Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/59

 INTRODUCTION. H

Du Bartas, as translated by Joshua Sylvester, was her favorite author. However distasteful his writings may be to readers of the present day, they were then exceedingly popular, and we are told that Milton not only found pleas- ure in reading them, but was to some extent indebted to them.* Mrs. Bradstreet, besides her special tribute to his memory, constantly displays her admiration for Du Bartas. This liking was known to her friends ; and in her dedica- tion of her '' Poems " to her father, she felt it necessary expressly to disclaim having copied from him at all. How much she really owed to him it is hard to tell. The gen- eral idea of her longer poems may have been suggested by reading his works, and her style and manner may have been affected in the same way.f

liographer's Manual, sub Du Bartas.
 * Craik's English Literature, Vol. i. p. 569, and note 2. Bohn's Bib-

t Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas, born of noble parents near Auch about 1544, and brought up to the profession of war, distinguished himself as a soldier and a negotiator. Holding the same religious views as Henry IV. before he became King of France, and attached to the person of that prince in the capacity of gentleman in ordinary of his bed-chamber, he was successfully employed by him on missions to Denmark, Scotland, and England. He was at the battle of Ivry, and celebrated in song the victory which he had helped to gain. He died four months after, in July, 1590, at the age of forty-six, in consequence of some wounds which had been badly healed. He passed all the leisure which his duties left him at his chateau du Bartas. It was there that he composed his long and numer- ous poems : La Premiere Semaine, that is, the Creation in seven days ; UUranie, Judith, Le Triomphe de la Foi, Les Neuf Muses, and JLa Seconde Semaine. The last work is very strangely entitled, as it com- prehends a great part of the Old Testament histories. His principal poem. La Semaine, went through more than thirty editions in less than six years, and was translated into Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, Ger- man, and Dutch. Michaud ; Biographie Universelle, sub Bartas.

Sj'lvester's translation of Du Bartas's works was first published in a

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