CHAPTER II.

A

ANNE BRADSTREET AND HER IPSWICH HOME.

MONG the honorable and notable persons who came to

Massachusetts in the good ship Arabella, in 1630, and landed at Salem, was Madame Anne Bradstreet, the daughter of one and wife of another of the early Governors of that Colony.

Anne Bradstreet, the Puritan poetess, and the first American author of the Anglo-Saxon descent, either male or female, who wrote poetry, was as talented a prose writer as in versification. According to many able and learned men of her time, she was the most remarkable, level-headed and self-poised intellectual woman of the early Colonial times, and a Christian woman, devout and conscientious, of the loftiest Puritan faith. In liberal ideas and toleration, she was far ahead of her cold, crusty, Puritan surrounding; with her former minister, John Cotton, she gave sympathy to Ann Hutchinson, and was so conservative that among her Puritan friends she openly condemned the beheading of Charles I by the Round Head and Rump Parliament.

At her death honors and laurels were heaped unstintedly upon her name, and laudatory sermons commemorative were preached in all the principal churches of the Colony, funeral elegies and addresses, hours in length, were delivered according to the dearest and dreariest form of Puritan custom.

Among all these elegies, we call attention to that by Rev. John Norton, a nephew of Rev. John Norton, minister of Ipswich, and later of the first church of Boston, which is a sample of many

others. This was a poetical effusion, and with head-lines and

blazing titles was published.

I copy herewith the headings and

titles as they were printed at that time.

A FUNERAL ELOGY,

Upon that Pattern and Patron of Virtue, the truly pious, peerless & matchless Gentlewoman

MRS. ANNE BRADSTREET,`

right Panaretes,*

Mirror of her Age, Glory of her Sex, whose Heaven-born-Soul leaving its earthly Shrine, chose its native home, and was taken

to its Rest upon 16th Sept. 1672.

I give herewith a specially selected clipping.

"Grave Matron, whoso seeks to blazon thee,
Needs not make use of witts false Heraldry;
Whoso should give thee all thy worth would swell
So high, as 't would turn the world infidel.
Had he great Maro's Muse, or Tully's tongue,
Or raping numbers like the Thracian Song,
In crowning of her merits he would be
Sumptuously poor, low in Hyperbole."

Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, writes of Anne Bradstreet and thus introduces her :

"If the rare learning of a daughter was not the least of those bright things, which adorned no less a Judge of England than Sir Thomas Moore, it must now be said that a Judge of New England, namely, Thomas Dudley, Esq., had a daughter (besides other children) to be a crown unto him. Reader, America justly admires the learned women of the other hemisphere. She has heard of those that were witnesses to the old professors of all philosophy. *Greek, All virtuous.

America now prays that into the catalogues of authoresses as Beverovicius, Hottinges and Voetries have given unto the world, there may be a room now given unto Madame Bradstreet, the daughter of our Governor Dudley, and the consort of our Governor Bradstreet, whose poems, divers times printed, have afforded a grateful entertainment unto the ingenious, and a monument for her memory beyond the stateliest marble."

Rev. John Rogers, of Ipswich, son of Rev. Nathaniel Rogers, of that town, and for a time President of Harvard College, wrote a poem of nine verses, wherein he classically and enthusiastically extols and commends Anne Bradstreet's writings to the learned men of that day. I herewith insert two stanzas.

Cotton Mather says, "He was one of so sweet a Temper, that the title of Delicia humani Genevis might have on that score been given him, and his real Piety set off with the accomplishments of a Gentleman, as a Gem set in Gold."

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Madam, twice through the Muses Grove I walkt,
Under your blissfull bowres, I shrowding there,
It seem'd with Nymphs of Helicon I talkt:

For there those sweet-lip'd Sisters sporting were,
Apollo with his sacred Lute sate by,

On high they made their heavenly Sonnets flye,
Posies around they strow'd, of sweetest Poesie.

"Your only hand those Poesies did compose,

Your head the source, whence all those springs did flow,

Your voice, whence changes sweetest notes arose,

Your feet that kept the dance, alone, I trow;

Then vail your bonnets, Poetasters all,

Strike, lower amain, and at them humbly fall,

And deem yourselves advanc'd, to be her pedestal."

Nathaniel Ward, minister of Ipswich, we summons to speak next, which he does in his caustic and quaint style. He refers to

the French Du Bartas, whom Anne Bradstreet is supposed to have made her beau ideal.

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Mercury shew'd Appollo, Bartas Book,

Minerva this, and wish't him well to look,

And tell uprightly which did which excell,

He view'd and view'd, and vow'd he could not tel.
They bid him Hemisphear his mouldy nose,
With 's crack't leering glasses, for it would pose
The best brains he had in 's old pudding-pan,
Sex weigh'd, which best, the Woman or the Man?
He peer'd and por❜d & glar'd, & said for wore,
I'me even as wise now, as I was before;
They both 'gan laugh, and said it was no mar'l
The Auth'ress was a right Du Bartas Girle,
Good sooth quoth the old Don, tell ye me so,
I muse whither at length these Girls will go;
It half revives my chil frost-bitten blood,
To see a Woman once, do aught that's good;
And chode by Chaucer's Book, and Homer's Furrs,
Let Men look to 't, least Women wear the Spurrs."

N. Ward.

Anne Bradstreet lived in Ipswich for ten years, from 1634 to 1644. Her active intellectual labor was at this town, and the memory of that residence added new fame and reputation to this ancient place.

Helen Campbell, in her life of this lady, says, "It was before the final change from Ipswich to Andover, that the chief part of Anne Bradstreet's literary work was done, the ten years after her arrival in New England being the only fruitful ones."

Though the manuscript of the first edition of Anne Bradstreet's poems was nearly complete before she removed from Ipswich, some years elapsed before it left her hands, and was taken to London where it was published in 1650.

THE

TENTH MUSE

Lately fprung up in AMERICA.

OR

Severall Poems, compiled with great variety of VVit and Learning, full of delight. Wherein efpecially is contained a compleat difcourfe and defcription of

Together with an Exact Epitomie of the Four Monarchies, viz.

Alfo a Dialogue between Old England and New,concerning the late troubles.

With divers other pleasant and ferious Poems. By a Gentlewoman in those parts. Printed at London for Stephen Bowtell at the figne of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley. 1650.

TITLE PAGE, FIRST EDITION, LONDON, 1650.

(See page 8.)