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good lines, which is not a bad proportion, considering the usual character of such performances, in which a single excellent verse would be surprising; but to my regret I am obliged to acknowledge that these two creditable lines do not belong to the professed author. They are these:

"Like a most servile flatterer he 'll show

Though he write truth and make the subject you."

Now it happens that Francis Beaumont, in the poem addressed by him to the Countess of Rutland, the only daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, had written:

Although I know whate'er my verses be,
They will like the most servile flattery shew,
If I write truth and make the subject you."

It amused me to find that the young graduate, then engaged in his theological studies, had had recourse to the poems of the playwright, who was not held in good esteem by the devout of those days.

But even Mrs. Bradstreet's repute as a poet, great as it was in her own little circle, hardly stands the

long interval, in regard to her whose praises he had sung, and that the act would not be without a certain piety toward my ancestor. And, further, I reflected, that as I could trace my descent in one line directly from Governor Thomas Dudley, the father of Mrs. Bradstreet, and as the portraits of her brother, Governor Joseph Dudley, and his wife, looked down on me every day while I sat at breakfast and dinner, she, as my aunt many times removed, might not unjustly have a claim upon me for such token of respect to her memory as had been asked of me. Moved by these pious considerations, I revised my decision.

I am sorry that I cannot speak with admiration of my venerable ancestor Mr. John Norton's verses, but their defects may, in part at least, be excused by his youth at the time when they were written. Mrs. Bradstreet died in 1672, two hundred and twenty-five years ago, and if the Elegy were written at that time (it first appeared in the second edition of her poems in 1678) Mr. Norton was in his twenty-second year, and had graduated at Harvard the year before. His verses are artificial in sentiment, extravagant in expression, and cumbered with pedantry. The Elegy contains, indeed, two tolerably

[graphic]

CHIEF JUSTICE JOSEPH DUDLEY. Half-brother of Anne (Dudley) Bradstreet. From the original painting owned by

Professor Charles Eliot Norton, Cambridge, Mass.

good lines, which is not a bad proportion, considering the usual character of such performances, in which a single excellent verse would be surprising; but to my regret I am obliged to acknowledge that these two creditable lines do not belong to the professed author. They are these:

"Like a most servile flatterer he'll show

Though he write truth and make the subject you."

Now it happens that Francis Beaumont, in the poem addressed by him to the Countess of Rutland, the only daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, had written:

66

Although I know whate'er my verses be,

They will like the most servile flattery shew,
If I write truth and make the subject you."

It amused me to find that the young graduate, then engaged in his theological studies, had had recourse to the poems of the playwright, who was not held in good esteem by the devout of those days.

But even Mrs. Bradstreet's repute as a poet, great as it was in her own little circle, hardly stands the

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