some varieties and chargable changes of
fashions: I marvell themselves preferre
not a Bill of Redresse. I would Essex1
Ladies would lead the Chore, for the
honour of their County and persons; or
rather the thrice honorable Ladies of the
Court, whom it best besemes: who may
well presume of a Le Roy le veult from
our sober King, a Les Seigneurs ont as-
sentus from our prudent Peers, and the 10
like Assentus, from our considerate, I
dare not say wife-worne Commons: who
I beleeve had much rather passe one
such Bill, than pay so many Taylors Bills
as they are forced to doe.

which invent antique foole-fangles, meerly for fashion and novelty sake.

In a word, if I begin once to declaime against fashions, let men and women 5 look well about them, there is somewhat in the businesse; I confesse to the world, I never had grace enough to be strict in that kinde; and of late years, I have found syrrope of pride very wholesome in a due Dos, which makes mee keep such store of that drugge by me, that if any body comes to me for a question-full or two about fashions, they never complain of me for giving them 15 hard measure, or under-weight.

But I addresse my self to those who can both hear and mend all if they please: I seriously fear, if the pious Parliament doe not find a time to state fashions, as ancient Parliaments have done in part, God will hardly finde a time to state Religion or Peace: They are the surquedryes of pride, the wantonnesse of idlenesse, provoking sins, the certain prodromies of assured judgement, Zeph. 1. 7, 8.

Most deare and unparallel'd Ladies, be pleased to attempt it: as you have the precellency of the women of the world for beauty and feature; so assume the honour to give, and not take Law from 20 any in matter of attire: if ye can transact so faire a motion among yourselves unanimously, I dare say, they that most renite, will least repent. What greater Honour can your Honors desire, then to 25 build a Promontory president to all foraigne Ladies, to deserve so eminently at the hands of all the English Gentry present and to come: and to confute the opinion of all the wise men in the world; 30 what useful supplies the pannage of who never thought it possible for women to doe so good a work?

If any man think I have spoken rather merrily than seriously he is much mistaken, I have written what I write with 35 all the indignation I can, and no more then I ought. I confesse I veer'd my tongue to this kinde of Language de industria though unwillingly, supposing those I speak to are uncapable of grave and rationall arguments.

It is beyond all account, how many Gentlemens and Citizens estates are deplumed by their feather-headed wives,

England would afford other Countries, what rich returnes to it selfe, if it were not sliced out into male and female fripperies: and what a multitude of misimploy'd hands, might be better improv'd in some more manly Manufactures for the publique weale: it is not easily credible, what may be said of the preterpluralities of Taylors in London: 40 I have heard an honest man say, that not long since there were numbered between Temple-barre and Charing-Crosse, eight thousand of that Trade: let it be conjectured by that proportion how many there are in and about London, and in all England, they will appeare to be very numerous. If the Parliament would please to mend women, which their Husbands dare not doe, there need not 50 so many men to make and mend as there are. I hope the present dolefull estate of the Realme, will perswade more strongly to some considerate herein, than I now can.

I desire all Ladies and Gentlewomen to understand that all this while I intend not such as through necessary modesty to avoyd morose singularity, 45 follow fashions slowly, a flight shot or two off, shewing by their moderation, that they rather draw countermont with their hearts, then put on by their examples.

I point my pen only against the lightheel'd beagles that lead that chase so fast, that they run all civility out of breath, against these Ape-headed pullets,

course

1 All the counties and shires of England have had wars in them since the Conquest, but Essex, which is onely free, and should be thankfull. [Printed in the original edition as a marginal gloss.]

Son and Heire, I mean the Pope, that service for which Lewis the eleventh kept his Barbor Oliver, which makes them so blood-thirsty. They are the Very Offall of men, Dregges of Mankind, Reproach of Christendom, the Bots that crawle on the Beasts taile, I wonder Rome it self is not ashamed of them.

