Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/63

 INTRODUCTION. Iv

either here or in England. If he was stern, blunt, and overbearing, he was at the same time placable, generous, and hospitable. He was a faithful and an able magistrate, and conscientiousl}^ discharged all his duties. He had some knowledge of law, and was a shrewd business man, but honest in all his dealings. In short, he presented that varied phase of character that one might expect to find in a man who had had such a rough experience in life. He left fifty or sixty books, principally on history and divinity, some of them in Latin, and forming what was then a large library.* Mather has preserved a Latin epitaph in his "Magnalia," signed "E. R." [Ezekiel Rogers], in which Dudley is described as a

" Hclluo Libroruin, Lector urn Bibliothcca

Communis, Sacrae Syllabus Hisiortac.'" t

Mrs. Bradstreet, too, calls him "a magazine of history," and acknowledges that he was her "guide" and " instructor," t and that it was to him that she owed her love of books. In some verses to her father, she says : —

" Moft truly honoured, and as truly dear, If worth in me, or ought I do appear, Who can of right better demand the fame? Then may your worthy felf from whom it came." §

If we may judge from a reference in her " Dedication," it is probable that he had written a poem "On the Four Parts of the World," || which might even have been printed. But, if it was similar to the oft-quoted verses said to have

Vol. xii. pp. 355-6.
 * Suffolk Probate Records, Lib. ii. Fol. 133. N. E. Hist. Gen. Register,

t Magnalia, Bk. ii. p. 17. J See pages 365 and 36S.

§ See page 398. || See page 97.

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