Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/24

 XVI INTRODUCTION.

with which she devoured their delicious contents. The quarter of a century preceding the departure of the Massa- chusetts Company for New England was one of the most remarkable in the history of English literature. Coming, as it did, at the close of the great Elizabethan Age, the more peaceful reign of James was better fitted for the quiet and considerate study and cultivation of literature than the more glorious and splendid, though more warlike and dis- turbed, reign of the "Virgin Qiieen." The impulse given by the great minds of her epoch had not yet died out, but had transmitted much of its vigor to their successors of the Jacoban Age ; many renowned writers of the one living late into the other. Spenser had died, near the close of the century, leaving his great poem unfinished ; having written enough, however, to charm posterity ever after, and to found a new school of poetry. His patron, the accom- plished writer, the elegant poet, and knightly soldier, Sir Philip Sidney, had fallen, some fifteen years before, on the bloody field before Zutphen. One year, 1616, had been rendered famous, by the death of two of the most brilliant names in the world's literature, — Shakespeare and Cervan- tes ; one in the prime of life, and the other at threescore and ten, summoned hence within ten days of each other. To Don Quixote and his squire, Mrs. Bradstreet may have been introduced by Shelton's translation. With the plays of Shakespeare, as well as those of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Webster, Massinger, and the other dramatists, we may well presume that she was not familiar, and that she rather shunned them, as irreligious. There are some passages in her "Poems," however, which seem as if they must have been suggested by a reading of

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