Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/48

 xl INTRODUCTION.

the manuscript poems of our author. These he caused to be pubHshed in London in 1650, under the title of "The Tenth Mufe Lately fprung up in America. Or Severall Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learn- ing, full of delight. . . . By a Gentlewoman in thofe parts." *

They were introduced to the reader in a short preface in which the author is described as "a Woman, honoured, and efleemed where fhe lives, for her gracious demeanour, her eminent parts, her pious converfation, her courteous difpolition, her exa6l diligence in her place, and difcreet mannaging of her family occafions." The poems were said to be "the fruit but of fome few houres, curtailed from her lleep, and other refrefhments." He also adds : " I feare the difpleafure of no perfon in the publifhing of thefe Poems but the Authors, without whofe knowledge, and contrary to her expectation, I have prefumed to bring to publick view what fhe refolved fhould never in fuch a manner fee the Sun ; but I found that divers had gotten fome fcattered papers, affected them wel, were likely to have fent forth broken pieces to the Authors prejudice, which I thought to prevent, as well as to pleafure thofe that earnellly defired the view of the whole." f

That Woodbridge was principally concerned in their publication appears yet more fully from a poetical epistle signed "L W." and addressed "To my deare Sifter the Author of thefe Poems " which follows soon after. X

Besides this, there are other commendatory verses, in which her poems are praised most extravagantly, by the Rev. N.


 * See page 79. f First edition, pp. iii-iv. See pages 83-4.

X See page 86.

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