Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/73

 INTRODUCTION. IxV

such an arm in her Life, I, f'd my most dear Mother, but y' arm lliall bee a Glorious Arm.

I being abfent fro her lost the opportunity of comitting to memory her pious & memorable xprefsions vttered in her lick- nefle. O y' the good Lord would give vnto me and mine a heart to walk in her steps, conlidering what the end of her Con- verfation was, y* fo wee might one day haue a happy & glorious greeting."

Mrs. Bradstreet's burial-place is unknown. No stone bearing her name can be found in the old graveyard at Andover, and it is not at all improbable that her remains were deposited in her father's tomb at Roxbury. As no portrait of her is in existence, the reader will have to con- template her image in her "W'orks, where she will reveal to him all the graces of a loving mother, a devoted wife, and a devout Christian.

Three years after her death, Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton, has this brief notice of her in his " Theatrum Poetarum : " —

" Anne Bradstreet^ a New-England poetess, no less in title ; viz. before her Poems^ prmted in Old-England anno 1650 ; then [than] The tenth JSIitse sprung up in A?nerica ; the memory of which poems, consisting chiefly of Descriptions of the Fo7ir Ele- ments^ the Four Humours ; the Four Ages, the Four Seasoiis, and the Four Monarchies, is not yet wholly extinct." *

Quite different from this is the pompous eulogy of Cotton Mather : —

" But when I mention the Poetry of this Gentleman [Gov. Dudley] as one of his Accomplifhments, I mufl not leave unmen-

Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart. etc. Geneva: 1S24. p. (48). § loS.
 * First published in London in 1675. Tliird Edition. Reprinted by

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