them,-Helluo librorum he is termed in his epitaph,and he left at his death a small but choice collection of some sixty volumes. She was acquainted with at least three books among the most precious in the whole field of English literature, the " Faërie Queene," the "Arcadia," and North's "Plutarch."1 But though she refers to Spenser, there is no sign in her verses that she really cared for his poem. Her master in poetry was Du Bartas, in "silver-tongued" Sylvester's translation. She refers often to the delight which she took in his poetry, and to its having been the inspir 1 Mr. Ellis has given in his Introduction a list of the authors to whom Mrs. Bradstreet refers, or whose works she had probably read. In a note he points out a curious resemblance in one of her verses to words in "Hamlet." It is in the first edition of her poems and was changed in the second, and it occurs near the end of the second of the "Four Ages of Man." The verse stood: "Ceased [seiz'd] by the gripes of Serjeant Death's arrests," which certainly seems to hark back to Hamlet's "This fell sergeant, death, Is strict in his arrest," v. ii. 347-8. It would be of interest to know that Mrs. Bradstreet had read the play. There is, I believe, no evidence that there was a copy of Shakespeare's plays in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century. ation of her muse. She begins a copy of verses in his honor, with the declaration, "Among the happy wits this age hath shown, Great, dear, sweet Bartas thou art matchless and she proceeds to extol him in terms which at last lead her to exclaim, "Pardon if I adore, when I admire." The Reverend Mr. Ward was not far wrong when, in his commendatory verses, he says "The Auth'ress was a right Du Bartas Girle." The immense vogue and influence of Du Bartas's poems in France and in England for more than half a century, contrasted with the oblivion into which they have fallen in both countries, affords an illustration not so much of the mutability of taste, as of the fact that circumstances other than its purely poetic merit may sometimes secure for verse an immediate 1 The chief poem of Du Bartas, "The Week, or the Creation of the World," was first published between 1570 and 1580, the exact date is uncertain. popularity so genuine and so wide-spread as to give a delusive promise of lasting fame. Wordsworth in the essay supplementary to his famous Preface of 1815 asks: Who is there that can now en dure to read The Creation' of Du Bartas? Yet all Europe once resounded with his praise; he was caressed by kings; and when his poem was translated into our language, The Faery Queen' faded before it." Mr. Lowell, I think, goes too far when, in his essay on Spenser, he declares Wordsworth's statement to be "wholly unfounded." For the moment, and with a large class, the poem of Du Bartas had an acceptance far beyond that of Spenser, but Mr. Lowell is right when he adds that the vitality of a poem is to be measured by the kind as well as the amount of influence it exerts." Spenser himself in the "L'Envoy" to his translation of Du Bellay's "Ruines of Rome" speaks of the "heavenly sense" of Du Bartas, and uniting him with Du Bellay, exclaims: "Live happie Spirits, th' honour of your name, And fill the world with never dying fame!" Du Bartas's Creation" retained its popularity. well through the whole Puritan period. In his dedi cation of the Spanish Friar," in 1681, Dryden says: "I remember when I was a boy I thought inimitable Spenser a mean poet in comparison of Sylvester's Du Bartas, and was rapt into an extasy when I read these lines: Now when the winter's keener breath began To crystallize the Baltic ocean, To glaze the lakes, to bridle up the floods, I am much deceived if this be not abominable fustian.” And in his "Art of Poetry," published in 1683, he again refers to the favorite of his callow days, and, scoffing at him with a lively quip, says: "Thus in times past Dubartas vainly writ, And following Moses o'er the sandy plain, And again in the same poem, warning against bombast and fustian, he cites afresh the verses which had once charmed him, and bids the poets "Not with Du Bartas bridle up the floods, And perriwig with wool the baldpate woods.' "'1 Even in our own century Du Bartas has not been without admirers who have tried to restore credit to his work, and, surprising as it may seem, chief among them is Goethe. He rebukes the French for their contempt and neglect of "The Creation," and declares that it possesses genuine elements of poetry, though strangely mingled. The author, he says, deals with weighty and important themes which afford him opportunity to display a naïve view of the world, and to exhibit entertainingly, in description, narrative, and didactic discourse, an immense variety of knowledge.2 In this characterization of the poem Goethe undoubtedly accounts in part for its popularity in the early seventeenth century. Even Sainte-Beuve, who contests Goethe's judgment, admits that Du Bartas had a certain Baotian fertility, and that fine fragments may be detached from the mass of his dispropor 1 These lines which ran in Dryden's head are to be found in the Fourth Book of the First Day of the Second Week of the Creation. His first citation of them is wrong in substituting "snow" for "wool." 2 See the Notes appended to "Rameau's Neffe." B |