Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/26

 XVlll INTRODUCTION.

and for their delicious descriptions of the beautiful in nature. Following upon the poets more distinctively belong- ing to the Elizabethan Age, with their fancifulness, their pretty, tiresome conceits, their quaint analogies, and far- fetched similes, the poets of the reign of James, while they retained many of their faults, were much less artificial. These poets, who have been classified as pastoral, satirical, theological, metaphysical, and humorous, indicate by their number, and by the excellence of many of their writings, the literary spirit of the age. They were generally anti- Puritans, and we may well doubt if Mrs. Bradstreet could have read them with much pleasure, as her scruples and belief would have received many a rude shock over their pages. Wither and Quarles, however, were peculiarly Calvinistic ; the former becoming afterwards one of Crom- well's major-generals, and the latter being in manner and matter, if not in spirit, a Puritan. Their works were extremely popular with the Puritans, not only at the period of which we are now speaking, but also long after. Quarles' "Emblems," to be sure, did not appear in print until 1635, but his gloomy poems must have already sad- dened the heart of many an honest Nonconformist. Quarles appears to have had some correspondence with the New- England men. Josselyn, in his account of his visit to Boston in 1638, speaks of "prefenting my refpedls to Mr. Winthorj^e the Governour, and to Mr. Cotton, the Teacher of Bojlon Church, to whom I delivered from Mr. Francis ^larles the poet, the Tranflation of the 16, 25, 51, ^'$), 113, and 137. Pfalms into EngliJJi Meeter for his approbation." *

This period, so prolific in versifiers, was not without its


 * Josseljn's "Two Voyages," p. 20.

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