Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/72

 Ixiv INTRODUCTION.

The revision of her " Poems " must have been no small undertaking, and from some of the references in the many additions which she made, it is evident that she was en- gaged upon this work as late at least as 1666. Sympa- thizing, as she naturally did, with Parliament and the Puritans, she said much in the first edition, written at the outbreak of the Civil War, which she felt obliged to omit or modify to suit the state of things existing under the Restoration. Although she speaks of a "' BrittiJJi bruitifh Cavaleer," and dignifies him with the titles of "wretch" and " monfler," yet she has to come down to calling Crom- well a "Ufurper." Indeed, these alterations form one of the most diverting features of the book. It must be con- fessed, however, that she rather inclined from the first to be a Monarchist, and that her hatred of Papists admitted of not the slightest compromise.

She had never set a very great value on the pleasures of this world, and had always been ready to abandon them for the joys which she expected to find in another. In the last piece which we have in her writing, dated Aug. 31, 1669,* she represents herself as positively weary of life and longing to die. Three 3^ears after, her wish was granted, and she was released from sufterin"-. Her son Simon's sad account of her sickness and death proves that it must have been in reality a blessing to her : —

" September 16. 1673, My ever honoured & most dear Mother was tranflated to Heaven. Her death was occalioncd by a con- fumption being wasted to fkin & bone & She had an iliiie made in her arm bee : she \vas much troubled with rheum, & one of y^ women y* tended herr dretling her arm, f'd Ihee never faw


 * See page§ 42-4.

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