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144 chiefly in theological lines, to which all thought now tended. Poetry, so far as drama or lyric verse was concerned, had been forsworn by the soul of every true Puritan, but "of course poetry was planted there too deep even for his theological grub-hooks to root out. If, however, his theology drove poetry out of many forms in which it has been used to reside, poetry itself practiced a noble revenge by taking up its abode in his theology." Stedman gives a masterly analysis of this time in the opening essay of his "Victorian Poets," showing the shackles all minds wore, and comparing the time when "even nature's laws were compelled to bow to church fanaticism," to the happier day in which "science, freedom of thought, refinement and material progress have moved along together."

We have seen how the power of keen and delicate literary judgment or discrimination died insensibly. The first era of literary development passed with the first founders of the Republic, and original thought and expression lay dormant, save in theological directions. As with all new forms of life, the second stage was an imitative one, and the few outside the clergy who essayed writing at all copied the worst models of the Johnsonian period. Verse was still welcome, and the verse-makers of the colonial time were many. Even venerable clergymen like Peter Bulkley gave way to its influence. Ostensible poems were written by more than one governor; John Cotton yielded to the spell, though he hid the fact discreetly by writing his English verses in Greek characters, and confining them to the blank leaves of his almanac. Debarred from ordinary amusements or