I begge upon my hands and knees, that the Expedition against them may be undertaken while the hearts and hands of our Souldiery are hot, to whom I will

[From The Simple Cobler of Agga- be bold to say briefly: Happy is he that wamm.]

shall reward them as they have served 15 us, and Cursed be he that shall do that work of the Lord negligently, Cursed be he that holdeth back his Sword from blood: yea, Cursed be he that maketh not his Sword starke drunk with Irish blood, that doth not recompence them double for their hellish treachery to the English, that maketh them not heaps upon heaps, and their Country a dwelling place for Dragons, an Astonishment to Nations: Let not that eye look for pity, nor that hand to be spared, that pities or spares them, and let him be accursed, that curseth not them bitterly.

These Irish anciently called Antropophagi, man-eaters: Have a Tradition among them, That when the Devill shewed our Saviour all the Kingdomes of the Earth and their glory, that he would 20 not shew him Ireland, but reserved it for himselfe: it is probably true, for he hath kept it ever since for his own peculiar; the old Fox foresaw it would eclipse the glory of all the rest: he thought it wis- 25 dome to keep the land for a Boggards for his unclean spirits imployed in this Hemisphere, and the people, to doe his

ANNE BRADSTREET (1612-1672).

The first American volume of poems, composed with literary intent and printed in adequate form, was issued in London in 1650 with this tremendous title page:

THE TENTH MUSE Lately sprung up in America. Severall Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight. Wherein especially is contained a compleat discourse and description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year. Together with an Exact Epitome of the Four Monarchies, viz. The Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman. Also a Dialogue between Old England and New, concerning the late troubles. With divers other pleasant and serious Poems. By a Gentlewoman in those parts.

The author of this work,-not of the title page however, was Anne, the daughter of Governor Dudley, who had accompanied her father to New England in 1630, and who soon was destined to be the most extravagantly praised woman in early American history. Her contemporaries spoke in superlatives whenever they mentioned her. Had Virgil heard her poems. they declared, he would have committed his own to the flames. Cotton Mather, after mentioning all the learned women of antiquity, was of opinion that to the list now was to be added the superior of them all:"Madam Ann Bradstreet, the daughter of our Governor Dudley, and the consort of our Governor Bradstreet, whose poems, divers times printed, have afforded a grateful entertainment unto the ingenious, and a monument for her memory beyond the stateliest marbles."

One cannot dismiss utterly a poet who won completely her own generation even when one finds in that poet's work hardly a single element of what modern times demand in its poetry.、 Like her age she was fundamentally didactic and always religious. The subjects which she preferred no pen could lift into poetic expression. And yet she was not devoid of poetic feeling. In other times, indeed, she might have become a lyrist of real distinction. Even as it is, she must be counted in one respect as a real force in the history of American poetry. The American landscape awakened in her something new and original. She became one of the very first in all English literature to put actual wild nature into poetry, nature described with enthusiasm and with the eye of the poet actually upon the landscape. Her "Four Seasons of the Year" and her "Contemplations" were written a full generation before the poems of the Countess of Winchelsea hailed by Wordsworth as the pioneer in the field of English nature poetry of the modern type, and almost a century before the work of Thomson.

Always she worked with handicaps well nigh fatal to literary merit. She was physically frail; she was without literary environment.-the atmosphere of the Colonies was anything but æsthetic; moreover, she was a true daughter of her generation: she gave to poetry only the unused fragments of her time. Married at sixteen, she was first of all a helpmeet of her husband. She was the mother of eight children, and as she expressed it,

I nurst them up with pain and care,

For cost nor labor did I spare,

Till at the last they felt their wing,
Mounted the trees, and learned to sing.

Sing indeed literally many of them did in later years. From her has descended a notable line of poets and literary leaders. Dr. Holmes, the Danas, the Channings, Wendell Phillips, Buckminster, and many other traced their line back to this earliest singer of the New England wilderness.