Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/60

 Hi INTRODUCTION.

Sir Philip Sidney was also a great favorite with Mrs. Bradstreet, but she was not able to praise his works in such unqualified terms as she does those of Du Bartas. Her criticisms are quite entertaining. She refers to the " Historie of Great Britaine " by Speed, and to Camden's "Annales,"* as if she had read them, and she probably derived some of the facts used in the " Dialogue between 01d-En"-land and New " from the former. She was not ignorant of the works of Spenser, | but she does not dis- cuss their merits.

The earliest date attached to any of Mrs. Bradstreet's writings is that of a posthumous poem entitled " Upon a Fit of Sicknefs, yl^^Wf?. 1632. y^^ai/'s Jucs, k^.^'X This was written at a time of great despondenc}', and certainly does not show the signs of much poetic genius. The elegy upon Sir Philip Sidney bears date 1638 ; the poem in honor of Du Bartas, 1641 ; the Dialogue between Old- England and New, 1642; the Dedication of the "Poems" to her father (in the second edition), March 20, 1642 ; and the poem in honor of Queen Elizabeth, 1643. All the "Poems," in the first edition at least, were thus apparently written by the time she was thirty years old.

Of her mother, who died on the 27th of December, 1643, scarcely any thing is known, not even her maiden

quarto volume in London in 1605, the parts of which it was composed having previously appeared separately. The title of the edition of 162 1 was "Du Bartas. His Diuine Weekes and Workes, with a Com- pleate Collection of all the other most delightfull Workes, Translated and Written by y* famous Philomusus Josvah Sylvester, Gent." Others had also competed with Sylvester in this work.


 * See page 358. t See pages 348 and 35S.

t See page 391.

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