

* See page 289.

"History of the World," Bk. iv. ch. 3, sec. I.

are substituted in the second, the following:

"Which Alexanders wrath incens'd fo high,

Nought but his life for this could fatisfie;

From one stood by he fnacht a partizan,

And in a rage him through the body ran."*

These last two lines must have come from Plutarch.

"Then Alexander taking a partisan from one of his guard, as Clitus was coming towards him, and had lift vp the hanging before the doore, he ranne him through the body, fo that Clitus fell to the ground, and fetching one grone, died presently.Ӡ

So, notwithstanding her allusion to Galen and Hippocrates, it is almost certain that she obtained her wonderfully exact description of human anatomy from the "curious learned Crooke,"§ whose "Description of the Body of Man" had gone through three editions in London in 1631.

Mrs. Bradstreet's familiarity with the Bible is apparent all through her writings. There are traces of her having used the Genevan Version, which, for many reasons, was more acceptable to the Puritans than the authorized one of King James.

* See pages 283 and 284, note i, and page xlvii. ·

† North's Plutarch. London: 1631. p. 700.

66

See page 143.

§ See page 144. Probably Helkiah Crooke, M.D., of whose works Watt has the following in his "Bibliotheca Britannica," Vol. i. p. 272, w. :"Mikроkоσμоyрapía, or a Description of the Body of Man, collected and translated out of all the best Authors of Anatomy, especially out of Gaspar, Bauchinus, and A. Sourentius. Lond. 1615, 1618, 1631. fol. A large work, illustrated with the plates of Vesalius and others. — An Explanation of the fashion and use of three and fifty Instruments of Chirurgery. Lond. 1631, fol. The same Lond. 1634, 8vo. Taken chiefly from Parey." [Ambrose Paré, a French surgeon.]

Du Bartas, as translated by Joshua Sylvester, was her favorite author. However distasteful his writings may be to readers of the present day, they were then exceedingly popular, and we are told that Milton not only found pleasure in reading them, but was to some extent indebted to them.* Mrs. Bradstreet, besides her special tribute to his memory, constantly displays her admiration for Du Bartas. This liking was known to her friends; and in her dedication of her "Poems" to her father, she felt it necessary expressly to disclaim having copied from him at all. How much she really owed to him it is hard to tell. The general idea of her longer poems may have been suggested by reading his works, and her style and manner may have been affected in the same way.†

* Craik's English Literature, Vol. i. p. 569, and note 2. Bohn's Bibliographer's Manual, sub Du Bartas.

+ Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas, born of noble parents near Auch about 1544, and brought up to the profession of war, distinguished himself as a soldier and a negotiator. Holding the same religious views as Henry IV. before he became King of France, and attached to the person of that prince in the capacity of gentleman in ordinary of his bed-chamber, he was successfully employed by him on missions to Denmark, Scotland, and England. He was at the battle of Ivry, and celebrated in song the victory which he had helped to gain. He died four months after, in July, 1590, at the age of forty-six, in consequence of some wounds which had been badly healed. He passed all the leisure which his duties left him at his château du Bartas. It was there that he composed his long and numerous poems: La Première Semaine, that is, the Creation in seven days; L'Uranie, Judith, Le Triomphe de la Foi, Les Neuf Muses, and La Seconde Semaine. The last work is very strangely entitled, as it comprehends a great part of the Old Testament histories. His principal poem, La Semaine, went through more than thirty editions in less than six years, and was translated into Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, German, and Dutch. MICHAUD; BIOGRAPHIE UNIVERSELLE, sub Bartas.

Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas's works was first published in a

Sir Philip Sidney was also a great favorite with Mrs. Bradstreet, but she was not able to praise his works in such unqualified terms as she does those of Du Bartas. Her criticisms are quite entertaining. She refers to the "Historie of Great Britaine" by Speed, and to Camden's "Annales,"* as if she had read them, and she probably derived some of the facts used in the "Dialogue between Old-England and New" from the former. She was not ignorant of the works of Spenser,† but she does not discuss their merits.

The earliest date attached to any of Mrs. Bradstreet's writings is that of a posthumous poem entitled "Upon a Fit of Sickness, Anno. 1632. Ætatis fuæ, 19.”‡ This was written at a time of great despondency, and certainly does not show the signs of much poetic genius. The elegy upon Sir Philip Sidney bears date 1638; the poem in honor of Du Bartas, 1641; the Dialogue between OldEngland and New, 1642; the Dedication of the "Poems" to her father (in the second edition), March 20, 1642; and the poem in honor of Queen Elizabeth, 1643. All the "Poems," in the first edition at least, were thus apparently written by the time she was thirty years old.

Of her mother, who died on the 27th of December, 1643, scarcely any thing is known, not even her maiden

quarto volume in London in 1605, the parts of which it was composed having previously appeared separately. The title of the edition of 1621 was "DU BARTAS. HIS DIUINE WEEKES AND WORKES, with a Compleate Collection of all the other most delightful Workes, Translated and Written by yt famous Philomusus Josvah Sylvester, Gent." Others had also competed with Sylvester in this work.

* See page 358.

See page 391.

See pages 348 and 358.