Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/161

Rh, the irrepressible need of expression effervesced in rhymes as rugged and unlovely as the writers, and ream upon ream of verse accumulated. Had it found permanent form, our libraries would have been even more encumbered than at present, but fortunately most of it has perished. Elegies and epitaphs were its favorite method, and the "most elaborate and painful jests," every conceivable and some inconceivable quirks and solemn puns made up their substance. The obituary poet of the present is sufficiently conspicuous in the daily papers which are available for his flights, but the leading poets of to-day do not feel that it is incumbent upon them to evolve stanzas in a casual way on every mournful occasion. In that elder day allegories, anagrams, acrostics—all intended to have a consolatory effect on mourning friends—flowed from every clerical pen, adding a new terror to death and a new burden to life, but received by the readers with a species of solemn glee. Of one given to this habit Cotton Mather writes that he "had so nimble a faculty of putting his devout thoughts into verse that he signalized himself by . . . sending poems to all persons, in all places, on all occasions, . . . wherein if the curious relished the piety sometimes rather than the poetry, the capacity of the most therein to be accommodated must be considered." Another poet had presently the opportunity to "embalm his memory in some congenial verses," and wrote an epitaph, and ended with a full description of—